Organisational Behaviour

Hanry Tam and MGI Team

Introduction:

Henry Tam,the protagonist of the case, was a second year MBA program student at Harvard Business School. To take part in HBS business plan contest he had teamed with HBS classmate Dana Soiman and the founders of start-up company Music Games International (MGI). The founders of MGI were Alexander (Sasha) Gimelson, Igor Tkachenko, and Roman Yakub. Both Roman and Igor were from musical background and belonged to Ukraine , unlike Sasha who is from business world and is from St.Petersburg. The team despite some conflicts was a closed knit. Also the team didn’t had good history with working with outsiders. The company was started in early 2000 with an aim to produce original music and sound effect for different website. MGI initially had a promising start but due to the internet bubble burst, the company started facing tough period for their expertise and hence team up with the idea of producing interactive music based games. In fall 2001 MGI came up with Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, which was a critical success but commercial failure. By start of 2002 the founders realised they need outside assistance to develop their vision into a viable business as a result they turned to HBS business plan completion. Henry and Dana was thus added to the team. Sasha also believed that with support of students of HBS, they can gather help from alumni network of HBS more effectively which could help them to market the product, this idea of Sasha appalled both Henry and Dana. In the next brainstorming meeting Sasha introduced a new member i.e. Alexander Jan Sartakov who was a student of Berkley school of music with dual degree. Again in the next meeting a new member was added to the group namely Dav who was a student of MIT and specialised in computers, this further added to frustration of Dana and Henry. With a lack of effective leader, no consensus was reached, whether to target educational market or entertainment market. The team had little...