Week 5: Clear-Making Your Presentation Stick

Anyone can create a presentation but making your presentation to stick is no easy task. During this week's lesson, we came across the concept of making your presentation to stand out and stick to the audience. Throughout my life, my experience with PowerPoint was not very pleasant at all . PowerPoint, to me, was a pointless presentation filled with bullet points and cluster of images. The word "fun" was the last thing to emerge into my mind when it comes to describing my feeling for PowerPoint. The book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, points out the criteria needed to build a successful presentation.

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There are five rules to help your presentation to stick:

1. Story and examples are the building blocks of the presentation

2. Don't preamble, parachute in

3. Let your main points hog the spotlight

4. Tease, don't tell

5. Bring reality to the room

These five rules can help us have a better understanding of how to create a PowerPoint presentation that can stick to the audience. The first rule is "Story and examples are the building blocks of the presentation". Story and examples can help your audience have a better understanding of the ideas you are trying to present. Story and examples can also connect with your audience in a more emotional level. The second rule from the book is "Don't preamble, parachute in". What it means is to not start your presentation with a boring introduction of what you are about to present, but instead be creative and surprise your audience.The third rule is a very important rule because it happens very often to all of our PowerPoints. "Let your main points hog the spotlight", let your main idea shine instead of putting more and more bullet points into another slide. The fourth rule is "Tease, don't tell", we need to tease our audience and make them demand more of our presentation. The last rule is "Bring reality to the room", this rule is easier to said than done. Instead of looking for images to present your main point, try bring reality into your audience. Show them what your main point is about by bringing objects and tools into your presentation.

In Conclusion, it is very important for us apply these rules into our future presentation because we want to be remembered. In today business world, no matter if you are trying to make a speech or making a PowerPoint, we need to make the presentation to stick.


This is a YouTube video from Dan Heath, one of the writer from the book. In this video, he explained the importance of remembering these five rules.

References
¹Heath, C., and D. Heath. Made to stick, why some ideas survive and others die. Random House Inc, 2007. Web. <https://elearning2.courses.ufl.edu/access/content/group/3daf3da5-cf1c-4806-853a-97219fc6c45a/ISM3004/MakingPresentationsThatStick.pdf>.

Week 4: Clear- Five Competitive Forces

Michael Porter's five competitive forces that shape strategy was a very clear concept to me this week. Similar to what I learned in economic, the five competitive forces include: rival competitors, customers, suppliers, potential entrants and substitute products. It is hard to imagine that there are different types of competitors that can shape the industry of your business. Businesses tend to create their strategy around their rivalry companies only. Many of them do not analyze the other types of competitors in their industries and underestimate the danger of doing so.To fully understand the profitability of the industry your business is in, one must consider all of the five competitor forces.

To come up with a good strategy for your company, one must determine the forces that affect the structure of the industry the most. One industry can have strong potential entrants and substitute products; meanwhile, other industries may not. Having all five of competitive forces working together can potentially destroy the profitability of an industry, for example the airline industry. I will now explain the effect of each five competitive forces. When a market is profitable, it will attracts new competitors. With more new entrants to the market, it will decrease the profit for each firm. Substitute of products and services can affect an industry because the industry can lose profit when buyers decide to choose alternative products and services. Consumers/buyers have bargain power over many types of industries. In these type of industries, price change is very sensitive to buyers. Price war is also a constant battle between rival companies. Suppliers who provide raw materials, labor, services and etc, also have bargain power over industries they are in. When there are few substitute, suppliers can ask for high pay for their resources. Last and not least, the existing competitors is one of the most important competitive force that can affect the company's profit. Company can counteraction towards the effects of many existing competitors by practicing operation effectiveness.

In my opinion, many businesses enter the industry blindly without looking into the five competitive forces in it. It is very important for business major to learn how these five forces can shape the industries we are try to enter.We have to create our plan and strategy with the knowledge of how our industries are structured.

Here is a very creative YouTube video to explain the five competitive forces.

References
¹ Porter, M. E. (2008). THE FIVE COMPETITIVE FORCES THAT SHAPE STRATEGY. Harvard Business Review, 86(1), 78-93. Retrieved from EBSCOhost