DomoDomo@INSEAD

The medium is the message

... Is a quote from Marshall McLuhan, also known as the "McLuhan Equation". The guy presumably is a guru of the network age. He was quoted by our IT Professor, Theo Evgueniou, who was a bit dumbfounded when no one in the class could answer who had said that. Of course, we understood the meaning of it. Too often, we believe that the content of the medium is the message. Too often we forget that the consequences of the medium themselves -intended or unintended- are more impactful than the content itself. Thus we should not forget, as future Business leaders and possible IT invesment decision makers, that when we decide on an IT investment, the consequences on people can be huge. Technology has evolved exponentially the past 10 years, people have not followed the pace. Therefore any IT change is potentially brutal.
There's no better ending than that... Great job, Theo, if I may.


We also had a nice discussion on our MBAwiki project, and on blogs, for which he claimed that 3 years ago not a single student could understand the value/incentives of it. To be honest, this is a valid question. Why do I do that? Not for the money, neither for the fame. Not to know more people. For the fun, maybe. More so, because a past student blog inspired my decision to apply to INSEAD, so it was only natural to keep the wheel going. Frankly, I tentatively started it while doing nothing at work but waiting for my departure date to Fonty. And then, so much to write about...

Like tonight, I ended my day with another great negotiation: representing a client who -my gut feeling- was acting in bad faith, or at best too emotionally. You still have to do your job... My counterpart -whom I did not know before- made it very tough, but so enjoyable. There was some brinkmanship strategy too, which he played astutely. Since the deal was pretty much at my BATNA valuation, it made sense to leave ethically safe and happy. I should add that because of my numerical challenges, I was not actually sure that my BATNA was higher, so I struck the deal which made me happy...

To know more about the McLuhan equation:
http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm

To learn about Negotiation theory and BATNA:
http://www.answers.com/topic/best-alternative-to-a-negotiated-agreement

Labels: P3 Courses

posted by DomoDomo@INSEAD @ 4:08 PM