Frank

I just came in contact today with a new field of marketing, called Neuromarketing. In this field the reactions of the human brain on marketing methods is observed and marketers try to find out which method works best. It is quite interesting to see how people react to different marketing approaches and sometimes it is even totally absurd that people choose a product althought they definitely know that a different product is better or tastes better, but they just choose it because of marketing tricks.
Anyway I think I will go deeper into this sometime. If you want to read some interesting articles about Neuromarketing, here are two good sites:
The first one is in German: www.marktforschung-mit-neuromarketing.de
and the second one in English: neuromarketing.blogs.com

A friend of mine just started to build up a directory of private schools in Germany. I think this is quite a good idea, because I can remember that my parents had really problems to find the right school for me. This was more than ten years ago and the internet was still in the beginning. So such a directory of schools didn’t exist. And even today there are no real official directories of the government you can use. So I wish my friend really good luck with his directory. It is probably much work to collect all the neccessary data, but maybe in one or two years we will have a very comprehensive directory of private schools in Germany in the internet.

If you are a manager in a company one of the most important tasks of your job is to motivate the people who work for you. Only when you get it that your employees are motivated and are satisfied with their job, you can receive the highest benefit from them. But this kind of motivation (in Germany we call it Mitarbeitermotivation) is often neglected. However, it is very important to compliment someone if he has done his work very well. You should always try to get diversification in the work of your employees. Even though one may be an expert in his special field, it is good to give him new tasks, so that he can develop further. This could be done with job rotation or job enrichment.
So, if you have some employees, always think about the right motivation. Finally you will benefit from it.

My father has done a lot of research about our ancestors in the last years. And now he has created a great Stammbaum. I was really impressed when I opened the package with the family tree included, which he sent to me. This Stammbaum, as it is called in German, now hangs over my desk in my little room here at Harvard. I think it is a great present you can give to your son when is far away from home.

Customer Relationship management is very popular and neccessary for a successful enterprise. But the licenses for a CRM software are normally quite expensive. A good opportunity for smaller comanies is CRM on demand. That means that the CRM software is not hosted on your server at your company but on a server of the producer of the CRM software. You are not buying a license, you only rent the CRM for a special time. That is much cheaper and for smaller companies often the better solution.
My friend is just building up a company and he is thinking of using such a CRM on demand system. I will report here his experiences with his system soon.

I was just wondering how companies here in the US choose their employees. In Germany more and more bigger companies use an assessment center to find the right person for the jobs they offer. I think this technique was tansferred from the US to Germany, so I think it is much more spread here. However, I just read a study that the tradition interview for a job has a higher validity than an assessment center. So why do so many companies use it then? Only because it is modern? I don’t know the answer. But what I know is that I won’t start in a company which uses assessment center to choose between prospective job applicants.

I think this year I’m going to spent my holiday in Irland. I think in August I will fly to Dublin to discover this beautiful island. The question is now: How shall I travel around there. There are of course some possibilities. I could rent a car and sleep in hotels or in a tent. I could use train or bus or I could rent a caravan. Mmmh, haven’t decided yet. I think I have to find out first how much these possibilities might cost…

I just have to write a small thesis about Venture Capital. It doesn’t have to be that long, maybe 10-15 pages. But it’s quite hard for me to write such a piece of work in English. Today I invited a frined who is a native english speaker to correct a part of work. And it is quite disappointing to see how many mistakes I made. But I won’t give up, next week this thesis will be finished – and hopefully the professor can read it…

As I’m new here in Harvard I would like to establish my new personal corporate identity. I think my life will change during the time I’m here and I hope I can develop myself here. I think I will learn lots of things I can use later when I’m back in good old Germany. So I see this year at Harvard as chance. A year abroad is a great chance.

Hi folks, I’m Frank and I’m new here at Harvard. I’m from Germany and I’m taking here a semester abroad. I hope I will have a good time in the US and especially here at Harvard.

Cheers, Frank