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Merchandiser in tablets

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But there is always a but isn’t there? One day BEN was confronted with the economic crisis.

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One day he was confronted with the economic crisis in Europe Revenue was going down However BEN is not the guy to give up And came up with a few good ideas

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BEN came up with a few good ideas to save the day and his company So what did he do to get a better profit? BEN decided to raise prices and lower cost in order to stay profitable

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His tablets went up in price and

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BEN took some interesting cost cutting actions.

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Looking back at his actions and the results BEN still is not satisfied and got real hesitations concerning his strategy. BEN asked himself the following questions: Is this the proper way to go about? What would customers say concerning this higher price? What would employees say concerning cost savings (i.e. smaller lease car) Are there any other possibilities to find that will lead to a better strategy and what could they be? BEN called his old university and had a discussion with Clemens and Marijn. BEN got supported by a group of students that looked at his Business Model.

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With the help of the CANVAS from Business Model Generation the business model of the company of BEN was drawn. His profit was down till just over 2%. Although on first sight his model reaaly looked good. He had the right value proposition for the correct customer segments. A good product and still he was in trouble. BEN could’t grasp it untill the students came up with an idea to make an evaluation of his model.

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With the help of a large set of questions this evaluation was completed. Based on the facts from the research the students had performed the questions were answered and graphically displayed. Very happy BEN looked at the evaluation. Now he could see where the real issues are. Channels, Cost structure and Rebenue streams. BEN was so interested that he also completed the same questionnaire. With the help of Avans these two evaluations were compared with each other. The comparision scared BEN shitless. He couldn’t believe his eyes!!!

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What happened? BEN came to a staggering conclusion of the two evaluations: There is a difference!!! But what and why?

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A total difference in strategy. BEN on cost and price, students on customer relationship and segmentation. How come? Students based on research And BEN? Well he just answered the questionnaire! So what is happening? How do entrepreneurs decide? We first will take a look inside the entrepreneurs brain.

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Brainstalk: Don’t judge BEN(the entrepreneur) on the size of his stalk. 90% of the intuition is often combined with gut. Forgetaboutit: BEN Forgets what has been learned at school. The ‘real world’ often requirs decision that are not tought at school. M.I.A: Missing in Action. BEN is Focussing on his plan to succeed in stead of looking at failures. I think therfore I am the best: The believe of BEN is that he can do it. And nobody else can do it better than him. Together with the other components BEN uses a three step approach for decision making: 1: Gather and store data 2: Interpretate data for opportunities 3: decide yes or no Dreamer: Big pictures and big goals. Yacht on Ibiza, or airplane with their own name. Ahead of the curve: Entrepreneurs make trends they don’t follow it Creativity: Continuously new ideas. Not all of them are successful. Power: Entrepreneurs are obsessed with power. Gadget ganglion: Deal with the ’it’ device, How does it work, How do I use it and who to bribe to be the first to get it.

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Envy: Every entreprneur aspires to reach the same level of succes as Richard Branson. Down Jonesing: Look for their next manouvre without exacltly knowing how it all works. They just want it like a twelve year wants Grand Theft Auto. Grindstone lobes: All thoughts are always about work.

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The first apsect is gathering data which is the basis for the decision making process. BEN constantly collects data and stores this data in his memory for later use.

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BEN discovers a lot of opportunities. For all of these opportunities BEN discoveres in the data he has to take a decision to follow thru. Some opportunities can lead to success and some will fail.

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BEN has to take a decision to follow up this opportunity. Will he follow up the opportunity or will BEN decline in following up?

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However each time BEN is confronted with a challenge: the proces of decision making remains a complex process.

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And not every decision of BEN is a good one and leads to success.

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BEN makes use of cognitive mechanisms to evaluate and interpret his data. He sees more opportunities in making business than non entrepreneurs. BEN sees the risk involved, however he doesn’t see the risk as high as others would see them. However BEN can fall into the ‘cognitive illusion trap’ which means that BEN doesn’t see the reality not anlymore because of information overload, responsibility, committment, emotions or a high degree of uncertainty.

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This can lead to what I call ‘airplane management’ where BEN takes decisions based on best practices from others. These best practices are more and more discussed because it was the best thing to do for that company, at that time in that specific situation. But is it also good for BEN?

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Another issue in the decision making process of BEN are his biases. BEN doesn’t always make use of rational processes based on facts to decide. He has a set of subjective opinions that he has built during his time of entrepreneurship. That means that these opinions again and again lead to the same interpretation because BEN doesn’t allow himselve to objectively looking at the facts. BEN also has a set of rules he uses in situations where he has to make decisions.

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If BEN would only have a hammer in his toolkit. Everything looks like a nail!! These predetermind decision rules, which are always in a limited number, can lead to reasonable judgements but also sometimes to severe and systematic errors. Risk justment is than done by three heuristics: 1) Representativeness: This decision is similair with another decision taken in the

past to a certain event or subject. 2) Availability: occurence of an event or situation in the mind of BEN. 3) Anchoring and adjustment: BEN uses his experience (anchor) and adjust the

situation insufficiently to reduce complexity and reach a final situation.

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BEN’s experience in entreprenership, his biases and heuristics prevent uereka moments that BEN used to have after a good night of sleep. Thats the moment the brain was able to mull over the issue and after waking up the rational mind takes over based on experience.

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BEN has to take many strategic decisions in stress situations. Stress lowers the control and leads to dicisions based on intuition. And the intuition of BEN is based on his personality type. According to Meyers Briggs there are four types, Sensing-Thinking(ST), Intuition-Thinking(NT), Sensing-Feeling(SF), Intuition-Feeling(NF) that have a different impact on the gathering of data, evaluating data and generating alternatives. By John Cassidy, contributor FORTUNE -- Who will be the most important person in economics in 2012? President Obama? Mitt Romney? Ben Bernanke? My candidate is Mario Draghi (a.k.a. "Super Mario"), who took over as chairman of the European Central Bank. Though virtually unknown to Americans, the dapper Italian technocrat could emerge as a savior of the world financial system or as its unwitting assassin.

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Well to be honest. Theoretically speaking this is the conceptual model of BEN. We have seen him struggle with his enterprise, took some decisions that apperently doesn’t seem to be the best strategy for his company. BEN has seen that in the decision making process a lot of aspects play a role. However BEN has still some questions that are unanswered. YET! So what questions does BEN have?

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Since BEN has seen that there is a gap these three questions pop up in his mind. 1) In BENs case it is bad but does this count for others as well? 2) With the evaluation BEN is able to reduce the gap and find a better strategy. 3) BEN doesn’t know.

So what could be the future implications for BEN?

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BEN is driven by the process of creation, never stop thinking about the business, his devotion to the business, taking risks and receiving a reward at the end. BENs decisions are influenced by his cognitive possibilities, biases, heuristics, experience and personality. Where does this lead to? The empirical research of the companies together with the desk research led to some insight in the decision making process of BEN. However it doesn’t give an answer on the former mentioned questions. Therefore a subsequent study is already started at Avans and therefore Avans is looking for participants . Future implications Empirisch model Wat is de hoofdvraag Uit de theorie Praktijk meten Doen we zo Intersubjectiviteit, elke onderzoeker komt met dezelfde resultaten binnen de toegepaste methode.

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Daarom zijn we hier mee bezig. Wat is het theoretische model, conceptueel model. Wat is het empirisch model, hoe willen we het concreet doen. Mthodologische verantwoording Methodologische verantwoording en doelstelling onderzoek

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Conducting this subsequent research with the support of entrepreneurs would be very helpful in answering the three mentioned questions. It is my honour to invite participants and that I am very happy that I am allowed to do this research. Thank you for your attention.

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