Your Full Name
Professor' s Name
Henry Tam and the MGI Team Case Study
The team that Henry Tam worked with on the MGI project was a disparate group with very different skill sets and perspectives on the project. The goal of the project, to create and market a piece of software designed to help people better understand music and create it, began with a small group. This group was soon supplemented by others, including Henry Tam and his team, who were attempting to win a Harvard Business School contest based on their work with MGI. The 5 Whys
Ultimately, this project was a failure. The reasons for this failure are difficult to define, primarily because of the complex interactions of the various individuals over time. One way to glean a few answers as to why this project did not succeed is to use the 5 Whys method discussed in Systems Thinking. As suggested in this method, the first question to ask with regard to Henry Tam and the MGI project is why it failed to achieve its objectives? The initial answer to this seems to be that there was a lack of focus in the project. Why was there this lack of focus? Some of the original members of the group themselves had disagreements as to the ultimate goal for MGI. There were two competing ideas for just what MGI should do. On the one hand, it was suggested that the software they were going to create should be used and marketed as a kind of game, while the other opinion was that it should be marketed as an educational aid. This led to considerable argument. The three founders seemed to see nothing wrong with the constant contention in meetings. Sasha states, “That's just the way it is. We work and we fight." (Polzer 4). The three of them seem to think this was the natural order of things in the business environment. Why did Tam and his team fail to get the members of the group to agree to a single concept and approach? It seems...
Please join StudyMode to read the full document