the beaten path in woods ..

Well, the Diwali party last night went on until 3 AM, and I slept only at 3:25 AM. As you can imagine, not an ideal sleeping time when the next day is Monday morning.

Yet, thankfully, I could get myself out of the bed and in school on time. Marketing Strategy class today was revision or overview session, discussing the concepts and cases we have seen so far, and tying it all together. We also learned a couple of new frameworks to look at marketing strategy and role of marketing within the organization as such.

What was interesting was that Erik started this class by a quote by Emerson, which basically says if you have something better to offer as a product, then even if you go and stay in the woods, people will make a beaten path to your doors.

And then, we could see how this is a thing of past, as all three cases we discussed so far, were of companies that came up with innovative and better products - but without a proper marketing strategy, they were handicapped anyways.

Erik also introduced the third leg of strategic advantage of customer intimacy - apart from cost and differentiation advantage. My mind got curious about this though, that why is it not taught or even mentioned as part of our Strategy class though and I did speak my mind in class, although I think the question didn't come out exactly as it should. I did get my answer though in form of "which is why it is taught in this course" which kinda stresses the importance of this element.

In BGS class, although I had skimmed through the case yesterday, thanks to the fatigue from last night, I didn't participate much today. The class was interesting though - about how politicians can use companies, specially those carrying a nationality with them, for their advantage, and how can such situations be handled.

the IA-IA-IA framework which was introduced in last class proved useful to understand this case better as well. Jeff also announced that we can now decide about our group projects - this project I think is going to be an interesting one - as we need to apply a theoretical framework and provide solution to some issue, which so far we have been just ignoring to think beyond a daily news about some company or some country.

There was also a session by Career Strategy, where a lady psychiatrist provided us some insights on body language, personalities and tempers of people.

Had a real long siesta in the afternoon to make up for last night's sleep and am back into action now to do the readings for tomorrow :-)

Chores time :)

Well, I had my fun with the sightseeing on Friday and doing nothing on Saturday, so today was the day to transform back into reality.

Today was the chores time. Spent the morning in cleaning, laundry and washing dishes, followed by a lunch with a friend and then got to the study chores a.k.a. Readings for tomorrow :)

There is Indian Diwali party at Akshay's place at 8 pm tonight, which is why today's post is early. Besides there is not much to say anyways :P

Happy Diwali :-)

Happy Diwali to all my readers. The biggest festival that is celebrated in India has one of its important days today, and at many places today is also the "official" start of Diwali.
I say this because, we have a couple of days prior to today as part of Diwali as well - It begins with "Vasu Baaras" - the day dedicated to Cows and Cattle, for expressing our gratitude towards them; second day is "Dhan Trayodashi" which signifies the importance of Health in our life and is dedicated to Dhanvantri - one of the ancient scholar and expert of Ayurveda - the Indian traditional medicine; the third day which is today, is the one which is celebrated all over India - it is "Narak Chaturdashi" - the day when evil demon Narakaasur was defeated as per Indian scriptures.
Tomorrow is the day of "Laxmi Poojan" when everyone worships the goddess of prosperity - Laxmi, followed by "Bali Pratipada" - the beginning of Hindu New Year and "Bhau beej / Bhai Dooj" the day when brothers and sisters express their love for each other by exchanging gifts.

While, I am here sitting and commenting on the whole structure of Diwali festival, I am also missing it all, with an only exception of the Diwali Party arranged by Akshay and his flatmates tomorrow. And to top it all, it is also my niece's birthday today.
So, a lot of things happening back home, and I am here doing my M.B.A. !!

There are always a few moments in life which make you home-sick. May be that is also a reason, why I didn't feel like doing anything today - apart from talking at home, and exchanging Happy Diwali messages on facebook and on whatsapp, and editing some photos of the trip that I took yesterday, there isn't much which I can claim that I did today :-)

Life is full of trade-offs and this is one of it. Anyways, today being an auspicious day, let me wish you all a happy Diwali and a prosperous year ahead !!

It's time to Mo !!

Decided to do some sightseeing today around Madrid and thanks to the list of one day trip destinations that Cian and Lisa had given me last week, I knew exactly where I am going. Avila and Segovia - was my plan for today. Got up early and even while I was rushing to get ready and start early, suddenly I realised that I don't have to shave today. It is first day of November and hence it's time to start with the Movember. It's time to Mo :)

Had a long day today with lot of walking around Avila and Segovia. Took some good pictures which I will post on my FB soon.

As for the Movember, request all my readers to do visit my Movember profile below:

es.movember.com/en/mospace/6944853

Help to spread the word, and help with donations. It's Mo time :)

Planning for non-business factors and for un-real candidates

So, the BGS class this morning was about how the non-business factors can have a huge impact on businesses in terms of revenue losses, reputation damage and so on. Jef discussed examples of how companies who fail to identify and react to these factors fail and while also giving an example of a company who has managed this balance of non-market and market components in non-business mix well and turned these factors towards their advantage.

Even while I was wondering about some of the new facts that I came to know e.g. the "Cheeseburger Act", it was time to prepare for the Talent Management class.

Yes, last night, I went out for a surprise Colombian dinner and could not do the reading for this class - I could postpone it happily though after seeing that the case is small and we have 40 minutes between first class and the second.

Talent Management class started with discussing the interview questions we would ask to the candidates described in case we read and our thought process for choosing these questions. Gradually, the discussion turned towards some other relevant and important concepts for interviewing - Prof Monika took us through the theory of it, by using a short video of a guy asking too many questions and his superior answering him even while explaining the concepts.

There was a good discussion on various types of questions and then we soon landed ourselves in the most wide spread aspect of interviewing that we find today - when candidates fake the information they provide, either slightly or completely.

We discussed results of surveys based on this, and a couple of ways to identify those who are faking and are un-real in terms of information they provide to the recruiters.

This discussion brought out some interesting information, I would say.

Our group met after the school to finalize our presentation for Tuesday - it's going to be a long weekend with holiday tomorrow, so everyone rushed into the meeting right after the class, and managed to leave early as well.

I spent rest of the time today working on first round of marketing simulation, again to ensure that there is no work during the long weekend.

Time to go for dinner, and those who have similar long weekend, enjoy :-)

Simulating businesses and OUR LIVES :-)

Well, the morning began with SCM session, where Daniel had already given us some excel sheets to play around at home. These sheets had some models designed around revenue of a news-stand -  he then used these sheets as a means to transfer our learning from simulating various situations in the excel model of news-stand into principles of SCM for perishable goods. The underage and overage costs and their significance when deciding whether to order lesser or more than the mean demand forecasts available, was an interesting take-away from this class today.

Then began a two-session Leadership module, where we continued to work on our vision. There were questions about how we see ourselves 20 years from now and so on, all designed to help us find the mission of our life. Basically, in this class today, we tried to simulate our life going forward and see if it provides us with the purpose of our existence. Too philosophical is it? Or may be too Psychological :-)

Truth is today was the day when both classes used simulation as a tool to help us understand and develop some of the concepts that would help us in the long run as we move ahead with this MBA and with our careers and lifes.

In the evening, we kick-started the Movember Madness, by shaving our beards and moustaches in MM31 launch pad area. And after postponing it once, we also had our section photo taken by IMBA today.

At night, while I was resting, doing "nothing", got a message from Martin asking if I want to go for Columbian dinner - Well, food is my weakpoint and I had never tried Columbian food before - So, it was an offer I could not refuse - went for a late night dinner with 2 other classmates and had amazing food, with tips and explanation from Martin all along.

Life is good :-)

The medium is the message

Well, the day started with talent management course, where we saw concepts like yield rates at work. While analyzing how different yield rates are affected by factors internal and external to a firm, Monika gave out a statement 'The medium is the message' pointing to how candidates form an opinion of the firms based on their interactions with the interviewer.
This statement was enough to stress importance of having a charismatic person as a recruiter.

Next was our group meeting where we kicked off the work for our talent management presentation.

In the Corporate Finance class today, Carlos summarized all the concepts we have seen so far, and the concepts we need to be familiar with for developing a good model. I think we will jump into developing finance models right away, starting next class.

And then, Gonzalo was back with a case on China. While it was an interesting case, where we got to know about the history of China, and the gradual economic reforms it has been implementing, the class also indulged into discussions such as how this relates to the way Russia and Eastern Europe went on with their reforms.

I think one of the important takeaways from this class was that the policies you implement as government talk a lot about what message you send to your population and to the world outside. Again, a common theme discovered in classes of today - the medium is the message :-)

Beginning of the Halloween week :-)

Well, a couple of Halloween parties planned by different student clubs, a halloween event planned by IMBA team, a secheduled photo shoot where we will all dress up casually, a shave-off party to launch Movember and a long weekend with so many appealing destinations calling ..

Sounds so good right? But then, this week also is the one when we need to be done with the first round of marketing simulation, our group needs to prepare for talent management presentation, there are lots of readings for everyday, I have some fellowship related work to be done by end of the week and probably all of us need to start squeezing in some time for job hunting and interview preparations. Add to it, this is a short week, if there is anything planned for the long weekend.

I know, I know suddenly - all that sounded so rosy about this week is not so rosy anymore. Add to it, we are still waiting on four of our grades, almost 75 credits, which has kept the anxiety within many of us still alive.

So, when Erik started his class today saying, the case for today about a company with innovative blood substitute nicely fits with the whole Halloween theme for this week, I couldn't agree more. At its onset, today being Monday, the week ahead does look scary.

Anyways, leaving behind this side-talk, today the in the BGS class, we discussed the effect that a political regime can have on economic situations in the country and how the policy makers can alter the faith of industries - of course, we saw it more from the perspective of the industrialists and analyzed what are the situations that we should not get our ventures into, when it comes to dependence and influence on policies.

Marketing Strategy class was about 'going to market' when we have an innovative product and how? We also discussed some numbers on finding the market size and potential market share.

A common theme - in both classes, we discussed ventures that have already been shut down.

Scary isn't it? Welcome to the Halloween week :-D

It's half time !!

Yes, if you have not noticed the number of posts in this blog yet, now is the time to look at the total count - the first post for introduction followed by one post per day - that will tell you that as this day ends, we will complete half the time of our MBA program here at IE.

"Time passes so fast !!" I am sure that each one of you will wonder - but what is more noticeable is how everyone is now thinking how time "will" pass quickly going forward.

We already have IMBA team arranging for our section photo, our class rep and a bunch of other folks are already planning some souvenir for remembering the class, many are packing their bags to go on a long exchange or on internship, many have begun looking for jobs, and many more are preparing for launching their ventures.

Life at IE, may not be the same again, for many of us. And that is exactly the reason why I thought of publishing this post early in the morning - although the earliness has been escalated a bit, thanks to the day light savings change this morning, where clocks went back an hour - nevertheless, it is Sunday, it is the day when we are all relaxed, and it is the day when we complete half the time at this program.

Just wanted to highlight this fact early in the day, so that we can all take some time to think back on all that is past, and all that we still need to achieve while we are all here.

Good Luck to all my fellow classmates and congratulations !! We are half way there :-)

Of Simluations, Surveys and the signal to get set ..

Well, today I spent some time, downloading all the material that was added to campus online by various professors - some have put in a lot of stuff, while others have put in documents relevant to past classes.

I also registered for marketing online simulation, answered the online survey for corporate finance and went through the course pack for next week.

Suddenly, considering the group work that we are already beginning to work on since last week, and all the materials, assignments, exercises that I found for coming days, I realized that it is that time of the term already - to get set - for the next lap of study and work load is going to start real soon.

Bring it on 'term 3' - I am all set now :-)

When numbers alone don't add together to provide value

Today, there was a double session for BGS, with first session dedicated to an online simulation and second to debriefing of the simulation.

We grouped to be 8 different companies, using water of a common lake, and trying to use this water, even while we were to take decisions regarding whether we will treat water after use or dispose without treatment. And then, there were flavors like rains, fines, awards. Overall, we had fun at the simulation.

Our group started believing that after the Strategy class, people now understand the concept of prisoners dilemma and will all treat the water. When that didn't happen, we played to maximize our relative gain.

While I expected the debriefing to be the same as what we had in the Strategy class simulation, it was actually different this time. With each element of the game, from lake to the fines to the awards, Jef discussed about how it relates to and represents some aspect of the business world and government norms and took inputs from the class about the hows, the whats, the likes and the dislikes.

I enjoyed this debriefing today. It gave us so much information, by referring to just a simulation, which I had initially thought to be just another form of prisoner's dilemma.

Later in the day was marketing strategy class. Today Erik discussed the Polyphonic HMI case - again a product with amazing innovation by a start-up trying to make its mark. The Plumber metaphor and question of 'who is the plumber in this case'? came up today as well. By the way, if I have not already mentioned this, this is with reference to the first case, where plumber represents a customer side stakeholder and an influencer, who needs convincing and converting, for successful sale of your product.

I have to admit, today I had only managed to read the case and didn't work much on solving it. But, even if I had solved it in all aspects, I could not have thought of using simple tools that we have already learned in the past like Bayes theorem to identify the value created. This was a good learning for me today. In fact, we saw a lot of numbers today, but none of them appeared out of place and they were actually relatively easy to do - reminded me of something which I have heard a few times in the past about cracking the case - that if you can't do the basic numbers on back of an envelope, you are not cracking the case correctly.

Today, I saw a demonstration of how to crack a case on back of an envelope. Not bad for a friday afternoon class, I would say.

And yes, the common theme in today's classes - if you only look at numbers, you may not be able to generate full value - for simulation in BGS, we had to look and think about what others are doing or will do and for marketing strategy, we had to identify the plumber and think on how we can engage this person to create value. 

Our group met right after the classes and at 6 PM, we finally concluded our work, and with that I also concluded my study for the day.

Last night was a long night with the Korean dinner and the after dinner gathering at a Turkish restaurant, so tonight I need some rest.

Enjoy your weekend readers :-)

Urgency, Optimism, Change and Innovation

Well, morning started with a class by Erik for the Aqualisa Quartz case - a innovative product, created with huge expense on R&D, as a newly minted MBA leading the company wanted to shun the complacency developed in this firm and sensed an urgency to bring in new product lines.

We discussed this case from a marketing strategy point of view and at the end of it, saw the measure actually adopted by our protagonist in form of his video that was available. I was surprised that when this innovative product was not selling, they did something very counter-intuitive when it comes to targeting the consumers.

Erik reminded us of how this case can also be looked upon from a change management point of view.

And then after our group meeting, began two sessions on Leadership Vision. Well, our mentor for the session Jill, after introducing herself started talking about overall program structure. Turns out - this is also about how leaders can behave in situations that demand change - how important it is to identify urgency in a timely manner, how important it is to be optimistic about future plans and how important it is to communicate a concrete action plan to all stakeholders.

We looked at a societal case of Martin Luther King as first example and then at a business case of Sony in recent times, and discussed various aspects of leadership vision aspects.

All-in-all, a common theme across all classes of today, and that is something I am always amazed with.

Small Probability, Big Impact events rule the day !!

Well, first of the Marketing Strategy classes by Erik in morning today, began with a metaphorical picture of some people trying to build a bridge and reach the end labeled 'Customer'.
What began with the question 'what do you see when you look at this picture?' eventually landed up on 'Does it bridge to reach customer ever completes? Can business ever build that perfect and long lasting bridge?'
That is where the discussion actually got philosophical.

Anyways, to stress the importance of Customer from Marketing Strategy point of view, Erik gave us an example of Dave. Dave Carrol, a small time country musician, whose custom guitar was broken while it was checked it in united airlines and who struggled to get a compensation for this 2000 dollar guitar from the airlines, created a song and posted it on Youtube. Song was titled 'United breaks guitar' - and this relatively low budget video, went viral with current hits reaching 13.5 million. The company itself suffered a 10% drop in its share price on fourth day this video was out, and caused a market cap loss of 180 million dollar.

While it is also a case for Social CRM, the lesson this example provides is that events like this with small probability and very high impact cannot be ignored and in today's world of internet and mobile phones, every single customer matters :-)

While we were still pondering over our discussion in this class, in came Carlos for the Corporate finance session. His lesson for today turned out to be the same - while forecasting, we cannot just rely on most likely scenarios - and this is especially important in cases where the outliers with small probability but high impact create a downside risk - well, he did state that risk is better understood and quantified if we look at it as variability between the expected outcome and the most likely outcome. So, if an event with small probability and huge impact is present on both sides of the expected outcome, probably nothing with change much - but if the risk is only on down side, at least the expected return and cash flows will change and we have to factor them into our model.
And then, depending on the variance of expected value, we can determine the risks involved and also the premium we can pay for the risk.

Interesting lesson, yet counter-intuitive to think that while a down side risk will definitely impact the expected return, it may not necessarily impact the risk involved and hence the discount rate associated.
It is this counter-intuitive nature of this argument which invited so many queries and doubts from many in the class today and Carlos ended up answering these queries for a long time even after the class was over.

While we suddenly have a lot to decide as a group now - for marketing strategy report and for talent management presentation, and spent an hour doing so, the day only concluded after an over-stretched session of career strategy by an head hunter lady. I don't really remember her name, but she spent almost two hours giving us tips and tricks of the trade.

Spent time post-lunch to do the readings for tomorrow, and now I am thinking of also completing the readings for Friday, as I have some dinner plans for tomorrow :-)

From Internationalization of Businesses to Economics of Countries :-)

Well, the day began with a mail waiting from Luis S., waiting in my inbox, providing us with our group feedback, so already a happy note to begin my day.

It was a double session of Talent Management today with Lincoln Electric case - the classic example of a company with completely counter-intuitive yet successful implementation of piece-rate system, paying high compensation in a high cost location, and yet sustaining its market leadership for more than 100 years now. This case in particular was about discussion on whether Lincoln should go to China with same HR practices. Along the discussion, Prof. Monika provided us with some survey data as well - to provide trends on behavioral and aspirational influences in U.S. and China, the differences in them and similarities in them.

While it was an interesting discussion today, what I liked the most about this class was that Prof. Monika was not only moderating the discussion based on inputs by people, she was actually helping people by reading into their comments and helping them state their case clearly.

Our group did pretty much nothing as part of group work today, as it is a little early in the term anyways and then it was time for our first session of the Core Plus elective class.
Basically, this is an elective offered during the core period itself. While the choices included Strategy, Finance, and Management Control as other options [both in English and Spanish], I along with 56 others [yes, this class is full] chose 'Country Economic Analysis' - firstly because the cases and countries covered in this class are interesting to know about and secondly because the professors for Economics are really really good. Prof. Gonzalo, Prof. Gayle Allard and Prof. Patricia Gabaldon, each with an expertise in economics of different regions of the world. Not to mention, my decision like many others was also biased by the fact that we had already taken Managerial Economics class with Prof. Gonzalo and we all liked that class and Gonzalo's teaching very much.

Anyways, today's opening session was by Prof. Gonzalo where he discussed where the world is today, the history of economic development, the future trends in demographics [he doesn't really advocate economic forecasts, so only forecasts we saw were the demographic forecasts, which are pretty much accurate due to data availability] and how different countries and their economies have evolved and are are currently placed.

He used references from Malthus to Rosling to the recently published report [just ten days ago] by world bank on GNI and GNI-PPP figures of various nations.

As usual, a lot of ground was covered in this class, even though this was the first session. We also got to know the overall syllabus, what countries we will cover in details, what are the grading criteria and other logistics stuff.

Anyways, by the end of this class, Investment Analysis grade was already out and I am really happy about this one.

Spent the rest of today reading for the first Marketing Strategy class by Erik tomorrow, and doing the Financial Forecast simulation as part of online exercise that Carlos has assigned us. This exercise was fun as it helped me revise the concepts of both financial accounting and investment analysis together in same exercise.

Need to apply to one more company today before I call it a day, and needless to say, it was a good day for me today :-)

Leadership, Businesses, Politics, Cash and Income :-)

Well, today started with the leadership module session for us to give feedback of term two to our work group and receive feedback from the work group. It was a good start of the day, talking about things we liked about each other, things we would our friends to improve on, and so on.

Then came the Business, Government and Society Class. Our professor for the class - Jeffrey Timmons started the session by telling us about himself and the course structure in general. And then, he took a poll on how many people like successful businesses and businessmen and how many like successful politicians. Obviously, the hands raised for second question were much lesser than for the first question.
And then began a series of questions, triggering a discussion around what makes business successful, what is it that we like about businesses and what we don't like about them and Jef established a correlation of all these things with politics and illustrated to us, how both are similar in so many aspects.
Discussion then built into economics and free markets and invisible hand and role of government.
He concluded the class by stating briefly how government is required for a market to work properly. IN absence of government, there are ways to ensure free market, but these measures ultimately cause efficiency losses.

Interesting class, with a very engaging discussion on various aspects. I know I am going to enjoy this class.

As BGS class ran a little over time, Carlos was already in the class. He saw the slides for BGS while Jef was closing them and during discussions in the class, he actually referred to that last slide on which Jef left us, and explained the concept he was talking about in terms of example that we studied in the previous class. That reference he made of something which is not his subject and not his slide was really impressive.
Today's class also had some of the slides with movie characters and quotes used to refer to basic concepts of finance. We had clickers distributed in the class and Carlos made a good use of these clickers to illustrate before us how bias of market participants don't cancel each other as put forth by some economists, but goes on adding to each other. He also related this to why we need to work with intrinsic value approach to find value of our investment, rather than going for market based approach - because true equilibrium doesn't really exist in the market.
One quote said by him, when he was explaining the different aspects of balance sheet, which I liked the most today was "Cash is the only fact. Income is an Opinion. And the future cash flow is also an Opinion."
Gave me a better perspective of things.

After classes today, I worked on a job application, and then after finishing readings for tomorrow, worked on my fellowship related paper, which has received some review comments.

A good beginning of this week and with classes for some of other subjects also starting in couple of days, I am hoping this week will be interesting one.