From College Classroom to Community Business Adventure?

Southcoast, MA - My 8 A.M. Business to Business Marketing students are developing the last phase of their semester-long project. The project has challenged them to research, analyze and study the feasibility of a Pike Place Market concept for the Southcoast area. Pike Place Market has been a Seattle mainstay for over one hundred years. Yet, it is not unique to the northwest. Cleveland has a marketplace that is even older and there are many others across the nation.

Why did I challenge and charge them with a project of this type? Well, to me, it was a perfect case study for teaching (B2B) business-to-business marketing since it contained nearly every aspect of the subject they needed to know. The other reason is that I try to bring as much hands-on, real-world experience into the classroom for them as I can. The course is learner-centric, which means they get involved in what the need to learn instead of waiting for the instructor to present them with a rigid agenda, or gauntlet, that they have to successfully get through.

How’d it go so far? Well, it’s an 8 o’clock Monday, Wednesday and Friday spring semester class populated mostly by seniors, which means that they’re already chomping at the end of their four-year rope. It’s challenging for me. Even the best students and those whom I’ve had in several other classes and am very familiar with aren’t working at peak performance. Other instructors have told me that they too have been as challenged by an 8 A.M. class schedule. So with all this in mind, it’s actually going pretty good. Yes, I can say it’s like pushing string, corralling cats and teaching cardboard cutouts but I think they’ll end up surprising me, as much as, they’ll end up being proud of their accomplishments.

These students are also discovering the grim realities of timeframes, group dynamics and the concept of knowing that the more they learn; the more they need to learn. They were divided into seven teams. Each team focused on one specific aspect of the marketing mix including Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process and Physical Proof. Oh yeah, working in groups can be as much fun as – insert your most horrible thought here – but, with a few exceptions, they’ve mostly all pulled together. They’ve also made their initial and progressive presentations (there are six scheduled before the final) to industry experts and members of the community. One of the most valuable lessons they’ve learned so far is to respect and not disappoint your audience, which they did and know how much work will be required to repair their credibility.

Currently, they are in the process of coalescing as a single super group comprised of one representative from each of the original marketing mix specialty groups formed earlier in the semester. The super group will be managing the final phase of the presentation, which includes social media components such as Facebook in order to attract attention to the project and get live feedback from interested parties. Using these methods is very current and offers them the experience of determining how to attract as many Likes and Friends as they can to stimulate the possible continuance of the concept. It’s as close to real-world as I can deliver. I’m writing this post because I want them to get them as wide an audience and as big a forum as possible. They’ve worked hard. They’ve thought it out and they’ve created something that’s a lot more than putting all of the farmer’s markets in the area under one roof. Yes, it is a huge risk from both them and I but they realize that this “test” it more than getting a good grade - much, much, more.

What they have managed to accomplish so far, is create a display window opportunity for the City of New Bedford with a tried and true marketplace concept proposal that offers a variety of options to small and mediums sized businesses to sell their goods either on a seasonal basis or year-round. For end consumers, everything offered will be as fresh as it can be off the farm and fishing boat. The market will represent locally produced products of all kinds, entertainment and a showcase of the myriad of local cultures that surround us. It can be, as they’ve discovered, a city within a city that will attract the locals and visitors alike; those on food stamps, as well as, those who can freely indulge themselves. Every detail has been reviewed from climate control and traffic flow to vehicular and pedestrian accessibility. They’ve looked parking challenges, considering their neighbors and surrounding community. Now they are exploring how to most effectively promote this enterprise as their feasibility studies have indicated.

Hopefully, with your input and feedback, these intelligent and eager students will experience learning in a new and memorable way. They are not only business majors at the Charlton College of Business at UMass Dartmouth. They represent our future entrepreneurs, business executives and business leaders. Their Facebook page is a work in progress – please visit it to see how their final presentation will unfold. As their instructor, while I expect a few missteps, oversights and errors in judgment, I also expect them to function at their highest capacity, especially since they will be presenting their concept beyond the classroom. Thank you in advance for your support.

Crossing the Bridge for a Pail of Water?

PROLOGUE: My Business Engineering blog has evolved into something that allows me to explore and pursue my passions of art, food/wine (sustainability) and marketing all in one blog: In Search of a Personal Stability Zone to explore our collective aspirations…

NEWEST POST: In my last post, I discussed the Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte’s painting: Treachery of Images (La Trahison des Images) painted between 1928 and 1929. The singular image in the piece is a tobacco pipe. There is only a blank background and script under the image of the pipe - ceci n'est pas une pipe – in English it means this is not a pipe. It seems more like a tobacco shop sign than it does a piece of fine art. The combination creates a contradiction.

Sometimes the obvious escapes us. This painting then, is not a pipe, it is an image; a painting of a pipe. It is nothing more than one individual’s interpretation (the artist) of a subject or situation. Yet, it is or becomes more than it represents. On one hand, the viewer’s perception, regardless whether it is correct or otherwise, constructs a truth that may be accepted. This truth will persist until another perspective is offered or another perception further defines what is in front of the viewer.

With this in mind, please allow me to present the paradox on the New Bedford-Fairhaven Bridge [Author’s Note: This blog offers another perspective and a photo. It is interesting to note how little there really is on this bridge in the Google organic rankings.] The bridge has been around for quite some time; over a hundred years in fact. It, as well as, its purpose has not changed very much. Its primary function is to connect. Yet, as the years have rolled on, it has been accused of doing more blocking and interrupting than anything else.

It’s not the bridge that’s the problem! The Old Norwegian folk saying of not crossing a bridge to get a pail of water holds true in this case. The bridge opens to water traffic closing the road to vehicular traffic. It does this on a set time schedule allowing commercial fishing vessels working out of the Port of New Bedford to leave on a trip or return with a catch, which combined represents the top-dollar value fishing port in the United States. The epicenter (there are either two or, depending on your point of view, one split into two) of this prosperous industry is located north of the reviled bridge. So then, if the industry had continued being developed south of the bridge where it began, in my estimation then, the problem would be moot.

The pipe is not a pipe. The bridge is not the problem. The problem is where the industry’s expansion was sited. Expansion is the result of the physical evidence or anticipation of growth. Increase the boat traffic and increase the number of bridge openings which impedes the flow of traffic on Route 6 between New Bedford and Fairhaven, Massachusetts. In actuality, the normal scheduled openings are not a problem if you are aware of them. The entire process usually takes, on average, just ten minutes. However, being constantly bridge opening conscious may be a problem as is working, living and traveling around that schedule. Of course, there’s no getting around the inconvenience of major bridge repairs which totally put a kink in everyone’s schedules, business and traffic patterns.

Taking a Zen approach isn’t something that I would suspect would be universally embraced. Being one with the schedule takes a specific character profile. Imagining that every time the bridge stops traffic is an indication of this community’s pride in being home to the nation’s number one fishing ports would only warm the cockles of the hearts of those associated with the industry.

From a marketing perspective and that of a self-professed marketing engineer, a solution is possible but not before really studying where the industry stands at present and where it may end up in the near future. To move industry operations to the south of the bridge would solve one problem and cause others. However, it is doable and does offer several types of opportunities. At this point in time and with the knowledge and information I have in hand (or, in head), the industry has the opportunity to evolve to the next level and solve other issues at the same time. Regulations, overhead costs and safety concerns come to mind. But, if selling fish is and always has been about freshness, then, please allow me to offer this idea, or scheme, up for your consideration.

Relocate a majority of the shore-side processing operations to at-sea or off-shore processing vessels. The result of such a move would be the reduction of shore or land based issues and an increase in product freshness. Day boats would unload their catches at these processing vessels, which would then be transported by helicopter either whole or in various states of processing to distribution points within 24-hours. This eliminates the archaic top of the catch concept. It reduces trip times. It increases cash flow. It reduces the strain on the old bridge. Traffic flows! And, we stop crossing the bridge to get the proverbial pail of water.