Hello all,
Autumn break! Holiday! Happiness??
Is everybody enjoying his/her freedom?
Does this break mean that we become a little bit more happy in life. Do we get the chance to recharge our happiness during these 7 days of no commitments? Or is it the commitments themselves that keep some of us happy? A few heavy questions about life you’ll be able to think about during this autumn break.
Why?
Today I read an item on the website http://http://www.nu.nl/,this stated that the Erasmus university in Rotterdam has published a worldmap of happiness. And apparently we(Holland) are ranked 12th, where Costa Rica is leading the charts and Zimbabwe is the least happy country in the world.
An average inhabitant of Costa Rica has 66 happy years in his life, where Zimbabwe only has 12. We as the Dutch need to deal with 60 happy years in our life. Very remarkable is that the people of Iceland have 66.4 happy years in their life. So that automatically leads to the question: How important is money in once life? Given the fact that the last few years haven't exactly been prosperous for Iceland. And just as important, how has hapiness been measured
To answer this question. Or better put, to be able to understand this question, we need to look at how this research is performed.
Technical details (Veenhoven. R.. Happy Life Years in 148 nations 2000-2009. World Database of Happiness. Rank Report 2009-2d. Internet: worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl)
1. Average enjoyment of life assessed by means of surveys in general public samples.
2. Life expectancy is estimated on the basis of civil registrations of birth and death around 2005. Source
3. Happy Life Years' is an estimate of how long and happy the average citizen will live in that nation in this era. Computation: 0-1 enjoyment of life multiplied by expected length of life.
I would like to invite you as readers of this blog to think about this, and preferably comment on this blog.
Enjoy the mind breaker for this week.
Regards,
Joep
Sharks in a Blue Ocean
Every single student of the Master in Imagineering class is very busy: attending lectures, preparing lectures with reading (academic) articles and books, finding an application company (or even already visiting one), learning for the oral exam, working on the Research Methodology Course (RMC), editing the Individual Transformation Report (ITR) and as a relief: planning the trip to South-Africa!
There are quite a few of us who already booked their flight to Johannesburg. The dilemma is to choose for celebrating ‘carnaval’ in The Netherlands or using the spring holiday to have a vacation in South-Africa.
Some things that we can already dream of doing over there are; visiting the Kruger Park, cage diving with sharks, the highest bungeejump in the world, riding an ostrich, visiting Mandela’s prison island, climbing the Table mountain, attending a football match of Ajax Capetown, having a ‘braai’, etcetera.
To continue on the White-shark-cage-diving. Let me explain this, you do it in an ocean of course, the Indian Ocean. It is quite a bloody ocean actually, because the tour operators throw in blood and guts to attract the nasty-looking Great Whites. The tourist dives in the cage underwater when they see a dorsal fin approaching, probably to get one of the greatest thrills of their lives; seeing a Great White Shark alive and in the wild! The controversy is that in this area the sharks started to associate humans with food now. But only the little pieces of fish that the boatmen throw in is not enough. They must still be hunting for their own food of course; seals.
In South-Africa, more precisely around Seal Island (close to False Bay), the seals are many! So there are many sharks as well! In this 'red ocean' sharks need to hunt with ‘surprise’ as main element, because the seals are much faster and (when escaping from an attack) can easily outrun their competition. The easiest option to surprise a seal is a vertical approach when they enter the water. This is possible because the physical environment is perfectly shaped for this. The main leaving and entering point of Seal Island is very close to deep waters, which gives the sharks the option of a vertical-approach-surprise-attack. With all the brutal force the sharks attack the seals from underneath and with this torpedo-like technique they fire themselves out of the water!This is the most likely theory why Seal Island (South-Africa) is the only place in the world where sharks have this behavior. You could say they found a ‘blue ocean’ in hunting. Of course it is not really ‘an uncontested market space’, because the seals might change their behavior to evade the ‘jumping’ sharks, but in the world of hunting one would possibly not find another specie of animal that is not hunted on by any other animal… Let’s hope that in February 2010 the sharks will still be torpedoing themselves so we can be amazed then!
To ladder or not to ladder?
It took a while but finally the outcome of our laddering class-assignment was there: the value map that represented the value we expect that our mobile phones must represent.
On Thursday the 8th of October we started by questioning each other what features we like best on a mobile phone. From these ‘attributes’ we questioned further (using the laddering technique) to get to the customer values. Most of us had no experiences with this methodology yet. Thus we were also not completely aware of the 36 values of Rokeach or the 57 values of Schwartz. This made the coding (on Monday the 12th of October) even harder, plus the fact that we did it altogether and not very objective.
Attributes, consequences and values which were mentioned less than 3 times were scrapped. We needed another moment of a day later that week (Wednesday the 14th of October) to finish the implication matrix and the value map. See the pictures attached to this blog post. According to this the main value our mobile phones represent for us are ‘self esteem’ and ‘caring for loves ones’.
The use of this outcome is for mobile phone manufacturers to focus on attributes belonging to these values and for marketing agencies to communicate these values in their campaigns.A part of the methodology of laddering, probing questions is also a technique used in other methodologies such as PAT (Profile Accumulation Technique), CIT (Critical Incident Technique) and mythological analysis. That’s why it was quite dominant in our two weeks of ‘New research’.
My next blog post will be about a more popular and less scientific subject: the blue ocean!
Which one of the three?
The moment of the truth: Monday the 12th of October from 15h30 till 17h15. Within those hours were the presentations of three different concepts, which were kept really secret for each other. But all have the same intention: to share the knowledge of popular management books. I was pretty exited to hear the other presentations (and to do our own), because we will choose the best concept and implement it directly so that the concept will be up and running when the first book presentations will be held (in the week of November 16).
Because of the high potential of all three concepts, I may not present them on this blog in detail (since they’re not patented yet). So I will just give an idea of what the concepts were.
Group 1 started with the introduction of a nice viral marketing campaign and they explained their concept via the ABCDEF-model (with emphasis on the Brooding phase). They came up with a type of interactional reading.
Group 2 (myself) explained their concept via the ABCDEF-model as well and put emphasis on the Concept phase. They came up with a way to facilitate reviews and physical meetings of interested managers.
Group 3 came up with a concept that involved us as students in sharing the contents of popular management books.
We actually didn’t really do a voting for which concept would win this ‘pitch’, but instead we formed a group of members of all three groups. The best idea to reach our goal (spreading the knowledge of popular management books) is probably a combination of all three concepts.
The key is to make it work and hopefully exploit it in a way that we can be real entrepreneurs and earn some money with it. That is... if the management books don't show us how to do that!
Organising the results of laddering
This Thursday we had to practice how to the laddering research technique can be used. In order to learn how it works, we practiced it ourselves by finding out what we like about our mobile telephone. We asked each other about the key features a phone should possess, after which we asked each other why that feature is so important. This questioning went on until we got a sense of terminal values. Values that are in you as a person and that do not easily come out.
Meanwhile during the interviews our classmate Wilma found out that the green wall in our classroom is never looked at, while this is the most 'inspirational' wall, as it is being green opposed to the other walls who are all white. Most of us agreed upon switching the lecturers view to the other side. Maybe in the upcoming time the class rooms view will change suddenly 180 degrees ;-).
However, when we all finished our interviews we had to put each answer of the why questions on a
yellow sticky note and bring it to the front of the class. We had to put each answer under the right header of abstract attributes untill terminal values. It went kind a like this in the beginning, but in the end we all contributed to putting the right yellow sticky notes on the right places and even clustering them together when we found out some answers were kind of the same.
Meanwhile during the interviews our classmate Wilma found out that the green wall in our classroom is never looked at, while this is the most 'inspirational' wall, as it is being green opposed to the other walls who are all white. Most of us agreed upon switching the lecturers view to the other side. Maybe in the upcoming time the class rooms view will change suddenly 180 degrees ;-).However, when we all finished our interviews we had to put each answer of the why questions on a
yellow sticky note and bring it to the front of the class. We had to put each answer under the right header of abstract attributes untill terminal values. It went kind a like this in the beginning, but in the end we all contributed to putting the right yellow sticky notes on the right places and even clustering them together when we found out some answers were kind of the same.Next week Bram wil maybe tell how the laddering results were interpreted further :-).
Using Endnote and experience research
This week we had to hand in the first RMC assigment. As I underestimated the assigment in hours of work, the weekend before was vanished into time to make sure the work was carried out in a good way.
The upcoming week was promosing a week full of new research methods given by Proffesor W. van Gool and associates. It promised to be less wonderfull as the three weeks of inspirational lessons before, however I know I need to know about the methods available concerning qualitative research as it will help me during my work I will be doing in the application company.
Monday we got a workshop about EndNote; a referencing program. We got explained how to use it to insert references from available databases and how to get these references to work within Word for writing the Business transformation report, our thesis of the Master in Imagineering.
The Wednesday we got a lecture of Nick Johns who flew over from the UK to talk about qualitative experience research. For example using the PAT methodology. It was quit interesting how photographs of a holiday can result into scientific research ;-).
There is another blog post about the Thursday is coming up. stay tuned..
R-to-the-M-to-the-C
Before the next blogger takes over on Monday, I promised to tell you something about Thursdays lectures. This week was all about the change in consumer behaviour that appears to take place in recent years. Although most of the information was already discussed in the last two weeks, it was nice to hear some different examples as well as other lecturers' views on Imagineering and customer behaviour. The different views of the lecturers and some students resulted in a number of interesting discussions. The flow of information was a bit less than previous weeks, but there was enough work to be done, due to another major part of the programme: the Research Methodology Course (RMC).
Next Monday, we have to hand in the first assignment for the RMC course. This course is developed in order to get our research skills at an academic level within eight months and have us writing a proper research proposal for our theses. The emphasis is currently on searching for relevant and reliable academic articles. The first exercise was to state three possible research questions, and find an academic article for each one. The next step then was to judge the articles' reliability and usefulness. I happened to find the holy grail, in this case an article about a research model which perfectly sums up everything I'm planning to study for the Emmen Zoo. The other two articles were about the role of the internet for Zoos and a study on destination loyalty among tourists. It really got me inspired and I ended up with some great ideas for my research. Not having done anything for the RMC up till Friday, with interesting and inspiring articles like that I managed to finish the assignment on Friday afternoon. It feels like I'm off for a good start. Hopefully I won't find a lot of my fellow students on Monday struggling to finish the assignment on time.
I'll see you guys around.
Next Monday, we have to hand in the first assignment for the RMC course. This course is developed in order to get our research skills at an academic level within eight months and have us writing a proper research proposal for our theses. The emphasis is currently on searching for relevant and reliable academic articles. The first exercise was to state three possible research questions, and find an academic article for each one. The next step then was to judge the articles' reliability and usefulness. I happened to find the holy grail, in this case an article about a research model which perfectly sums up everything I'm planning to study for the Emmen Zoo. The other two articles were about the role of the internet for Zoos and a study on destination loyalty among tourists. It really got me inspired and I ended up with some great ideas for my research. Not having done anything for the RMC up till Friday, with interesting and inspiring articles like that I managed to finish the assignment on Friday afternoon. It feels like I'm off for a good start. Hopefully I won't find a lot of my fellow students on Monday struggling to finish the assignment on time.
I'll see you guys around.
Getting started at the application company
This morning I finally had the time to post something on the blog again. It's been a busy first part of the week, with the second full day at my application company on Tuesday and my graduation party on Wednesday. Since I was the first to have an application company, I'll tell you a bit about my experiences so far.
The idea behind these application companies is that each student has the opportunity to immediately put everything they learned into practise. The Master thesis will be written as an advisory report for this company, although they won't be grading it. While most of my fellow students are still struggling to find an application company, I had the opportunity to start already in week 1 of the Master programme.
Months before the Master started, me and my girlfriend visited the Zoo in Emmen (http://www.zoo-emmen.nl/). She had worked there for a while, and through her I found out about the plans to move the Zoo from the city centre to a location outside the city. This involves designing a 33ha Zoo from scratch, but also reviewing all the human processes regarding customer contact and redesigning the entire back office to suit the characteristics of the new Zoo. I figured this would be the perfect application company for my Master in Imagineering. When I first met people from the Master, I told them about my ideas regarding the Zoo, and I found out that the Zoo had already asked them for advice. So I had a nice way in.
In the months after, I convinced the Zoo about how I could help them, and they agreed to employ me for one day a week, and in the course of the year expand that to two days, and finally full-time. In return, they would pay the tuition fee for the Master.
I started two weeks ago, and there wasn't a lot for me to do since the people I was supposed to work with were out of office for most of the day. So I just focussed on getting some basic things done, like requesting keys to the office and login data for the computer network.
A week later, I joined the marketing manager and the programme manager (who is in charge of the development of the new Zoo) on a trip to a market research organization in Zoetermeer. They where doing interviews with possible visitors of the new Zoo, who were selected on age, social class and income, and were asked to participate given the fact that they go on day trips every now and then. These people didn't know why they were there and what they would be talking about, neither did they know about the plans for the new Zoo in Emmen. Therefore they gave us a nice insight of how the average Dutch family would respond on the plans and, more importantly, whether they would like to pay us a visit. There was also a lot of nice feedback about for example the routing in the Zoo and the possible price for a ticket.
Having met most of the people working on the development of the new Zoo, last Tuesday I met a couple of people who keep the current (old) Zoo running. Together with the marketing manager I agreed on my activities for the coming months. I will be looking into how they want the visitors to experience the Zoo, then team up with some key members of the staff to find out how they think about their jobs, contact with visitors, the role of management and what they themselves add to the experience of the visitor. At the same time I will be doing research among visitors, probably using a questionnaire, to find out how they actually experience the Zoo and what they think about the role of its personnel. Then, in the remainder of the year, I will be doing a lot of supporting research to finally come up with a report giving advice on how the new Zoo can give the visitors an even better experience than they hope for, and how to arrange the entire organization in order to facilitate in that.
I put my plans on paper last Tuesday and right now I'm waiting for them to be approved, so I can start doing my research. It's already clear that I will have a lot of freedom to do what I want. There's an office I can use each Tuesday, but I can also arrange meetings somewhere else if necessary. I will also be doing several jobs throughout the Zoo for one day, to get a good picture of what everybody does and what it takes to keep an organization like that running. I'm anxious to start!
Today I'll be back in Breda after skipping an interesting guest lecture yesterday, because I had my graduation party in Leeuwarden. Hopefully it'll be easy to get up to date with all that's been said and discussed yesterday. Today will be about the 'Age of Experience', which to me seems like a pretty vague subject but I hope the lecturer will come up with some inspiring insights. I'll let you know how it all worked out.
The idea behind these application companies is that each student has the opportunity to immediately put everything they learned into practise. The Master thesis will be written as an advisory report for this company, although they won't be grading it. While most of my fellow students are still struggling to find an application company, I had the opportunity to start already in week 1 of the Master programme.
Months before the Master started, me and my girlfriend visited the Zoo in Emmen (http://www.zoo-emmen.nl/). She had worked there for a while, and through her I found out about the plans to move the Zoo from the city centre to a location outside the city. This involves designing a 33ha Zoo from scratch, but also reviewing all the human processes regarding customer contact and redesigning the entire back office to suit the characteristics of the new Zoo. I figured this would be the perfect application company for my Master in Imagineering. When I first met people from the Master, I told them about my ideas regarding the Zoo, and I found out that the Zoo had already asked them for advice. So I had a nice way in.
In the months after, I convinced the Zoo about how I could help them, and they agreed to employ me for one day a week, and in the course of the year expand that to two days, and finally full-time. In return, they would pay the tuition fee for the Master.
I started two weeks ago, and there wasn't a lot for me to do since the people I was supposed to work with were out of office for most of the day. So I just focussed on getting some basic things done, like requesting keys to the office and login data for the computer network.
A week later, I joined the marketing manager and the programme manager (who is in charge of the development of the new Zoo) on a trip to a market research organization in Zoetermeer. They where doing interviews with possible visitors of the new Zoo, who were selected on age, social class and income, and were asked to participate given the fact that they go on day trips every now and then. These people didn't know why they were there and what they would be talking about, neither did they know about the plans for the new Zoo in Emmen. Therefore they gave us a nice insight of how the average Dutch family would respond on the plans and, more importantly, whether they would like to pay us a visit. There was also a lot of nice feedback about for example the routing in the Zoo and the possible price for a ticket.
Having met most of the people working on the development of the new Zoo, last Tuesday I met a couple of people who keep the current (old) Zoo running. Together with the marketing manager I agreed on my activities for the coming months. I will be looking into how they want the visitors to experience the Zoo, then team up with some key members of the staff to find out how they think about their jobs, contact with visitors, the role of management and what they themselves add to the experience of the visitor. At the same time I will be doing research among visitors, probably using a questionnaire, to find out how they actually experience the Zoo and what they think about the role of its personnel. Then, in the remainder of the year, I will be doing a lot of supporting research to finally come up with a report giving advice on how the new Zoo can give the visitors an even better experience than they hope for, and how to arrange the entire organization in order to facilitate in that.
I put my plans on paper last Tuesday and right now I'm waiting for them to be approved, so I can start doing my research. It's already clear that I will have a lot of freedom to do what I want. There's an office I can use each Tuesday, but I can also arrange meetings somewhere else if necessary. I will also be doing several jobs throughout the Zoo for one day, to get a good picture of what everybody does and what it takes to keep an organization like that running. I'm anxious to start!
Today I'll be back in Breda after skipping an interesting guest lecture yesterday, because I had my graduation party in Leeuwarden. Hopefully it'll be easy to get up to date with all that's been said and discussed yesterday. Today will be about the 'Age of Experience', which to me seems like a pretty vague subject but I hope the lecturer will come up with some inspiring insights. I'll let you know how it all worked out.