Music Games International (MGI) had a product that they wanted to develop but they were not sure how they were going to do this. The founders of the company -- Igor, Roman and Sasha -- had already produced a game that used a game platform to introduce youth to music, and it had been a critical success. Unfortunately, the game did not sell well, so the three were basically broke and searching for a way to reinvigorate the concept. Every year Harvard Business School (HBS) has a business plan contest that allows students to showcase their talents. They are allowed to work in teams and with outside developers and that is how Henry and Dana became involved with MGI. The task was to create a business plan out of the previously muddled work of the original founders and determine what was needed to present the concept to investors. There were many different personality conflicts and differing ideas of what the vision should be. At some point the founders brought in two other people, Alex as a music industry consultant and Dav as a technical consultant from MIT, which further gummed up the process. The disjointedness of the meetings was concerning to the HBS students Dana and Henry, and they tried to bring all of the ideas together into a cohesive whole. The biggest issue to date, besides the personality conflicts, is what industry the team should focus...

The founders believe that they should seek a foothold in the ultracompetitive music entertainment industry, and the HBS students believe that the team should focus on the education market for the product. This is a basic disagreement that is making it difficult for the team to move forward.
Position

The inexperience of the original three founders led them to bring in the HBS students for the purpose of entering the business plan contest, but more for their ability to act as consultants. The fact that the HBS graduate they had on their team, Sasha, was the most volcanic and disorganized of the group the entire time, and jumped from idea to idea meant that there needed to be a more logical approach. This is what Henry and Dana wanted to bring to the team, but they were constantly in conflict (especially with Sasha) over the vision of the team.

Henry and Dana made several good points regarding entering the education industry vs. The entertainment industry right away. The two of them need to somehow differentiate between the two by producing a SWOT analysis of both industries as they relate to the product that MGI is marketing (Berry, 2007). With a detailed analysis of the two industries the team would have the ability to objectively look at which would be the best immediate fit. From a…