1-2-3 Phoenix!
During IMEx (Integrated Management Exam) a team can rise from the ashes like a Phoenix or crash and burn down to the ground. I’m pleased to let you know that my team rose up like a Phoenix.
Although my team did not win
We had a great time and I learned a lot during this experience! That is why I want to write about IMEx and my highs during this last week before the ICP’s. Also a final congratulations to the winning teams of IMEx 2018!!!
So let’s get started.
During IMEx we represent a high tech toy company that recently had a fire. We had 12 periods to recover from the fire by making decisions related to operation management, people management, marketing and others. These resulted in three different metrics that were shared at the end of each period; profit, people and planet. Our team, named TEKTO (a great creative brainstorm was behind this name btw), did quite well at the start. We scored highest on people and did quite well on our share price, our planet was terrible though but we recovered.
Tuesday, after period 5, it was time for our first intermediary meeting with the board of directors. Right before the meeting we discovered we would be first mover of a new product that would be launched. Because of that we were very excited and I must admit a bit too confident. We were sure our company would keep on going up as it did in the past but as you might have sensed by the tone of this text that wasn’t the case. After period 5 we encountered a major set back and our share price dropped by a lot!
But when I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, “let it be“. Just kidding, Karel De Gucht wasn’t there to motivate us and we did not “let it be”. In our time of trouble our team came together and we looked at how we could recover. It was not until period 7 but we did recover! I will now fast forward to period 12 because we created a model that suited our company and caused a growth in the end of 221,98% compared to period 1 which resulted in TEKTO having the highest share price in the end. I will not elaborate too much on our methods because the point of IMEx is that you discover how to do this on your own.
I can however share that I learned a lot and I really pushed my boundaries. Near the end of IMEx we got an email about a final guerrilla marketing campaign for which each team would get 30 seconds at the final plenary session. The winner of this campaign would receive eternal fame and 1 additional point for creativity (but I wanted to compete just to challenge myself and I had expectations that this would be considered for the final IMEx winners… the point was that you wanted to move forward with your fictitious company and great marketing of a new product shows that).
So what was our final marketing campaign? Well our first products involved virtual reality gaming with product Z (called Gen Z) being a virtual reality headset where you wouldn’t need any additional gear and you will be fully submerged into a new world. Therefore our new product had to be even more amazing and I had the idea to create a contact lens and an earpiece with which you could basically play any game anywhere you want. With Pokémon Go you still needed your phone, with our new product this wasn’t the case anymore! (The advantage of IMEx is that you can dream without having to create it)
So for TEKTO we wanted to walk with dinosaurs so this 30 second movie was our teaser (I did take clips from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and another VR T-rex game. You cannot create a marketing campaign during IMEx without using things from the internet);
And because people do love a prototype I created a hologram! You can find plenty of videos on youtube on how to create a hologram. I just decided to make it big enough so it could fit on my laptop screen (the largest screen I had available, just imagine how big you could go with this). Now, on a movie it does not have the same effect as in real life but here you can see why TEKTO won the guerrilla marketing campaign;
Hooray for eternal fame!
To end this article I want to thank my team! We had a great collaboration and having a good vibe in your team is really important during IMEx. We were all very pleased with our end result and although we did not win IMEx, in my opinion we are a winning team.