Playbook 2.0

Rim is releasing the blackberry Playbook 2.0 which is their version of a tablet. The previous tablet offered by blackberry failed. One of the reasons for this is because of the distinct lack of apps that are available on the blackberry market. To fix this problem the playbook 2.0 will allow developers to submit their android applications and they will run on the new blackberry operating system. 

  To lure developers to submit apps to the blackberry marketplace, RIM is offering a free Playbook 2.0 for each developer and has created a process that takes approximately 30 minutes in order to submit the android application to the blackberry marketplace. A developer can easily license an app for blackberry without changing the code that allows the app to run on android. For example, an app to change operations systems i.e. android to IOS, the app has to be rewritten to in a different programming language. This requires the developer to acquire new skill sets and spend time redeveloping the app.  By offering hardware and allowing an easy way to transfer an already completed app to Blackberry

The model that this applies to is the value curve. Customers see tablets only as valuable as the apps that are available to run on them. Executives at RIM realized that developers didn’t want to develop for their operating system and came up with a solution that piggybacked on an already thriving environment of Android. By allowing developers to use the same app on their operating system, they decrease the cost to developers to create apps for them while increase the value of their product by increasing the number of apps available. In the end the value to both developers and customers both increase.

Oklahoma Recruiting

National Signing day for college football is the first Wednesday of February. This year the university of Oklahoma changed its strategy for signing recruits. In the past the university of Oklahoma would focus on signing the best prospects in the state of Oklahoma and getting the best possible prospects for the state of Texas. This strategy would usually result in 70-80% of recruits coming from these two states. This year however Oklahoma recalibrated its strategy to finding the best recruit in the nation for their current needs. This year OU signed 4 recruits from Florida, 3 from Oklahoma, 3 from California, and 5 from Texas. Overall OU signed players from 11 different states.

The positives of this strategy is that when OU is successful in obtain a recruit the quality of that recruit will be better. A possible downside of this strategy is that they will be more competition for the recruits because instead of getting the best in one or two states they are trying to get the best in the nation. This increase competition means that OU could possible miss out on fulfilling a need.

As I think about this in regards to the competitive advantage model we talked about in class. OU seems to have moved from differentiated narrow market to a differentiated broad market. I say that they are differentiated in the terms of college football because they a brand that very few other teams can duplicate. I believe that they have changed from a the narrow market to a broad market because they have changed from recruiting in a narrow market -Texas and Oklahoma- to a broad market-the entire nation.