Graeff´s Blog

Freitag morgens – um 08:00 gehts los, eine Stunde joggen durch Amsterdam. Ich laufe am Rijksmuseumvorbei in den Vondelpark. Zurück geht es vorbei am Hotel American über den Leidseplein und Leidsestraat, dann am Blumenmarkt vorbei und über die Spuistraat zurück zum Hotel. SUUPPERR.

Danach um 10:00 gemeinsames Frühstück im Cafe mit der besten Apfeltart von Amsterdam, liegt direkt an der Prinsengracht.

07:00 rain, therefor no jogging

09:00 strategic Management

The theories about Michael Porter are today in the center of my studies. Strategy is about finding a sustainable competitive advantage.

We see a nice case study about Ivory Soap Bar – it is a story about how to to change the SCA of a product without loosing customers.

Later on we are talking about value chain and a case study about cochelar. Last case study is about morgan car

07:00 I take a short run around stein and the danube bank back to the university.

09:00 strategic management – we play today a strategic management game – the beer game.

after a great start I choose the wrong demand curve modell and sooner then later we have a lot of unused inventory.

19:00 assignment preparation

07:00 get up for jogging, 5km through the nice old town of krems

09:00 strategic management – professor stockport

We are doing a nice case study about airtransport deregulation efforts in australia during the late 1980´s.

We´re doing a 5 forces analysis – a toolset developed by michael porter – of this case study. there are two issues with that toolset, first of all it is static in time, and second of all there is an issue with business boundries.

An important outcome for me is the following sentence:

Price is never an strategic issue, it is only a variable of marketing costs.

Next Theory we´re playing with is game theory – it´s all about PARTS. we go through different models like egocentric and allocentric games. Great ideas about changing the game from playing win – loose games to win – win situations like cooptition.

We learned that price wars are not a good option for capturing the value – so it´s better sometimes to

Raise the fog

After looking onto a nice Michael Porter Video about his 5 Force Analysis we´re getting again to the core of strategic management, it´s all about

Creating Value and capturing it.

if the businesses are not capable of capturing it, it is a industry which is not favourable and we should focus on a strategy for improving this. For example frequent flyer programs of airlines or credit card programms are solutions for getting out of the price war trap.

we finished with a video about apricot computer, which has three different lines of business but one of them is in a quite bad shape.

Business is very often about killing your favorite child to save the family.

a hard lesson to learn.

20:30 Weingut Nigl – after a hard day some nice food.

hi,

06:30 get up early, prepare packing as I have to leave today for some jogging through central park.

09:30 We meet with Roger Mesznik, my managerial accounting and corporate finance professor @ krems. we visit together the

Metropolitan Museum of Art

after having a great morning together with roger I have to go back to the hotel – vienna is calling already