Day 4. May 29, 2007At 7:00 AM, we kicked off the day with “elevator speeches” over breakfast – each Accelerator participant worked on their personal introductions of themselves. Morning team sessions included Project Management tools and Personal Branding.
At 11:00 AM, The 5 competitive teams (in 20 minute rotations) did “dry runs” of their MAPCO consulting presentations for Dr. Furse and Dr. Owens. Final feedback was given for the MAPCO presentations to be done on Friday.
After a working lunch, we boarded the bus at 1:00 PM and headed to Lexus of Nashville – Cool Springs (www.lexus.com). We were met by JR Roper (General Manager), Patricia Apple (Marketing Manager) and members of the Lexus Local Sales Teams (www.lexusofnashville.com) In addition, Mike Brumm (Lexus Brand Experience Manager, Lexus Southern Area) and Alexandra Boggs, Manager from the Atlanta Office of Team One joined our session.
The Lexus showroom had been cleared and a new Lexus IS 250 was parked in the center surrounded by Accelerator team tables. The teams were briefed by Roper, Brumm and Boggs on the project objectives, the history of the Lexus IS, and its initial launch. The teams had the opportunity to spend time with the Lexus of Nashville sales team to review the features of the car. As we departed Lexus, the company provided 5 new Lexus IS cars for our Accelerator teams to use for the next 3 weeks during the project competition. Teams will evaluate the Lexus IS, make comparisons of the IS 250 and IS 350 to other automobiles in its class, and develop a “new media” marketing campaign targeted to Millennials (Generation Y). This should be interesting…
At 5:00 PM, our bus returned to Owen in time to visit with Curt Jones, Founder of Dippin’ Dots (www.dippindots.com). Mr. Jones shared his entrepreneurial story of the creation and growth of his famous ice cream business. He also shared with our Accelerator teams his current plans for new ventures. Mr. Jones joined us for dinner for a Q&A session.
After dinner, the teams returned to their Team rooms to begin the work of setting up their strategies for the Lexus project. The day ended about 8:30 PM. The teams clocked 13.5 work hours today.
Thus far, we’ve clocked 51 work hours in four days. We’ll reach about 100 work hours by the end of the week.
