...three years * He could easily foresee the rise of Trivial Pursuit in Canada and its potential market and thus success in the US market (US market had approx 10 times the sales of Canada) * TV guide thought of involving themselves because of the monetary gain that the venture assured and supported the idea of working with a small company instead of a big one * Apart from the this Bob due to his earlier network had come up with an amazing idea of coming up with a TV board game * As an average American spent 7 hours on an average watching TV and thus the theme had chances of being enormously successful (The success of Trivia) * Kaplan had ample experience to be a good business advisor and guide * Lastly, an association with Kaplan brought Reiss in contact with Swiss Colony and HellenFactoring who were the other partners in Trivia 2) What risks & obstacles have to be overcome in order to pursue the opportunity successfully? How did Bob Reiss accomplish this? (Cover the Risks & Obstacles and steps by Bob Reiss in pursuing the opportunity successfully) * In this industry the fad of products was really high * The industry was highly competitive with big retailers having maximum say and share * R and R was a new and small player in this industry which was unknown to both retailers and customers so there were doubt of their acceptance * In order to achieve credibility, they went ahead with collaborating with TV Guide * TV Guide could...
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...Defining customers as those people and organizations for whom R&R creates value, R&R serves the following customers: 1. TV Guide; 2. American board game players, i.e. adults and children; 3. Retail outlets, which can be classified as mass merchandisers and department/gift stores; 4. The game developer, i.e. ‘a professional inventor’; 5. TV guide employees who develop the questions; 6. Sam Kaplan; 7. Sales representatives; 8. Kaplan’s supplier; 9. Swiss Colony; 10. Heller Factoring. Arguably, TV guide is a supplier/ marketing channel/ licensor, yet R&R creates value for TV Guide in the sense of creating a business opportunity. A similar argument holds for the other customers of R&R as well. If we look at the final consumers of the product, then according to the definition of Osterwalder and Pigneur, R&R serves a mass market. Taking into consideration the remarks of Mr. Reiss, who mentions that his customers are the manufacturers representatives and the buyers of major chains, we can argue that he distinguishes between input and output in his firm. Thus making the business model multi sided, the suppliers need many retail outlets to have their products for sale; and vice versa: the retail outlets require large production. The value proposition describes what value is delivered to the customer. Or, to be more precise, what are the bundles of products and services that create value for R&Rs customers. Given the limited space of 1 page, I will stick to the customers defined by Mr...
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...Harvard Business School 9-386-019 Rev. November 15, 1987 R&R During the summer of 1983, Bob Reiss observed with interest the success in the Canadian market of a new board game called “Trivial Pursuit.” His years of experience selling games in the U.S. had taught him a rough rule of thumb: the sales of a game in the U.S. tended to be approximately ten times those of sales in Canada. Since “Trivial Pursuit” had sold 100,000 copies north of the border, Reiss thought that trivia games might soon boom in the U.S., and that this might represent a profitable opportunity for him. Reiss’ Background After his graduation from Harvard Business School in 1956, Reiss began working for a company that made stationery products. His main responsibility was to build a personalized pencil division, and he suggested that he be paid a low salary and a high sales commission. He was able to gain an excellent understanding of that market, and by 1959 could start on his own as an independent manufacturer’s representative in the same industry. His direct contact with stores that sold stationery products revealed that many of them were beginning to sell adult games. He decided to specialize in those products. In 1973, Reiss sold his representative business to a small American Stock Exchange company in the needlecraft business in exchange for shares. He then set up a game manufacturing division and ran it for that company, building sales to $12,000,000 in three years. Reiss decided to go into...
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...Reis and Trivia inc. accomplished. First of all the large established companies are driven by the resources they currently control. No large company controlled the knowledge nor the resources needed to design a new trivia game. Reiss, as an entrepreneur, saw the changing market and the opportunity it created. Secondly the opportunity was only there for a short period of time. Reis predicted that the new trivia game would sell for only one year. Larger companies want to invest in opportunities that are profitable for a more than one year. Reis exploited the opportunity with the (correct) assumption that it wouldn't last for more than a year. Finally, Reis, who outsourced all the steps of the production, development, marketing and sales process, was able to keep the risks for himself very low. A large established company normally does all the steps by itself and therefore has a larger risk. When one of the steps fails, the company will definitely lose money. Reis distributed the risk in such a way that that he and his company Trivia inc. had virtually no risk. The opportunity WHOOZIT is a different cook. The market has changed since the production of The TV Guide TV Game. In 1984 over 80 trivia games came to the US market. The sales for trivia games plummeted. The opportunity WHOOZIT therefore comes in a less favorable time than the “The TV Guide TV Game”. On the other hand, the WHOOZIT game is different than the existing trivia games. Where other trivia games...
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...BoReissROBERT REISS Robert “Bob” Reiss, HBS 1956, started out as a waiter at resorts in upstate New York. He moved on after HBS to run the personalized-pencil division of a small New York company. He saw that as an opportunity to learn about running a business while someone else “picked up the tab.” He then started a sales rep company and soon stumbled on opportunities in adult games like chess and magic. Eventually he sold his company to a needlecraft company. Bob then founded R&R to create and sell games, including the TV Guide Trivia game produced during the Trivial Pursuit craze in the 1980s. Bob described his entrepreneurial career in a video interview from his office in Boca Raton, Florida, in February 2001. Interviewer: Amy Blitz, HBS Director of Media Development for Entrepreneurial Management. The Early Years I grew up in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. Both my parents worked. They taught me a strong work ethic and a strong sense of morality. They also taught me to never, ever complain about anything in life. I had a brother who was three years younger than me. We grew up in a very competitive environment. We weren’t aware that it was competitive since that was just the way things were. Sports were everything in our world. We had millions of street games in front of the house. Basketball was the big sport, because in Brooklyn we didn’t have the big playing fields, so everybody played in the schoolyards. Three-man basketball was the game all weekend long. In the winter...
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...$12000000 within three years * He could easily foresee the rise of Trivial Pursuit in Canada and its potential market and thus success in the US market (US market had approx 10 times the sales of Canada) * TV guide thought of involving themselves because of the monetary gain that the venture assured and supported the idea of working with a small company instead of a big one * Apart from the this Bob due to his earlier network had come up with an amazing idea of coming up with a TV board game * As an average American spent 7 hours on an average watching TV and thus the theme had chances of being enormously successful (The success of Trivia) * Kaplan had ample experience to be a good business advisor and guide * Lastly, an association with Kaplan brought Reiss in contact with Swiss Colony and Hellen Factoring who were the other partners in Trivia 2) What risks & obstacles have to be overcome in order to pursue the opportunity successfully? How did Bob Reiss accomplish this? * Offering incentive, 5% ad allowance, to department stores for placing ad in print * Free media publicity * In this industry the fad of products was really high * The industry was highly competitive with big retailers having maximum say and share * R and R was a new and small player in this industry which was unknown to both retailers and customers so there were doubt of their acceptance * In order to achieve credibility, they went ahead with collaborating with TV Guide * TV Guide could...
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...Q.1. What factors created the opportunity for Bob Reiss and the TV Guide Game? 1. Demand for “Trivia” products were on the upswing, and had yet to reach the U.S. 2. Success of Trivial Pursuit in Canada was crucial 3. Reiss’s experience in the logistics and lead time concerns of manufacturing in the toy industry 4. Reiss’s personal connections: • Kaplan (Equity) • Helen Factoring (Billing & Accounts Receivables) • Swiss Colony (production and shipping) • Suppliers for books, boards and boxes Q.2. What risks and obstacles had to be overcome to pursue the opportunity successfully? 1. Advertising (Did not possess the Advertising budget of larger companies, i.e. Parker Bros.) 2. Public’s interest in Trivia Games declining (Over saturation can/will occur rapidly) 3. Manufacturing with little lead time 4. Cash Flow 5. Sales 6. Competition (mainly Trivial Pursuit) How did Bob Reiss accomplish this? 1. Advertising Strategy 2. Offering incentive(5% ad allowance) to dept. stores for placing ad in print 3. Free media publicity 4. Ensured product would be available for sale before “fad” of Toy/Game had occurred 5. Utilized personal experience and intelligence to create an efficient product design (booklet, instead of cards) 6. Business Partner Kaplan 7. Sales Strategy 8. Price Point was set significantly...
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...R&R Case Write UP By: XXXXXXXXX Bob Reiss is an experienced player in the Toy/Game market. Currently he is deciding how to follow his successful TV Guide trivia game. He could try to create a spinoff of the TV guide game. He could launch a new proposed trivia game called Whoozit, where you guess people based on clues. Mr. Reiss has to make a decision launch Whoozit, a new trivia game, or try to spin off the TV Guide game. My recommendation is to launch Whoozit. The Whoozit game allows Trivia Inc. to leverage their skills developed in the launch of the TV guide game. Trivia Inc. has access to the channels, the manufacturers, and the pulse of the trivia market customer. The case indicates that Trivia Inc. had a preliminary royalty deal with the Bettman Archive, keeper of the images necessary for Whoozit. I think the addition of a magazine like People, Life, or Time would create a direct point of touch/access and lend more recognition to the endorsement. Another reason to launch Whoozit is the low cost of the endeavor. If analogous estimation holds true, Trivia Inc. could produce these units for about $5/unit and stand to make profits of about $2.00 per unit on 500,000 units. The total cost to launch The TV trivia game was $50K, but profits were over $2M net for Trivia Inc. If Whoozit could be executed as successfully as TV Guide TV game, it would be money well spent. Finally, the lessons that Reiss had gleaned from Trivial Pursuit’s US launch are incorporated...
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...Statics of Rigid Bodies STATICS OF RIGID BODIES Chapter 1: Introduction Department of Engineering Sciences enter 〉〉 Statics of Rigid Bodies DEFINITION Mechanics • the study of the relationship among forces and their effects on bodies. • the science which describes and predicts the conditions for rest and motion of bodies under the action of forces. • a physical science (for it deals with physical phenomena) Prev Department of Engineering Sciences Jump to… Stop Show Next Statics of Rigid Bodies MECHANICS MECHANICS RIGID BODIES STATICS bodies at rest DYNAMICS bodies in motion DEFORMABLE BODIES INCOMPRESSIBLE FLUIDS COMPRESSIBLE Prev Department of Engineering Sciences Jump to… Stop Show Next Statics of Rigid Bodies What is a FORCE? represents the action of one body on another that tends to change the state or state of motion of a body. may be exerted by actual contact or at a distance (e.g. gravitational and magnetic forces). characterized by its point of application, magnitude and direction. represented by a vector. Prev Department of Engineering Sciences Jump to… Stop Show Next Statics of Rigid Bodies Effects of a FORCE • development of other forces (reactions or internal forces) • deformation of the body • acceleration of the body Applied Force Prev Department of Engineering Sciences Jump to… Stop Show Next Statics of Rigid Bodies Development of other forces ...
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... GE 253 Physics Albert Einstein’s Contribution to Quantum Mechanics Albert Einstein was one of the greatest minds in world history. Einstein is known as a brilliant physicist who contributed more to the scientific world than any other person. His theories on relativity paved the way for how science currently views time, space, energy, and gravity. Einstein was so advanced in his thinking that his studies and work set the standards for the control of scientific energy and space explorations currently being studied in the field of astrophysics. Albert Einstein's most noted contribution to the world is his theory of relativity. By 1902, Einstein was working on combining time and space, matter and energy. In 1905 when he was only 26 years old, he published a paper on relativity. This paper showed mathematically that the speed of light is constant and not relative to its source or to the viewer. Einstein had actually written an essay when he was only 16 years old on relativity, which became the basis for his published paper. The greatest result of relativistic physics was Einstein's famous relation, E=mc2. In this, he was able to prove that any increase in the energy, E, of a body must lead to a corresponding increase in its mass, m, these increases being related by a factor c2 , where c represents the velocity of light squared. In conclusion, Albert Einstein ranks as one of the greatest people for his contributions towards physics and his part...
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...Physics is all around us. It is what causes the lights to buzz with electricity, the car on the streets to go from point A to point B, and our televisions to run so we can watch our favorite shows. According to Webster dictionary, physics is the science of matter and energy and of interactions between the two. In all physics consists of energy, kinetic energy, potential energy, velocity, acceleration, mass, force, and gravity. Without physics many things would not be possible. In fact, when a person is driving their car they are suing momentum (the quantity of motion of a moving object) and acceleration. Over time our general understanding of physics has helped us develop greater technology than society thought possible. For example, many years ago society believed that flight was impossible until two brothers, the Wright brothers, invented the aircraft. Now of course that was with many trial and errors. According to Bernoulli principle an increase of a flow results in a decrease of pressure. When air hits the leading edge the airflow above the wing travels faster than the flow below the wing. So therefore, the pressure below the wing will be higher than the air pressure above the wing. Because of this difference in pressure, lift is created, and pushes the wings upward. Be that as it may, this is not the only physics principle at work One must also apply Newton’s 1st (every body remains in a state of rest or uniform motion unless it is acted upon by an external unbalanced...
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...CWV-101 March 29th 2014 Joe Stanley Role Model Review Outline Directions: * Identify the worldview of the role model you chose. Their worldview will be one (or a combination of two for some of the role models) of the worldviews that we have discussed in this course. * Write an Introduction of 3-5 sentences to set up the purpose of the outline. Include the identification of the worldview of the person you chose in the introduction. * Write a Thesis Statement. This should appear at the end of your introduction in the final draft of the paper. A sample thesis would look something like: Martin Luther King Jr.’s worldview can be seen in the way that he viewed family, the nature of God, and social issues. His view of these three topics will be compared with my own. * Address each question with a topic sentence (the first sentence in the paragraph) and 1-2 additional sentences (“a” = 1 sentence / “b” = 1 sentence). In the topic sentence you should clearly identify the topic being discussed. A sample topic sentence would look something like: Martin Luther King Jr.’s worldview can be seen in how he views the issue of family. * Write a Conclusion of 3-5 sentences to wrap up the purpose of the outline. In this paragraph you should explicitly state why you do or do not consider the individual you wrote about to be a role model. * Write your References in GCU style: These should be three academic references that you will use and cite throughout your...
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...Name Professor Course Date Isaac Newton the Last Magician Biography This is a one hour movie documentary narrated by Helen McCrory trying to give an insight to the life of Isaac newton and how he changed our understanding about how the universe works. The documentary asks question to experts of the history surrounding Isaac newton. In the documentary Isaac newton is brought out as a pessimist as he would enjoy his own company, his life revolved around research and a lot of studying in the laboratory in religious activities like heretical, alchemy and also the study if the hidden. Newton did not believe anything that he read, this was evident when he was the age of twenty one by declining to agree with scientific research which was more than two millennia old and decided to come up with his own through conclusion and to do this he had to perform a number of experiments. We get the notion that he was a skeptic and anything could be questioned of its legitimacy. Newton had a secretive life that came to light two hundred years after his death, this was his passion for cultic behavior where he considered himself a scientific Christ who was sent to save the world from scientific fiction, this is ironic as he was also born on Christmas morning just like Jesus the messiah in the bible. He is called the last magician because after his death there has not been any other iconic person like he was that has made a fraction of the changes in science that he did. His discoveries...
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...Kruyper (trained mathematician). While attending his last years of High School in Rotterdam Netherland Edsger Dijkstra knew what he wanted to do in life. He wanted to represent his country at the United Nations. Even though he was still in high school, he formulated a plan to achieve this goal of representing the Netherlands in the United Nations. He decided to get a law degree. After receiving the maximum highest points possible in the following areas: mathematics, chemistry, biology and physics on his final examine. Everyone starting with his loving and supportive parents to his very motivational teachers convinced Edsger that a career in the field of science would be an outstanding career move for him. So, Edsger Dijkstra headed on to the University of Leyden. There at the University of Leyden Edsger Dijkstra decided that he would major in Theoretical Physics. To develop a good, strong and firm foundation in Theoretical Physics Dijkstra began his studies in mathematics and physics. Douwe Wybe Dijkstra being the loving and supportive father that Edsger needed him to be, was always searching for great opportunities to encourage his son in the field of study that he had chosen. Well, as the story has it, Douwe, (Edsger father) was reading a paper and just happened to come a cross an advertisement for a computer programming course that would be held at Cambridge University in England. The computer programming course was three weeks long. The three week course was to start...
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...German-born American theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein, often regarded as the father of modern physics, had exceptional intellectual ability and unprecedented insight. Many believed him to be one of the most influential people in both science and mathematics, and quite possibly the most famous scientist of the 20th century (Severance, 1999). As cited by Fingon and Fingon, Einstein was well known for being a brilliant physicist and abstract thinker, applying his creativity and imagination in his scientific thought process (Parker, 2003). He received the 1921 Nobel Prize for his contribution to the study of physics, namely his special (1905) and general (1916) theories of relativity. The name “Einstein” is often thought of as being synonymous with the word genius. Einstein was not always thought of as a genius, however. His unique intellectual abilities as a young boy created challenges for him in his everyday home and school life, but his sense of wonder paired with persistence and determination led him to be the successful prodigy people know him as today. Abraham Maslow’s humanistic approach of self-actualization provides significant explanation for Einstein’s behaviors and achievements throughout his life. Heredity and environment played vital roles in Einstein’s psychological development. Einstein’s parents and teachers observed his early childhood developmental delays and had doubts regarding his intelligence. His parents worried about his intellectual development...
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