Blog 10

Idea 1

 

The first topic from this course that I would like to relate to this project is the one about ethics and privacy. With this project I’ve been able to see, once again, how delicate is this aspect and the importance of keeping it in mind as professionals.

 

Sometimes can be difficult to considerate which information about the customers is ethically correct to use and which one is not. Of course there are always more concerns about that information that is personal and identifiable. As professionals, it should be known which information we are gathering, and what is more, approved the way we are using it. Marketers, as well, must considerate when is worth it. Business benefits should always be perfectly balanced with ethics, legal requirements and public response.

 

In our project our target segment where Cougars. While doing the project, we had always to have in mind that there are some aspects of this prospects life which is not ethically correct to address directly as they are not always proud to be considerate as Cougars. As a particular example, the way of approaching them was sometimes a bit aggressive and there where some questions we couldn’t ask directly as they could feel offended, so in this way we had to ask them other way to try to get from them the insights we where looking for. Moreover, personal information that we had, we had to decide if we “could” or “could not” include it in our project.

 

Idea 2

 

The second topic I want to address was the one talking about creativity and innovation. Getting peoples insights can be relatively easy, but understanding which are they needs and overall creating a product that can fulfill their needs is the part that requires the most work and research.

 

A lot of times ideas are simply combination of existing elements. Creativity comes when new combinations of these ideas are made after gathering and digesting the information obtained. Then, instead of thinking to much about the idea it should let the idea come to someone. From here, innovation appears when someone applies creativity. I think was really interesting the class in which the guest came to talk about prototypes. It helped me, in particular, to understand how companies come to ideas of new products, and all the phases the product has to come through to go to the market.

 

Applying this topic to our project, is evident that was in the final stage of it, when we had to design the product that satisfied Cougars needs in the kitchen. After all the insights obtained about the needs of being time-conscious, convenience and health-consciousness, and also need of coming up to a product that its stylish enough for this segment, was not easy at all to came to an creative idea that would satisfy this needs. After finishing the project, I don’t really know if the product was good or it was not, but what I keep for me about it is all the process and interesting phases of the process we had to come through to come up with an idea.   

 

Final Reflections

 

On my final reflections about the way we worked with our group, I must mention that was really interesting to work together with this teammates.

 

First of all I should say that within the group we had open and fluent discussion of any point that had to be treated, everyone’s ideas where heard and took into consideration. It is a really important aspect about working in teams and unfortunately not always this discussion is so fluid. In our work environment we will always be working in groups and developing the right skills for it will be significant in our future professional success.

 

Apart from this, I’m used to work in groups as in my school back in Spain I’ve always done several group projects, and also playing team sports or working in associations makes you work in group environment. But what I saw really interesting from this particular group is that different group working styles had to come together, as somehow here people work in one way and, we in Spain work differently. I’m not saying that one way or another way is better, in which neither of them I’m going to get into depth, but in today’s every day more global world we must know that people think and act in a different way and we should take it into consideration and be able to adapt to the different circumstances.

 

To finish, I just wanted to add that I enjoyed very much this class, thank my classmates for making classes so entertaining I really thing that has contribute to having a complete exchange experience.