Great Expectations

I am very surprised after reading the emails on the isb-pgp yahoogroups. Prospective applicants come up with so many weird questions. They seem to be so worried about their future - JOBS to be specific.

Lets get to the bottomline: All they want to know is whether the will get a good job - let me clarify that its more in monetary terms, good position - people want to know the roles offered by various companies, whether they can shift from IT to Finance, what roles do IT people get after an MBA and how do companies view MBA's with IT background, with commerce background? THAT's ALL - nothing else? They dont want to know anything other than this? I am totally puzzled.

How come I didn't have any of these job related questions when I applied to Schools.

Why did I just see what value the MBA Program would add to my current experience and education.
Why did I decide on schools based on the research they do, the course structure and the diversity of the batch?

Isnt clarity of thought very crucial for a B-School Applicant?

I have some more questions. Will you not decide where you want to be after your MBA, even before you apply? The answer has to be yes. Atleast you should have a fair idea. In that case, you should know your target companies too. I dont know why people decide to join a school based on the placement options that the school provides them. Is MBA all about getting that whatever digit salary at the end of the day?

Some people are confused about their post MBA plans. Some tell that they will decide whether to apply based on the roles provided by companies. Ha, gimme a break. So according to some of you, a b-school is a new kind of employment office? I think this is one of the reasons why we are still where are and perhaps will continue to remain so.

For a fact, we must understand that most schools in Europe and US do not have this spoon-feeding placements concept. Its all left to you and the student body to conduct career fairs, invite companies and get jobs. And all these international schools are much better than the indian schools.

I think, our country needs a LOT of time to get out of this cushion system. People value schools based on just the placements. I have lived in London for 2 years and not once have I seen LBS or Oxford or any of the other schools placing so much emphasis on placements. Even the students who are there and who want to apply talk more about how much they contribute and get from the school!! Some of them do not know where they want to work after their MBA, but their goal is to learn, experience and then search for jobs.

My questions and arguments can go on. I will just end this here. But is this what management education in india all about?

Abraham Thomas of IBM visits ISB

An account from yesterday.
After a hectic day of class and sessions on electives, we had a speaker series to attend. It was none other than Abraham Thomas of IBM. I had read a lot about AT when IBM Global Services started off big time in India.

I had initially thought that AT was an Indian National, but then he had a strong South Asian or South East Asian English Accent. That got confirmed when I heard that he was a Singapore national.

Moving on to AT's talk for the day. It was all about Leadership. How Global Leadedrs emerge and carry the legacy of the company forward. Finally, it boiled down to leaders being somewhere in these categories - authoritative, coercive, coaching, pace setting, convincing and something else that I cant recollect.

On the whole, the talk was highly animated. AT kept the mood of the crowd very lively by asking a lot of questions and adding humor to the flow of the presentation.

Overall Rating: Very Good

Operations Lessons on Videotape

The Term began with Prof.Chowdhry giving us some insights on Corporate Finance. He clearly mentioned that its not necessary that CA's will do well in the course. That definitely doesnt mean that Engineers will do well!!! Prof.Chowdhry was also very interactive. He gave a number of examples and kept us interested. He also laid the ground rulez that since its a post-lunch class, we can sleep if required and that will not be a problem for him. But he recommended attending every class. Maybe, suddenly you will wake up out of the blue and then the concepts would just rush into your head all of a sudden.

Not to everyone's surprise, we had an obedient MBA Student in our class.



The next class was Operations. Today's was more like a primer. We got to see how UPS manages its Operations effectively. We also got to see videos with respect to our case discussion on Benihana today.

Overall, not very heavy day. But yes, the worst bits are yet to arrive.

Term 3 : Jet Set Go!!!

I didnt imagine that Term 3 would begin with such a bang. This bang is much much bigger. Definitely, I didnt expect this coming along my way.

120 pages of Corporate Finance to be read for the first class. Another 50 pages to be read for Operations Management. And I am suhre that this trend would carry on till the end of this term.

Oh yeah, we have a case submission on Wednesday morning for OpMan and then lot of pages to read for Entrepreneurship and Management Accounting.

I hope the people who went home during this term break took the books for the first class to have a pre-read. For the guys who are coming back tomorrow morning to enter the class directly, I am speechless and breathless when I see this truckload of information on my table to read up. I know I cant finish it and for you guys still at home - Its just getting close to becoming brain-damaged.

I am just freaking out inside my mind!!! Thats what I can say.

Apart from this Academic Affairs is organizing Electives Information Session throughout this week. All Clubs, as usual, would want to meet during the first week. After that, such a thought about scheduling a meeting, will probably a nightmare. And I also found that a number of clubs are highly ambitious and are setting great targets. I am happy about the enthusiasm from the respective presidents, but I am not sure how the students are welcoming this. As such, just by reading the one and a half page email that every club sends out, I am totally tired.

The collaborative ISB blog is out. Need I explain more, when it says collaborative.
The link is here: http://isblife.blogspot.com

Competitive Strategy

Strategy was perhaps the best course we had this term. 10 case studies of some of the best companies in the world and a final assignment in the lines of competition and strategy - that means that you had to prepare for a case every class. A case that
ran into 30 odd pages with serious exhibits and lots of numbers. Addding on to the case was a chapter/article related to the concept discussed in the case. Add another 30 pages.

The course was handled by Prof.Harbir Singh and Prof.Nandini Lahiri. Prof.Harbir is the head of the strategy research cell in Wharton. Who wouldn't want to learn from a person who knew Rajat Gupta from IIT Days.

So, here we have a course highlight with the list of cases and the strategy concepts associated:

Coca Cola and Pepsi - Industry Analysis
Nucor Steel - Competitive Advantage
Intel - Sustainability and Core Competence
Jollibee - Global Strategy
Eli Lilly - Strategic Alliances
Cisco - Strategic Acquisitions
Dell - Competitive Interaction
Walmart - Well, this had a number of concepts - mostly with sustainability
McKinsey - Strategy Implementation
Johnson and Johnson - Corporate Culture

Reflecting on MKDM

MKDM - Marketing and Decision Making was an extension of Marketing I in Term 2. We were introduced to various concepts in Marketing like - Competitive Strategies, Dealiing with competition, conjoint analysis for strategic decisions, sales force allocation, resource allocation, managing products, launching new products and also attending to a declining market.

Apart from this, we were also asked to play this game called MARKSTRAT. The whole batch was divided into teams of 4. 5 teams were part of an industry. In an industry, every team (we were called as A,E,I,O and U) was given a starting budget and products to market. Our job was to apply all the marketing fundas and - launch products, do R&D, allocate sales force, allocate advertising and a host of other things. Typically, anything and everything that would be a part of creating a new product for the market.

Markstrat tips for the next batch - do get in touch with me before your first decision. We'll make you rich!!!

So, when the exam came, everything turned out to be a total disaster. Questions were like describe this, define that, write three attributes, two reasons and stuff like that. It was a mugpot's delight. On top of this, we had few quantitative questions for which we had to memorise the formulae. And you can be sure that you will not get marks if you dont write the right words that were mentioned in the handouts.

Did I do something like this in 1996-97 when I appeared for the Tamil Nadu State Board Examination? Just mugged up every printed word from the textbook and fished for those keywords in the question paper so that I could just blindly write.

Well, that's marketing for all of you.

Sky High

Its 2.30 am now and I am still awake. I dont know wat I am doing. I think that mainly because of the three large smirnoff's and two large white mischief that have caused a reaction inside me to stay awake for a longer period.

its a big day tomorrow. lots of things to do. need to finish my competitive strategy assignment. its a long way to go. while i am typing all this, i am literally struggling to find the right keys. i have made more than 10 mistakes in the last few lines and all this is because i decided to get a bit drunk today. its greta fun i must saY.

hoepfully, i shud be able to update a lot on my blog in the next few days. ;ets see what happens.

A true dedication to the soft and beautiful

1. Was your father a thief? Because he stole the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes.

2. Didn't it hurt when you fell from heaven?

3. You must be tired, because you've been running through my mind all day.

4. Excuse me, I seem to have lost my phone number. Could I borrow yours?

5. Do you believe in love at first sight, or shall I walk by again?

6. Excuse me, do you kiss strangers? No? Well let me introduce myself.

7. Do your legs hurt from running through my dreams all night?

8. I'm new in town. Could you give me directions to your apartment?

9. Do you have a map? I keep getting lost in your eyes.

10. The only thing your eyes haven't told me is your name.

There's something about Sarovar Food

Yesterday, rather early morning today, around 3am to be precise, I just woke up because of a strange feeling. As soon as I got up, I figured out that my stomach had failed to make an operational decision. Production had failed because of defective inputs. So, it decided to send a feedback to my throat that there could be a system error and the result could most probably be a reverse reaction.

When I tried simulating the reaction on my own, it did not work. So, I gave up and tried to get some sleep. Suddenly, the rivals of my immune system, the germs, gained competitive advantage over my stomach. And that was it. I threw up and since then, the whole day has been horrible.

Now I have my own doubts about the food that is being served here. There were a lot of complaints and I never gave it a serious thought. Was it lunch? Was it dinner? Wast it the veggie puff I had at the cafe? Or, was it the Roshogolla? I dont know. All I know right now is that I gotta be careful from now on.

Marketing Decision Making

Marketing Decision Making was one of the courses Term-2. This course was jointly taught by Prof.Pradeep Bharadwaj and Prof.Jagmohan Raju.

Prof.Raju took the last 5 classes. It was really good to have Prof.Raju back for Marketing II. We did have a great time attending his classes for Marketing I.

[ In picture: Prof.Raju cutting the Markstrat Cake for the Class ]

Who wouldnt want to attend a Marketing Class being conducted by the Chair Professor of Marketing in WHARTON !!! It was just amazing.

The best part used to be the review section, wherein he used to test our knowledge of the last lecture. And this was not by calling names. Questions used to appear on the screen and then the photo of the person who had to answer would come up next. It was damn funny and very scary. There have been so many embarassing situations and we have lived through all of that just for the experience.

So, all this ended on a great note yesterday, when we ordered a cake for Prof.Raju and thanked him for all the marketing knowledge and experience he shared with us.



And here they are, the charming ladies from my study-group enjoying their share.

Quizzing to pick those dying brain cells

We had a general quiz today. Awesome participation. The weather was too good. If I remember right, we had about 6 teams of two people and then people started piling on wherever they wanted. Our team topped the quiz along with Dipti and Shiv's Team, two other teams were trailing behind with just a point's difference.

From what I remember:

Benetton advertised that the smallest clothing in their shops is a CONDOM
"Without Reserve" is an internal magazine published by RBI
Britain introduced INCOME TAX to raise money for Napoleonic Wars
Black Hair Dyes are used in Maharashtra to color the buffalos in the selling market
Sewards Folly refers to the purchase of Alaska
Resurrection Men in the 18th century refers to grave diggers in Britain
Vauxhall Victor was introduced in India as CONTESSA
Malaika Arora was the first indian to appear on the COSMO cover
Michael Jackson and Santana got the maximum number of nominations in a Grammy
The S in Dreamworks SKG stands for Spielberg
"We scare because we care" was the tagline for MONSTERS INC
Saudi Arabia does not have a national anthem because music in public is banned there
Dreamz Unlimited is a company formed by Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla and Aziz Mirza

My memory fails....

Chicken Lens

Have you heard of contact lenses for Chicken? Well, this was perhaps the most innovative idea that came to the mind of a Harvard Business School MBA Candidate.

We had this case discussion today for the course Marketing and Decision Making. In random, three groups were asked to present their views on the case. The presentation had to cover the following aspects:

Target Segmentts
Positioning Statement
4P's
Sales targets for the first year and second year.

This case is about this company called Animalens (google it and you will find a lot of information). For the sake of the case the name was changed to Optical Distortion Inc. Animalens now produces lens for chicken that helps reduce cannibalization among chickens, reduces food intake to some extent, helps avoid the debeaking that was normally done for all chicken and in the end increases the egg output per chicken.

A very interesting case indeed - right from the beginning. And in places where the guy starts comparing his company and competition against players like IBM (although in different markets), its actually funny to see that he makes such a comparison as though the market size was in billions of dollars. It was also good fun to guestimate the number of chickens in America.

We were also told that this case is a MUST DO case for MBA Students in most top B-Schools in the world. Its one of those case studies from which entreprenuers can learn a lot.

Diversification Strategies

Well, Rhapsoder is definitely going to write about this. But, then I thought I'll add a few words too. So, people who read this here please read insights from Rhapsoder's blog too.

Our textbook on competitive strategy talks about Diversification and in the summary page it says that "Diversification is like sex". So here's what happens next when we add a little fun to diversification.

The critical issue for managers is to avoid the errors of the past through better strategic analysis of sex decisions. The objectives of sex need to be clear and explicit. Twenty years ago, sex strategies were based on vague concepts of synergy. At the same time, we recognize that economies of scope are insufficient to ensure that sex creates value.

AIKYA 2007

Aikya is definitely not one of those oriental words that are regularly used in the English context.

Aikya is a Sanskrit word meaning oneness and unity.

And yesterday was when we had our first Aikya meet. A brilliant idea - whoever conceived it. I am sure this is prevalent only in ISB. I havent heard of any other school having something like this.

Aikya is a forum where ISB connects the MBA Students with business families and entrepreneurs in Hyderabad. Each study group is assigned to a particular family. Sometimes, two study groups are assigned to a single family. I think that depends on how many MBA Children they can support.

So, yesterday morning was when all this started. Most families have been connected with Aikya since inception. We also heard that 80% of families from the last year we happy to be part of Aikya this year too.

Every group had a representative who was supposed to receive the respective family at 9.30 in the morning.

So, when the right time came, my mom arrived. My Aikya Mom is Pinky Reddy, daughter of T. Subbirami Reddy. GVK Sanjay Reddy, her husband, who runs the GVK Group of industries is our Aikya Dad. Dad was very busy running business in Bombay, so he couldnt make it. But from what we heard from Mom, Dad's hazaar enthu about Aikya and he likes to network with ISB Students big time. So, we are looking forward to meeting him very soon. Our Mom is a very socially inclined person. She is into a lot of activity in Hyderabad. She organizes the Hyderabad 10K every year. I have told her that this year I will run the marathon.

So that's the story.

So whats the purpose of all this. Well, we get to interact with business minds in Hyderabad, get a taste of corporate life and culture. We'd probably get to learn about the real work life balance. I dont even know whether it exists for serious enterpreneurs who are so engrossed in running their businesses. My dad (original) didnt have. In fact, he was just running a small industry. But he was extremely busy. We can imagine how it would be for people running huge firms. Must be a big challenge.

And then, we get to meet the family at their residence during festivals orr events organized by them. We also get to share our knowledge from the ISB MBA. I dont know to what extent that would help them, but it would definitely make a better topic to talk about than to talk about the Hyderabad Weather.

Coming back to reality. Without further delay, we entered the dining hall. Sarovar had made great arrangements with respect to the food. ISB Junta hogged.

I continued my activity of clicking photographs. I managed to click about 100 photos. All photos are on my Flickr.

The Editor's Round Table

The Editor's Round Table that happened on saturday was a great event. My take-aways from the event were few, but it was just amazing to listen to the speakers. Disha and Ali Potia did a wonderful job. They represented ISB on the panel. Megh gave a short presentation on the Right to Information Act. And during the discussion, every speaker quoted Megh's presentation in one context or the other. It was just great to see that.

Read more about the whole event by clicking here.

The ISB Editorial team led by Shivangi has covered the whole event. They have also interviewed the speakers separately.

I had a lot of fun working for this event. We did the co-ordination work at the Auditorium and then I continued my hobby of clicking as many photographs as I could.

Photos will be available on my Flickr.