Early in the development of a new

Answer choices

1. A

   Weakens4% picked this

   On average, new ventures under the direction of managers at executive level survive no longer than those

   This makes it sound like it could be a waste to put our best managers on new ventures. New ventures have the same likelihood of surviving whether they're headed by executive level managers or lower-ranking managers.

   4%
2. B

   No Impact3% picked this

   For most established companies, the development of new product lines is a relatively small part of

   We want new product lines to sound like a very juicy source of potential revenue, in order to strengthen the suggestion that we should allocate our most talented managers to trying to launch those new product lines. This is just saying that most companies don't spend a large share on developing new product lines. That fact doesn't really support or oppose the idea of allocating our best managers to new product lines. If anything, it seems to diminish the economic scale of the new product lines, and the smaller in scale they are, the less likely we would be to "waste" our best managers on those projects.

   3%
3. C

   Weakens5% picked this

   The more talented a manager is, the less likely he or she is to be interested in undertaking the development

   This goes against the Plan by talking about motives / incentives. It sounds like this plan would not have the cooperation of the best managers, because they are the ones with the least interest in developing a new product line.

   5%
4. D

   Correct71% picked this

   The current revenue and profitability of an established product line can be maintained even if the company’s best

   Why this is right

   This Rules Out an Objection we made. We were worried about transferring our best managers off of our cash cows (our established high-revenue product lines). After all, it's not worth gambling on trying to launch a new product line (with a rockstar manager) if it's going to imperil an established source of high-revenue. Luckily, though, as this answer tells us, we have nothing to worry about. We can safely move the best managers over the new products and not worry about messing up the established products, because the current revenue and profitability can be sustained even without those managers. This answer basically works by Ruling Out a way in which the plan could backfire (it would backfire if we had our top managers helping new products to get off the ground, while our best products started slumping now that they weren't being so expertly managed).

   Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   71%
5. E

   Weakens, if anything16% picked this

   Early short-term revenue prospects of a new product line are usually a good predictor of how successful a

   The new projects that we're thinking of assigning our best managers to have relatively small short-term revenue prospects. We would want to hear that even though a new project has only small revenue in the short term, if it's successfully launched it could one day be very lucrative. This says the opposite. The early prospects are a good predictor of the long-term prospects.

   16%