Real Life Imitates Real World

摘要

It sounds more like reality TV than a reasoned strategy. Last year, Best Buy picked four groups of salespeople in their 20s and early 30s and asked the strangers to room together for 10 weeks in a Los Angeles apartment complex. On the agenda, besides hanging out at the beach: coming up with businesses the electron-rnics retailer could roll out quickly and cheaply.rnBelieve it or not, the arrangement worked. Today, in a dozen stores in greater Los Angeles, Best Buy offers a service called Best Buy Studio, which provides Web - design consult -ing for small businesses. Jeremy Sevush, a former sales-floor department supervisor in West Hollywood, came up with the idea and then worked with executives to launch the venture only a couple of weeks after he moved out of the company apartment last May.rn"My friends joked and said I was joining 'Real World: Best Buy Edition,'" says Sevush, 29, referring to the MTV tele-rnvision series that features a youthful cast sharing a home. "Living together and knowing we only had 10 weeks sped up our team-building process. We voluntarily worked longer hours, talking about business models while making spaghetti."rnExtreme brainstorming sessions like Best Buy's maybe common in the tech sector, where programmers and engineers are sequestered so they can better focus on the next breakthrough.