Bella Ice Cream Challenge

Bella's Ice Cream is based off a real-life issue with an ongoing ice cream business (Ben & Jerry's). We attempted to solve the problem the business faces. This activity helped us with our main project because it challenges us to go further in depth by developing our integrative thinking skills.

The company at hand is at a crossroad and needs to decide whether it is more beneficial to maintain the status quo or change their business model. The status quo for Bella's would mean keeping their unique set of ingredients, procedures, employees, etc. that differentiate Bella's from their competition. In this case, they use fresh ingredients from organic producers, their employees have good wages, and the production environments are above average. Since they chose to use the top ingredients available, it makes the production expensive and inevitably results in higher prices and lower profits than their competitors. Unfortunately, if they decide there are willing to keep the status quo, they might not make enough revenue to sustain their business. The alternative, efficiency, would entail a potential loss of Bella's character and their unique model. The company does not want to lose their essential values to the new business model they build.

Our job is to take the best of both models and bring new ideas to the table by using integrative thinking. We started out by describing each model, status quo and efficiency. What would it look like if it were to follow the status quo? Efficiency? Our next activity was creating benefit bubbles.



We were given sheets that look like the picture above. It helped us be specific about the benefits of both sides and how it is created. Some specific benefits we wrote down were flexibility, security and work environment.

We found Bella’s Ice Cream exercise a difficult one, not because of its countless steps and procedures but because of the thinking, it requires in order to carry out the task. In fact, the most difficult part we found was the deliberation of the benefits of the two models – Efficient and Status Quo model, despite the disadvantages the model had while focusing the deeper benefits rather than the shallow

ones.

Take for example the thinking that we had when we arrived at the ‘flexibility’ benefit. That specific benefit originally belongs under the status quo model. We first thought that the status quo model generates customer loyalty to the business. However, being able to think deeper gives us a
benefit not merely customer loyalty but flexibility to take risks and adapt change in any aspect of the
business while still having a loyal customer. Granted that the benefit has a solid explanation as to
why it should belong under the status quo model, we eventually debated as to where it should
belong since we found and have seen that the benefit also fits under the efficient model.

Given all the thinking process we’ve been through in Bella’s Ice Cream Challenge, it made us equipped in applying integrative thinking to Baycrest Health Centre project. One of the few takeaways is that the benefits from the two models should be solid and deep in order
to have a bunch of strong choices/options to choose from which would help us arise with the top two
strongest benefits. These top two strongest benefits would be the basis and foundation of the third model,
the solution. If from the start choices are weak and shallow, the tendency of arising a unique and great
model is at a big risk and worst, impossible. In addition, when doing a task like this, team members
should always cooperate and participate in conversations and debates in order to have variations of ideas that would lead to a much stronger and solid input.