The Kids Are Alright: Alumni Children Crack Case
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| Reunion kids in class: with comments ranging from random to brilliant, analyzing an online company. |
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| Eisenmann: adventures in Neopia. |
Growth is something that children experience every day. And they certainly know a lot about the Internet. So when it comes to seeking answers about expansion strategies for a youth-oriented dot-com, who better to ask than a roomful of bright kids, especially kids with HBS in their genes?
During reunions last June, HBS assistant professor Tom Eisenmann did just that when he conducted a case-method discussion with the children of alumni. (Doting parents watched the proceedings on closed-circuit television in a nearby room.) Ranging in age from 6 to 15, identified by name cards, some eighty kids filled a Hawes Hall classroom. Not all feet reached the floor, but hands of all sizes were soon waving as Eisenmann (himself a member of the 20th Reunion Class of 1983) guided his charges through a case about an online company named Neopets. The central question Eisenmann posed was: Should the company grow or stay about the same size?
An interactive Web site, Neopets targets users age 20 and under who create and care for their own “virtual pets,” with whom they can experience adventures and activities in the mythical land of Neopia. Neopets was launched in 1999 and quickly became popular after enthusiastic users spread news of it by word of mouth. The site soon became profitable, largely from ad revenues. (Interestingly, Neopets eschewed the banner or pop-up ads on most sites. Instead, its “immersive” advertising was more like the product placements common to television and movies — sponsors’ products or messages appear in the context of the site’s games and activities.)
As the class got rolling, Eisenmann, whose children Caroline and Jack also took part, found himself fielding some unexpected questions. “What’s a soap opera?” one boy asked during a discussion of ad rates for different kinds of TV programming. Mention of a $1.3 million cost provoked the query, “How much money is that?” “Enough to buy a very nice house,” replied Eisenmann.
Soon, the discussion got animated. One student, Gavin, suggested that a way to increase Neopets’s revenues might be to cut back on creative development costs. The company could put some of its existing online games “in storage, and when new games get old, bring the old games back, and people will think they’re new.” That prompted another student to say, “The only problem with that is people might like a game that you put away, and that would make them probably not want to go back to the site.” Asked by Eisenmann if he would take that risk, Gavin responded with a confident “Yes.” Then a third student proposed a way to assess the possible risks of Gavin’s strategy: “Since this company is about the kids who use it, maybe you could send out a survey,” she suggested. Beaming at the exchange, Eisenmann told the class, “This is exactly how the case method is supposed to work!”
This is the first time that a case-method class has been taught to alumni children at a reunion, and the experiment was a resounding success with kids and parents alike. Said Eisenmann, “Every ten minutes, I got a comment that was brilliant, and every five minutes, somebody said something completely random. That’s not very different from the ratios that normally prevail in Aldrich with MBAs. It was really fun; I hope we do it again.”
