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Intro

The case focuses on Henry Tam, an MBA student who teams up with MGI founders to develop an interactive music game for a business plan competition. MGI previously had success with a music-based game but faced commercial failure. They hoped working with HBS students would help market the product and access alumni networks. However, tensions arose as the MGI founders kept adding new members without consensus from Henry and Dana. With a looming deadline, the culturally diverse team struggled to agree on target markets and work cohesively due to experienced tensions and conflicts.

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umustknowme
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55 views

Intro

The case focuses on Henry Tam, an MBA student who teams up with MGI founders to develop an interactive music game for a business plan competition. MGI previously had success with a music-based game but faced commercial failure. They hoped working with HBS students would help market the product and access alumni networks. However, tensions arose as the MGI founders kept adding new members without consensus from Henry and Dana. With a looming deadline, the culturally diverse team struggled to agree on target markets and work cohesively due to experienced tensions and conflicts.

Uploaded by

umustknowme
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Henry Tam,the protagonist of the case, was a second year MBA program student at Harvard
Business School. To take part in HBS business plan contest he had teamed with HBS classmate Dana
Soiman and the founders of start-up company Music Games International (MGI). The founders of
MGI were Alexander (Sasha) Gimelson, Igor Tkachenko, and Roman Yakub. Both Roman and Igor
were from musical background and belonged to Ukraine , unlike Sasha who is from business world
and is from St.Petersburg. The team despite some conflicts was a closed knit. Also the team didn͛t
had good history with working with outsiders. The company was started in early 2000 with an aim to
produce original music and sound effect for different website. MGI initially had a promising start but
due to the internet bubble burst, the company started facing tough period for their expertise and
hence team up with the idea of producing interactive music based games. In fall 2001 MGI came up
with Tchaikovsky͛s Nutcracker, which was a critical success but commercial failure. By start of 2002
the founders realised they need outside assistance to develop their vision into a viable business as a
result they turned to HBS business plan completion. Henry and Dana was thus added to the team.
Sasha also believed that with support of students of HBS, they can gather help from alumni network
of HBS more effectively which could help them to market the product, this idea of Sasha appalled
both Henry and Dana. In the next brainstorming meeting Sasha introduced a new member i.e.
Alexander Jan Sartakov who was a student of Berkley school of music with dual degree. Again in the
next meeting a new member was added to the group namely Dav who was a student of MIT and
specialised in computers, this further added to frustration of Dana and Henry. With a lack of
effective leader, no consensus was reached, whether to target educational market or entertainment
market. The team had little success working together having experienced tension and conflicts.
There is a three week deadline for the submission of the business plan, and before that the team has
to come up with best possible plan.

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