Agenda

Class Notes
Guest Lecturer: Tina Seelig

Introduction:
- Social Entrepreneurship week is Feb 22-29. BE THERE!
- Next Friday showing movie, “Imagine It!” Video documenting competition- students creating value from 3 post it notes packs.
- Fri, the 29th: Don’t miss the innovation tournament show case. At Arrillaga Alumni Center.
- As a class we will be participating in this year’s challenge so we should be there on Fri 2/29.
- Played two truths and a lie.
- Game: Every team gets a stack of cards and rules paper. Make a house with the cards according to specific rules.

Debriefing of activity:
- Limited resources: 3 decks with 4 teams.
- First thing we did was try to get whole deck of one card. Started trading (but took a while to get there).
- Then merger. Work together to create the most value. Competition is so fun and overpowering that we can get in each other’s way to
actually creating more value.
- Stealing ideas—stacking instead of pyramidal structure idea traveled through groups. Could also have been more creative in assembly. For example, making on floor, cutting, folding.

Ideas/Issues discussed:
- Accountability in transaction- stealing sticks when dividing equitably.
- Knowing what rules you can break, how far you can push the limits. Innovation can come from different interpretations. When Professor Seelig devised game, didn’t even think of stacking cards method. There are millions of ways of thinking and interpreting.
- Opportunity recognition: Where are the opportunities?
- Value creation: Nobody decided to just create value by collecting sticks or serving as “stockbroker.”
- Leveraging resources: In life, will always be limited resources, not enough for everyone. Figure out how you will act in the market to be one of the ones who actually gets resources.
- Team dynamics: feel like you got stuck at all because of clashing ideas? We ignored David’s idea of collaborating at the beginning when it was actually what we ended up doing.
- Division of labor: Dividing of roles? Should one person be the negotiator? Or builder? Or scoping of other teams? How would having a bigger team change the division of labor? Smaller setting allows every member to be involved in decisions. When merged to one larger group definitely showed miscommunication and not having everyone involved.
- When we lost a key member of team, impacted gravely. Things happen though, can’t always be in control of people’s actions. Big deal, especially if person goes to competitor and takes intellectual property with them. Don’t necessarily take all of secrets with you though. People are respectful and responsible too.
- Pressure: dependent on attitude and degree of competitiveness. Can be reactive or proactive depending on how you choose to frame your limits, opportunities, and what is going on.
- Time: Spent more time thinking about what we were going to do. Is this a technique for keeping strategy secret? Cuts into execution time, run out of time to actually “do.”
- Entrepreneurship is about trying things and experimenting. Best way to learn is to feel it, experience it.
- Opportunities for creative solutions? Yes! For example, merging, card stacking. Instructions so ambiguous that allowed for a lot of creativity.
- Window of opportunity: difficult to be a late entrant when patterns have already formed.
- Coming from a position of strength is valuable and definitive in allowing for merger to happen. If you are behind, probably will not try to merge. When the strong suggested though, weak or less advantaged followed.
- Was prize important? No, just winning. But interesting that people want prize for each (i.e. - 3 prizes) instead of one prize for all as a cohesive team. - Strategy of keeping one card of each deck- poses question, is goal to prevent others from being successful?

Assignment due 2/19

• Readings:
• Weird Ideas by Robert Sutton. (5 pages & a great read)
• Bring 1 or more interesting/weird items that you own to class, and a story about how you got it/them.
  
• Make sure you did last week's reading and posted questions, because we're going to talk about it in class this week (and use it.)