PrintSocial Media Marketing Strategy: Google+ or Facebook?
Posted on: April 17th, 2012 | by: Becca Zinn | no comments
Research indicates that marketers plan to increase social media spending by 46% in 2012. However, not all social media platforms are alike. To make the most of a social media marketing budget and effectively engage new and existing customers, marketers should understand the culture and features available with each platform and develop strategy accordingly. To help with this process, this following infographic offers a snapshot comparison between Google+ and Facebook.
Risk, Sustainability, and Corporate Resilience
Posted on: April 8th, 2012 | by: Jim Hutchin | no comments
The risk and insurance industry fills a unique role in the world’s economy as a private market mechanism for the sharing of risk, with the global pooling of what would be risks otherwise borne solely by the individual and/or entity estimated at US $100 trillion. As this risk pooling is instrumental for creating the resilience that underpins the efficient functioning of economies and societies, the insurance industry is clearly a legitimate object of public policy. As the risk pooling afforded is only possible with investors’ willingness to put capital at risk, value creation is a necessary condition for its continued existence.
The convergence of public and private interests in the industry are nowhere more keenly apparent than in the risks and opportunities presented by “sustainability,” the issues and factors illustrated with a “Taxonomy of Sustainability” developed at the Fox School of Business. An EMC faculty member and MBA team conducted a global survey of sustainability and the insurance industry on behalf of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (“UNEP FI”). This survey had two lines of inquiry.
First, what is current “state of play” as respects the integration of Environmental, Social and Governance (“ESG”) factors in insurance underwriting? Secondly, what is needed for the development of a more purposeful dialogue on the role of the insurance industry in response to ESG factors? From the survey results, five broad themes emerged, each of which is discussed in depth in the publication that resulted from the survey: The Global State of Sustainable Insurance.
Dialoguing on Sustainability & Risk
- ESG factors influence underwriting.
- Proper management of ESG factors potentially enhances insurance industry earnings via avoided loss and new product offerings. This in turn could afford greater protection for the insureds’ they serve.
- Given their assessment of ESG risks, insurance underwriters judge societal response for many ESG factors as under-developed.
- There are significant differences in the assessment of ESG factors dependent on whether an underwriter is operating in the “developed” or “developing” world.
- Promotion of ESG risk management and financing requires:
- Working with a fragmented insurance industry structure to achieve integration
- Enhanced forums for dialogue between stakeholders
- Distinct, and sometimes new, skill sets
- A recognition and respect for interests divergence
Understanding sustainability allows insurance companies to better understand the risks they are assuming, and in so doing, make more money – all while doing the “right” thing as well.
James W. Hutchin
Willis Research Network
Reaching through prison walls to develop strategy
Posted on: March 25th, 2012 | by: TL Hill, Managing Director | no comments
Image Credit: The Inside-Out Center
A little over a year ago, a team of our MBA students spent a Saturday in maximum security Graterford Prison facilitating a day-long strategy session for the steering committee for Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. Started at Graterford more than 15 years ago, Inside-Out has grown into an international network of 310 trained facilitators and several prison-based think tanks – all without a well-formulated business model. The strategy session was designed to stimulate the steering committee – roughly half inmates and half professors, with a smattering of students and staff – to design a business model to support the organizational component of Inside-Out.
Programmatically, Inside-Out provides incredible educational offerings in which inside and outside students conduct workshops and take college classes together, inside prison walls. The quality of thinking is exemplary, with the inside students holding the (often younger) outside students to an extremely high standard of preparation and logic, and the outside students (often having the benefit of more formal schooling) bringing to bear strong technical skills in reading and writing. Even more important telling the high-quality thinking is the commitment to mutual respect and deep listening such that participants draw from each other and the group deeper insights than would be available individually.
Needless to say, talking business and strategy in this setting was extraordinarily challenging, both because many of the participants are actively suspicious of business and because the group expects the highest level of honest and respectful participation in decision-making. The team prepared by clarifying the goals of the session, designing a flow, blocking out the day in 15 minute intervals, assembling needed materials, and practicing various listening, recording and facilitating techniques. On the actual day, this meticulous preparation allowed the team to adjust nimbly as the group challenged, changed and eventually found its way back to the central themes and decisions.
In the end, the steering committee’s insights and decisions shaped the EMC teams recommendations for Inside-Out, even as these recommendations have guided Inside-Out.
On the dissecting table [at a recent Think Tank discussion] was the EMC team’s comprehensive 176-page report prepared for Inside-Out, entitled “Pathways to Sustainable Growth.” Out of this critical meeting of minds rose a guiding theme: harnessing the power of the international network. To maximize this power, the Graterford Think Tank has been placing special focus on the continued development of what EMC identified as Inside-Out’s core competencies (what has made Inside-Out successful, unique, hard to copy, and what will give Inside-Out an edge moving forward). They are: the Graterford Think Tank, the international network, and the instructor trainings.
– The Inside-Out Center Newsletter, Fall 2011
As useful as the strategic work has been to Inside-Out, the experience of working with such a powerful group of people, inside and out, has also left its mark on the EMC team:
On a practical level, the facilitation at Graterford made me realize how important preparation is for any sort of meeting and how being intentional – about activities, questions, etc. – can make an incredible difference on the outcome of your discussion and the richness of the content and dialogue that you create.
On a personal level, as always – going into Graterford was a transformational experience. It was incredibly humbling to stand up in front of professional facilitators and try to facilitate a meeting. It was also incredibly rewarding to be able to create a structure – and see it unfold in expected and unexpected ways – that allowed people to discuss their ideas and reactions to our work and listen to their suggestions of how we could make it better and support Inside-Out in deepening their own impact. Also, as a person who can be on the shy-side, especially in large groups, having to facilitate in front of 40 people – without my teammates! – was character building to say the least.
- Christy B., FMBA, 2010
What’s the added value of a strategy consulting course?
Posted on: March 20th, 2012 | by: TL Hill, Managing Director | no comments
Today I was re-reading Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (and feeling quaint and anachronistic while holding an actual library book) and was struck by Smith’s notion of “productive” and “unproductive” labor. I wonder if our students would count all of the time they put into the EMC as productive or unproductive?
Productive labor is labor that “adds value” to something, such that some of the labor is captured and stored for later use. (This must be one of the earliest uses of the b-school jargon, “added value.”) An example is manufacture, in which some of the labor is captured in a product and (in a sense) released as the product is used and eventually re-sold. Unproductive labor is labor that dissipates even as the effort is expended; Smith uses the example of housekeeping and other servant services which provide some immediate but not lasting value.
The Enterprise Management Consulting Practice requires from each students perhaps 300 hours of work, between classes, team meetings, client meetings, research, modeling, writing, presenting and, we hope, thinking. Does any of this effort transform into value that can be called on at a later point to solve a problem or make a decision? Is there true “value add” to MBA education?
Coming up with objective measures of the added value is a topic for another post. Anecdotally, we measure the impact of EMC by the increasing confidence we see in our students’ faces and actions, and by the emails we receive, sometimes years later, telling us how they have used their EMC skills to solve business problems.
EMC gave me much more than knowledge of a particular industry. It gave me soft skills: I learned to work under pressure, to deliver high standards of quality on time and to manage various characters and competencies within a team.
Matthieu Guillaume, IMBA 2001
Lloyds TSB MonacoI use EMC tools to evaluate potential investments and acquisitions for my firm.
Francine Pramana, PMBA 2011
Business Development Specialist
Independence Blue Cross
