Analyzing Marketing Strategies: My Cognition Home Project

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments. This report reflects on a student's experience with a marketing strategy project.

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION
MANAGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................. 3
CONCEPT OF REFLECTION..............................................................................................................4
BUSINESS CHALLENGE REFLECTIVE COMMENTARY USING GIBB'S CYCLE......................................6
WHAT WE LEARNED.......................................................................................................................9
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................... 10
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Creativity is the ability to generate new ideas which are boundless in terms of field of study,
subject or skill. Efforts made by a team with a creative approach to their problems and
solutions, result in innovation. Innovation is one of the key drivers of change and development.
Working within a team, every small idea contributes towards creating a large innovative
solution and as the team has one goal to achieve and one direction to move ahead, every
member should be free to find their own path, ensuring the contribution of their part of
creativity.
A similar process was utilized by our team during our assessing of marketing strategy for “My
Cognition Home”, an education and training program for children to enhance their cognitive
intelligence and logical reasoning abilities. However, we were unable to get the expected
results from our work but in the process, we learned many valuable lessons regarding working
within a team and supporting each other for sustainable growth and goal achievement. Our
dedication towards the project and the number of different tasks involved has made us self–
sufficient and skilled in creativity and team management. The knowledge and experience we
have acquired during the project have been discussed in this report with the inclusion of critical
points in the steps we took where we lacked and recovered.

CONCEPT OF REFLECTION
Reflective commentary on an incident or time period is considered as the best way of self-
analysis and description regarding all the success and downfall stories in the event. A successive
making of a reflective report about an event or a certain time period gives a perception of self-
development and approach we take while dealing with a tough situation. In the process, we
look back at the things we did, why we did them, how they ended and what we learned. We
create a thorough analysis on us every step taken during the event or some sort of project so
we could identify the shortcomings aroused and where we did exceptionally well. The whole
method of preparing a reflective commentary can be summarized in three steps, the first one is
Description: This part focuses on the incident or project details. The author in this part
described his roles and responsibilities are given and what was the task all about. It contains
basic details like people involved in the process, nature of work, your personal skill
compatibility with the task assigned to you and the objectives of the project etc.
Interpretation: This section involves analysis of the situation you had to face and how you faced
them. Also, the tools and method utilized by you in the light of the situation and why you opted
for them. An analysis on the activities of other team members is also done in this part in hope
to draw some positive conclusions from your perspective. Evaluation of every situation and
problem faced by you is of the main focal point in this part and how you look towards other’s
approaches of facing problem is also an important topic to discuss in this part.
Conclusion: As usual in any report, this part concludes the commentary with a brief narration of
your findings from the event and the problems you may have faced. The conclusion also
includes how the situation ended or project finished, did you get expected results, why if not
and what did you learn from your failure. This part explains why you wrote this reflective report
in the first place and are you able to conclude whatever you learned from the incident.
However, this is just one of the many ways of structure reflective writing but the concept of
reflection must include these three steps otherwise it would be considered incomplete.
Reflective writing has a decent history and it has helped in understanding many research

findings and processes done by a former scientist who wrote their reflective report on their
research activities. The writing style and structure may not matter much but an effective
reflective commentary must include analysis of every step you took while dealing with a
situation along with your learning and comment of your personal approach and way of thinking
during problem-solving or leadership activities.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE REFLECTIVE COMMENTARY USING GIBB'S CYCLE
Reflection writing is another way of business process analysis and considered as much effective
when done with an individual’s perspective (Moon, 2013). While writing a reflective
commentary on business challenges, the steps and procedures followed are little different from
those of the personal reflective writings. For business reflective analysis, Graham Gibbs, in
1988, proposed theory, a set of successive steps to prepare an effective reflection, called Gibb’s
Reflective Cycle (Bassot, 2015). There is the total of six steps involved in Gibb's cycle and the
reason they work in the cycle is that they are sort of conditions based analysis. The aim is to
cover all the aspects of a business challenge and prepare an impactful strategy for the task
assigned.
Figure 1 Gibb's Reflective Cycle
Source: [Author’s work]
Each of the steps involved in Gibb's cycle has been described herein our business perspective.
Descript
ion
Feeling
Evaluati
on
Analysis
Conclusi
on
Action
Plan

DESCRIPTION: This part involve the introduction of the incident with facts and figures. The aim
is to provide a complete understanding of the situation along with people and functions
involved in the process with their roles and responsibilities (Davies, 2012). The basic questions
involved in this step are what was the task or project all about, what were the goals, what
exactly happened during the process, who was involved, what was your role etc. During our
project My Cognitive Home, we were assigned with a task of creating a marketing strategy
program to spread awareness and sense of necessity among the families with children. We
evaluate the market condition and need in such programs and the availability of suitable
marketing model for the uniqueness of the project.
FEELINGS: This part focuses on the feelings and underlying emotions involved with the
outcomes of the program and emotions regarding the requirement of the product among the
families. The important questions involved in the scenario are, what you feel about the need of
the program, how conscious a family is about the cognitive intelligence of their kids, what are
the emotions attached with the objective of the program etc. Analysis of emotions is necessary
because they decide the direction of the whole operation and individual perception about the
program and objective is formed on the basis of those emotions.
EVALUATION: This part implies the assessment of actions taken and strategies employed along
with an analysis of the individual's role and responsibilities. In basic terms, this part emphasis
on the evaluation conducted on different tools and method that may be employed for the
objective and also the how will they impact the process (Bassot, 2015). For example, in our
case, we thoroughly focused on social media and digital marketing strategy, without assessing
their need and approach for the requirement.
ANALYSIS: Analysis is conducted on different possibilities of the situation and possible actions
that may have taken in those situations and how they correlate with a current situation. A
systematic approach is used for such analysis and every step of the procedure is passed through
a series of critical questions and evaluation (Buck, et al., 2013). In our case, we had to find out
our market competition and how are they doing it, what were their marketing strategies and
the tools they were utilised for the purpose.

CONCLUSION: This part describes the steps taken by us and how well did it go. The conclusion
part, as usual, contains the after-effects of the situation, what was learned, what could more be
learned and what left that could be learned. It also covers the outcomes of the process and did
it matched with expectations and requirement and if not why and where did we lack. The 48
hours we got for coming up with the asked marketing plan were used with a plan or not, what
we couldn’t deliver to the CEO that he may have expected. We used a much different strategy
to approach the problem and since the product had some serious competition in the market,
our marketing plan should have considered this seriously and planned accordingly, but that’s
what we learned as a result that competition is not something to overlook. There should be no
defences against the competition, the strategy must be forward and the aim should be to
supersede the customer’s expectations, offering them something they can’t refuse.
ACTION-PLAN: This last step prepares the roadmap for the first step of the cycle thus
completing the cycle. In this part all the lessons learned and shortcomings observed are framed
out in a chart and based on them, an action plan is created which is much improved then the
last one and has potential to not only match the expectations but move beyond them. We may
be failed to give the CEO what he was expecting but at least we now understand that what
exactly was he expecting also we came to know our personal shortcomings as a team and what
we must do to rebuild it into a stronger unit which could handle any number of such projects. In
a way, we became the best choice for reassignment of the project, because not only we know
that what we have to do what also what we don’t have to do, not to mention how we are going
to do it.

WHAT WE LEARNED
Innovation is an act of introducing or bringing some new and improved change in an already
established system. How big and impactful an innovation could be, depends upon this bringing
process, so when it’s done by an individual, it may not bring a big impact but if this change is
brought by a well-managed team with good leadership, it may be (Somech and Drach-Zahavy,
2013). The point is, we worked in a team with the expectation of preparing an effective
marketing strategy for the company, so while we were involved with this challenge we should
have focused on our team management. On a personal level, to increase my efficiency, I used
this technique of mind-mapping, where one organises information and data in his mind in a
visual hierarchical manner. It gives you easy and fast access to the information in your brain,
improving your overall working speed. Mind-mapping has really helped me in many situations
where we needed a lookout or search, but because of my practice with mind-mapping, I was
able to recall the required information in no time, saving lots of time.
We now know the importance of team management and the necessity of strong leadership in
an entrepreneurial task. A task should only be assigned to a person if he has a capability and
required skillset to perform it. Also, the competition in the market is too much to miss or take
lightly; it may be the deciding factor in our strategy. When a problem has uniqueness, the
approach towards solving it should also be unique and relevant at the same time because that’s
what would be the right way of addressing the problem (Dawson and Andriopoulos, 2014).
Although we know what went wrong and where we proved inefficient, any of it will mean
nothing if we couldn't correct these mistakes and turned them into our strong suit. The whole
concept of failure is to get one step closer to success by learning from it and for that, we must
use the inside-out thinking approach, i.e., divergent thinking.

CONCLUSION
This reflective commentary was aimed to prepare a summary of what we have learned from
our experience of working on the marketing strategy of My Cognitive Home as a project. It can
also be seen as an analysis of our project, our approach, strategies, management and possible
reasons for getting undesired results. In the process we have utilised Gibb’s cycle to analyse our
actions and strategies with its every successive step, learning about our shortcomings and how
we could convert them in our strong suit. No matter how effective and efficient our plan and
strategies are but if we do not follow rules and team management spirit, even a small element
that we may knowingly neglect could be the chink in our armour. Our aim from every study and
project must always be to apply what we have learned in full capacity and learn more from the
situation, especially when the situation is against our favours. All the lessons we have learned,
we will discuss among ourselves and for the opportunity comes to us once again, we’ll not back
down this time and we’ll use our knowledge and experience in full capacity. We have to change
our way of thinking, converging from outside to the problem. Instead, we must use the
opposite, diverging towards the outer world scenario along with the problem.

REFERENCES
 Somech, A. and Drach-Zahavy, A., 2013. Translating team creativity to innovation
implementation: The role of team composition and climate for innovation. Journal of
management, 39(3), pp.684-708.
 Dawson, P. and Andriopoulos, C., 2014. Managing change, creativity and innovation.
Sage.
 Černe, M., Jaklič, M. and Škerlavaj, M., 2013. Authentic leadership, creativity, and
innovation: A multilevel perspective. Leadership, 9(1), pp.63-85.
 Buck, A., Sobiechowska, P. and Winter, R., 2013. Professional experience and the
investigative imagination: The art of reflective writing. Routledge.
 Moon, J.A., 2013. A handbook of reflective and experiential learning: Theory and
practice. Routledge.
 Davies, S., 2012. Embracing reflective practice. Education for Primary Care, 23(1), pp.9-
12.
 Bassot, B., 2015. The reflective practice guide: An interdisciplinary approach to critical
reflection. Routledge.