On May 23rd 2014, Marc Khoury published a blog post titled “How can I spend my $35 to get the best return on investment?” on the Quora blog website. The blog goes over how a Stanford MBA class was giving an assignment to take a small nominal amount of money ($5 or $10), and grow it as much as possible in one week. Following that week, they would give a ten minute presentation on what they did with their money. Groups did all sorts of things that either grew their money a slight amount or lost it all but none of them fully grasped the goal of the assignment.
They completely forgot about what makes businesses profitable. It isn’t about what products you offer, but more so how you can offer those products in a way that is different and beneficial to the consumer. This idea connects to my group Business Plan project on a small Graphic Design company that is trying to start up in an existing market. The thing that will make people go to his company are the ideas and skills he uses to differentiate himself. It answers the question, “What skills and ideas does [he] have that people would be willing to pay for”. His product isn’t unique in a physical sense, but the ideas and knowledge he has are one of a kind.
After all the winning team in the business class simply sold their presentation time slot to a small company because “What’s more valuable than 10 minutes in front of Stanford’s best and brightest MBA students”.