Henry Tam and the Mgi Team

The case

The main character of the case is Henry Tam, an MBA candidate at Harvard Business School. Henry wants to join the HBS Business Plan competition but does not have any interesting business ideas; however he feels he would be of added value to any team applying to the competition. At the same time, the three founders of Music Games International (MGI) are looking for an MBA student from HBS to participate in the Business Plan competition. They meet Dana Soiman, another MBA candidate from HBS, and Henry, and they decide to bring them on board. They all decide to form a team to participate in the competition by presenting MGI’s interactive musical video game as the main product of their start-up. In their first few meetings, the team dynamics prove to be complicated and the team does not seem to be operating efficiently.

1.2. Diagnosis

In the case, a new team has been assembled to formulate a business plan for the HBS competition. The team is made up of individuals from different backgrounds that want to achieve different things from the experience. Although the individuals in the team have a lot of experience and potential, there is no team cohesion or structure.

1.3. Causes of the Problem

The team’s current state is caused by the attitudes and backgrounds of the individuals. The team is not homogenous and is made up of internal groups. There is the group of the MGI founders which have been working together for a while and already have some internal problems. Only one of them has some management experience, while the other two are simply musicians. There is the group of the two MBA students which are outsiders to the MGI founders. They have good ideas to make the team operate efficiently, but do not seem to have the experience to guide the whole team to follow their structure. Lastly, we have two individual additions to the team that are introduced later and do not have enough drive or passion to influence the team’s direction.

How would...