The B2B team gets fly like paper

At the end of our last meeting, the B2B team took a little time to get creative. The game was to make a paper airplane, develop a 30 second pitch for why yours is the best and then fly the plane. The winner of the pitch was decided by closed ballot votes. The furthest flown wins the latter challenge with slightly more weight considered for this portion.

Here's what happened:

Round 1: The Pitch

This is essentially a marketing challenge where each team member communicated verbally why his/her plane is better than the others.

First up was James. He emphasized the aerodynamic nature of his plane and how it was even tested in a wind tunnel prior to final production.

Shirley went next. As SFC team members are socially and environmentally responsible, we used recycled paper for this contest. As such, Shirley mentioned the aesthetics of the print on the paper in addition to the aerodynamics. She even pointed out where the little pilot would sit!

Catrina was third. She emphasized the features of the plane that made it less resistant to air drag. And then Catrina got really creative. She talked about the plane's lights for easy identification. Last but not least, she mentioned the plane's ability to write messages in the sky!

I (John) went last. Although I participated, I was not in contention as I've done this exercise before in the Queen's MBA program so I thought it might be unfair. With my pitch, I branded the plane "Air Social Focus Consulting." I mentioned how the plane was made entirely from recyclable materials and how 10% of every ticket sold on the plane goes to charity.

Winner: tie! between Shirley and Catrina although James was close behind. I inadvertently just made James sound creepy. Sorry James!

Round 2: The Flight

Catrina (left) watches as Shirley launches her plane.
James (not pictured) crosses his greasy fingers (inside joke).

furthest to closest: Shirley, James, Catrina, John

Winner: Shirley!

With Shirley tying in the pitch and flying her plane the farthest, she was the clear overall winner! The point of this exercise is to demonstrate that in business, marketing is very important to sell a product successfully, but your product also has to deliver on its promises and perform!

Cow and forever

The B2B team met again last Thursday to go over our secondary research results and develop a decision framework to narrow down our target organizations. 

Once that was done, we took the last 10 minutes or so to get our creative juices flowing. As a lead-in to brainstorming for an SFC team slogan, we did the "Silly Cow Exercise" as recommended by Osterwalder and Pigneur in Business Model Generation.

On a small piece of paper, we each drew our idea of an innovative and novel business idea involving a cow. These are what we came up with:

From top to bottom:

1. James developed a self-sustaining farm where the cow's poop is used to grow the plants that the cow will eat. Money is made from the poop (fertilizer) and crops.

2. Catrina chose to leverage the cow in a really creative way by using a particularly large cow to motivate people to get healthier and lose excess weight.

3. Shirley had the best drawing and tagline which shows how a cow's dairy has versatile uses in producing food.

4. I (John) clearly had the worst drawing (my cow has shoes!) in the team. The little box on wheels is capturing the energy generated from the constant wagging of the cow's tail.

As you can see, we all came up with different ideas which underlines that we're all bringing different perspectives to the team. Ultimately, this will help us perform at a higher level and develop more effective results.