Market introduction strategy for Calendar42

Abstract

This report is the graduation report executed at Calendar42 with the assignment: “Design the (inter)national market introduction strategy for this intelligent mobile calendar service.” Calendar42 is a company founded by Jasper Hartong and undersigned, Michel Boerrigter, with the goal of developing an new method of the consumption of time related information. The unique situation of founding my own company and developing a new product and technology platform while in parallel executing my graduation project within this company can be considered to be the “red thread” for this report. The product developed at Calendar42 is a digital calendar service that differentiates from other digital calendaring services by providing subscription based calendaring in a decentralized architecture. This setup enables to pro actively enrich, simplify and support the users calendar. The commercial interest of Calendar42 can be found on the one side in the fact that it can act as a communication channel while at the same time providing valuable insights and data about the information consumption regarding calendar information. The research approach followed during this project was a combination of different types of research approaches. The combination of both creating a theoretical foundation for execution and actually executing and implementing results into daily business can characterize this project as a learning by doing process. The process was based on five phases. An internal analysis phase intended to analyse the situation of Calendar42 at the start of the project. A research and case study phase intended to gaining external insights about the context of Calendar42. An experimental phase in which small scale tests and trial and error experiments are executed. A pilot phase containing the main scope of this project in preparing, executing and analysing a full scale service pilot at the TU Delft. And finally a synthesis and conclusion phase in which all information is processed in order to come to a set of learning moments, insights and recommendations ultimately leading to a final recommendation for the introduction strategy of Calendar42 and providing detailed road maps as guidelines for the Calendar42 team.