Tag: Budapaest



Student teams in the Venture Advising Consulting Course taught by Clifford Holekamp, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship, spend 10 days in Budapest, Hungary immersed in the startup community and working on specific projects with founders. They also learn about Eastern European history and culture. Each team in this year’s course will submit a blog post about their experience and consulting project.

We are fortunate to have been selected to work on a consulting project in Budapest, Hungary for a company that creates software and apps for e-bike navigation: GPS Tuner, a leader in the field of software development for GPS navigation. GPS Tuner currently works with original equipment manufacturers (OEM’s) to build GPS navigation devices for e-bikes. They aim to transition into launching their own application for the end consumer.

Our project is to identify a strategy to differentiate GPS Tuner’s e-bicycle navigation app by conducting a competitive analysis, crafting a clear value proposition for the app, and developing a strategy that will solidify the company’s strategic position going forward.

Throughout our week in Budapest, we’ve focused on developing a hypothesis tree to clearly define and tackle our project. This problem-solving strategy is focused on finding one core business issue and then delving deeper into mutually exclusive, but collectively exhaustive sub-issues, which might be causing the business problem.

Budapest3DOur work with the client, GPS Tuner, introduced us to the struggles of a fragmented market and how a setup like this can lead to beneficial results for an incumbent market leader. From an academic standpoint, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that all markets operate as efficiently as possible, making it very difficult to sustain a competitive edge.

After our conversations with the CEO, we learned that the cycling industry operates in a unique situation. The industry leader currently benefits from keeping every aspect of e-bike design and manufacturing in-house, and from minimizing compatibility with competing hardware components. As a result, we’ve identified an inherent opportunity for GPS Tuner within the market.

Budapest3AAlthough our time in Budapest has been short, it has provided a tremendous opportunity for both academic and personal growth. We’ve received excellent feedback from Professor Orban, which has guided our analysis and allowed us to set up a framework for our project going forward.

We are also lucky to have had the opportunity to work with Ivan Pap during our time here at Oriens. He has been a fantastic guide and mentor, and he has made our trip very memorable. Although we are sad to leave the amazing city of Budapest, we are confident in our direction and look forward to diving deeper into the opportunities GPS Tuner faces as it enters its newest growth stage.

Team GPS Turner: MBA students Courtney Callegari, Douglas Mullenix, and Kirtika Singh.