Management Reflection - week 10

From last week's lectures, I learned most from the the topic of knowledge innovation. There are two types of knowledge, tactit and explicit. Tacit knowledge is knowledge based on one's experience and feelings on the matter while explicit knowledge is written facts and figures presented to you. The lecturer then moved on to knowledge flows, saying that interactions between tacit and explicit knowledge can create numerous flows.

A simple conversation could be the start of a knowledge flow, where one talks about his experience or his way of doing things to another person. Socialisation is the form of tacit to tacit knowledge flow. Externalisation is from tacit to explicit and the most obvious example for it is teaching. Teachers are taking what they know and presenting it to you by putting it on powerpoint slides or notes. The opposite of that is internalisation; explicit to tacit. This is when you take what you learned from what you read,start making it into your habit and adding your own variation to it. Lastly there is combination, explicit to explicit. An example of this could be summerising what you have learned in class, like writing this reflection on learning.

Management Reflection - week 9

Last week we went over the topic of innovation. Innovation is basically bringing something new in, it could be useless and weird but it is still an innovation. The concept is similar to evolution, if one does not change with the world, it will be left behind and will not survive. The lecturer showed an example of this by showing us the S-curve of technological development. Section 1 shows the initial slow growth of a technology eg. phone. Section 2 is the rapid increase in the use of it. Lastly section 3 reaches a limit where people just got bored of it and the slope of the curve dies off. Here is when innovation or evolution comes in. A smart company will take their products to their next level eg. iPhone 4 to iPhone 5. Just before the product reach it's limit, they will release a better version of the product so the curve can continue rising and not die off.

Another point I learned was the Business Model Innovation. It is when a business takes a whole new approach in marketing their products. I had to agree with the example the lecturer said about Nokia was advertising their phones by showing simply how great their technology was. However Apple marketed their iPhone through applications. Through the use of applications like Facebook, the customers realise how great this piece of technology is. The two models has a slight difference however this extra step can determine whether the business suceed in the market or not.

Management Reflection - week 8

Last week, the focus for the course was on marketing. The market research section seemed familiar to me because I often participated in the research without realising it myself. The purpose of market research is basically to help companies understand the opportunities and problems between themselves and the customers. To do research before launching a product seemed pretty self explanatory to me because why would anyone buy your product, if it was not what the customers were looking for?

Then the lecturer talked about the different categories of market research. Exploratory, descriptive and causal, each differ in terms of the magnitude of the research. Causal is simply compare product A to product B, an experimental research. Exploratory research is when the company is unaware of it's problems therefore doing research on finding out where it is going wrong. Descriptive is when the company is aware of it's problems and therefore doing research on how to solve it.

The lecturer mentioned the site Smile City, how they conduct market research on selected individuals. Being a member of the site, I recalled the different kind of surveys I had received and now understands how the research works. Occasionally I get surveys which falls into the exploratory area while other times I get yes, no questions which means they are descriptive or causal questions.

Choas;Head

Recently finished watching Chaos;Head and I have to say it wasnt that bad. The story involves a high school dude Nishijou Takumi, standard otaku who dislikes 3D girls, collects figurines and plays computer games, oh and he lives in a shipping container LOL. In the city of Shibuya, there has been a series of killing which the people called the New Gen events. On a particular night, Takumi witnessed the event happening and the killer even greeted him. The very next day, he found the the killer was his friend without him even realising it...?

One thing I really liked about this anime was the character personalities, they're all unique in their own way which makes them very likeable. The story itself started off quite well, as the series go on, you start to sense theres a bigger picture behind the scenes which makes the anime interesting. I had to keep clicking next episode because I was so hooked into it.

The ending however wasnt so great, they rushed it a bit so a lot of it does not really make sense so that brought it down. It had a huge potential, they should've worked on the ending more carefully and I gurantee it would've been an awesome anime to watch for everyone. In terms of music, the background music in anime were pretty standard and I enjoy the opening and ending. Im having trouble rating this a 6 or 7 out of 10 so maybe just a 6.5/10 :P

Chaos;Head songs


*Like!*




*IDEI YONAAA* Hard to describe... just a mean song

One of the best Friday in uni life

So last Friday we planned a gelato day. Thanks to the vouchers that Alvin bought, after the 370 interviews, the crew went down to iStorm - the gelato place. The voucher was pay $4 and get $10 worth of anything in the shop so we each got a $8 glass of special mix gelatos. This is what I got, a triple youghurt one. Sorry for the pic, lighting wasnt great at the store.



We then found there were all these fun interactive, strategy games like Jenga, connect 4, 3D connect 4. So six engineers sat down and battled it out XD Jenga was an epic game, so much manuvering and stabilising was required for it lol. Here is Dixon concentrating...



After Jenga, we moved on to 3D connect 4 and it was one of the best games I've played in a while. Had to think in terms of 3D planes, some lines I just couldnt even see it until it was pointed out LOL. It was also harder since you are playing against 2 other people. So while 3 people were duelling it out on the 3D version, we had 2 others on the simpler normal connect 4. I won that one with ease.

After spending like 2 and a half hours in the store, we decided to leave, went back to engineering and started playing card XD until it was tutorial time. That day was just too relaxed but we also had tonnes of fun :D