- UnEARTHing Iowa, College of Growth in Iowa

UnEARTHing Iowa, College of Growth in Iowa

Jennifer Doak | Main Page | Joseph Vesterfelt

Jon Raftis

Monday was an interesting day for me because I am a Finance major. It seemed like we spent the entire morning discussing finance or money in some way, shape, or form. Jim Langin at Bank Iowa was nice enough to host our morning session and he was joined by Jeff Vroman and Adam Carroll. All three men appeared interested in speaking with us and cared about our potential future success as individuals here in the state of Iowa.

Then, Pella Corporation hosted us for the afternoon session and I personally enjoyed the speakers there. Dr. David Roe touched on leadership and various components/dimensions of it. He clearly spoke with a lot of experience and that truly allowed him to have a great deal of credibility in my eyes. Then, it was also very intriguing to learn about some of the specifics of Pella Corporation from a couple of their employees. I was fully engaged because I was learning things that I had not known before. They have an impressive company.
 
The late afternoon business simulation with Dan Topf was the most challenging, yet probably the most enjoyable, portion of the entire program thus far. Our particular team finished 6th out of 8 teams, but I would say we learned some things in the process. I learned how to effectively break into a certain market and acquire a great deal of market share in a short amount of time. There was only one group that was carrying soup for quite a few quarters. We decided to buy into that line. We undercut their price by a few percent and we poured a lot of money into marketing soup. In less than a year I think we went from 0% market share to over 30%. It was a concept that made sense before this day, but it was neat to apply it and watch it work in a “real life” situation. I think our company might have done better by being more of an actor instead of a reactor. We tended to watch what Team Zeta and Team Sigma and others were doing and then figure out how we could beat them at what they were doing. Team Zeta appeared to act more as a leader and they ended up winning the game. I am a Finance major at the University of Iowa, but the one thing I still don’t understand is how our debt ratio went all the way down to 0% at some points and no other group allowed their debt ratio to dip into single digits. I am sure there is a simple explanation and it will make sense to me when I hear it, but it is still a confusing part of the simulation we did today.
 
Overall, I did enjoy this day. The evening activities at the park shelter near Lake Red Rock were fun even though I had to eat a Dutch letter as fast as I could during an eating contest (and it was right after dinner!!). It was a pleasure to get to know the other students even better throughout the course of this day and I look forward to getting to know them better and also learning quite a lot in the coming days.
Aug 11, 2009 9:07 AM |Add a comment
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