Tanaka MBA

That was Then

It is 19 years - more than half my life - since I first came to Imperial College. I'm not sure what date it was exactly, but I remember that ITV were rerunning the JFK mini-series when I got home, so I'm guessing it was around 22 November. I think it was a Wednesday.

It was for an interview for the undergraduate physics programme. I'd never dreamt of the business school then. Well, it wasn't actually an interview, I knew that. I'd read the alternative prospectus. It was a chat with the legendary Dr Pain. The interview was in the afternoon. But there was a tour of the department beforehand that I wanted to go on. So, I got a really early (and hence expensive) train from Preston. I got there with plenty of time to spare and went to the Geological Museum, a thrill in itself.

I remember being surprised that only one other person turned up for the tour. Surely, if you'd been invited to interview, you'd want to go on the tour? Seemingly not. Perhaps not everyone studied the alternative prospectus as carefully as I did. Our guide was a female physics student. And there aren't many of them. I remember her saying that in the Physics building, going from the top fllor to the basement, you go from the hottest place in the world (OK, just a fairly hot place: the fusion/plasma group) to the coldest place (OK, just a fairly cold place: the low temperature physics group). Actually, I can't remember which group is on which floor. I work with a chap on an Imperial Innovations project who did a PhD in fusion physics there. I could ask which floor the group is on. OK, OK, it doesn't matter that much. I do remember going for lunch, and The Waterboys "The Whole of the Moon" playing on the PA. And I do remember walking across Prince's Gardens and there was a crocodile of prep school children and I thought I will write a trilogy of novels about this (my three years at Imperial College, not the prep school children). Well, that was something that wasn't to happen.

We had our chat with Dr Pain. All eight of us. We got our offer. Two Cs. I was very into Imperial College. I knew it was the number one science college in the UK (after Cambridge and Oxford). I remember a Horizon programme in which they described it as the number one. They were doing something in the stairwell of the Physics Department. I wish I could remember what. But I knew Imperial wasn't that good. But I couldn't hope too much for Oxford. My A-level physics teacher. Fred Richardson, went to Imperial and he talked of it often in class. At that instant, Imperial was enough to be going on with for me. It was within my grasp.

I'd didn't go to Imperial as an undergraduate. But before I started my MBA, I had spent many happy hours at Imperial at ICSF meetings and Picocons (not forgetting all those canapes at business school information evenings). The thing is that being at Imperial everyday somehow does have quite the same resonance at 36 that it would have done at 18. I can't see myself writing a novel about my MBA (well, actually...). Imperial was recently ranked as the 14th best university in the the world by the THES. OK, it's certainly doesn't have the 14th best business school in the world. But even so. That should be quite something. Maybe if I was doing a PhD in the Physics Department, I would feel that is was quite something. But somehow, given that I'm not, I can't quite muster the feeling. Imperial isn't quite MIT. That's one of the problems of getting older. Nothing's quite what you hope it will be.                     

Those Who Can...

It is de rigeur among MBA bloggers to write an entry describing one's pleasant surprise at finding that the teacher of at least one course that one has been dreading is able to make the driest subject come alive in wonderul and unexpected ways. To be honest, I wouldn't say that I have been dreading any particular course. However, it is fair to say (and I try to be fair, at least some of the time) that the standard of teaching is higher than we experienced while undergraduate physicists at Oxford. Given that I am paying £17k of my own money to be on the course, I should hope it is.

Stefan Szymanski (Business Economics) is a pretty damned good lecturer in my opinion, lively, interesting and a little bit opinionated. I know all about downward sloping demand curves, the Giffen good and the Nash equilibrium. If I saw A Beautiful Mind now, I could say "oh, that Nash" if it wasn't for the fact that I knew it was that Nash all along. I'm tempted to do his elective on the economics of experiences (i.e. sport and leisure), even if it is taught with PY Gerbeau of Millennium Dome fame. Actually, these days, he is best known as the finance of the delectable Kate Sanderson. I saw her once in the Anglesea Arms in Brackenbury Village and she's even better looking in real life than on TV. I saw Sophie Rasworth there once too. Anyway...

Jaideep Prabhu (Marketing Management) has the makings of not a bad lecturer, even if he did regurigate the old chestnut about the Chrevolet Nova car being a flop in Spanish-speaking countries. That one was put to rest long ago and, frankly, I expect a bschool professor to know this. But still, I'm now familiar with STP, the 3Cs and the 4Ps.

Yiannis Gabriel (People and Organisations) comes from the old school of lecturing. Pretty dull really, but at least I'll know a Weberian bureaucracy if I ever run into one. The less said about Innovation Management the better probably, but Apple did not a monopoly of the GUI from 1984 until 1995. What about GEM, Windows 1.0/2.0 not to say Windows 3.x from 1990? 1993 was the first year more Windows software shipped than DOS software, so it did take a lonfg time for the GUI to catch on on the PC, but it was there. And we shouldn't forget windowing systems on non-PC platforms. A polite veil is probably best drawn over Quantitative Skills (but I've never done a proper statistics course, so there is interesting stuff there) too. Paul Klumpes is an eccentric Australian who is teaching us Financial Skills. He does indeed manage to make a dull subject both interesting and understandable.

Four of the courses end this week. Next week is given over to the TEchnology Venture Project and a new set of core courses starts the week after. Four more lecturers. Could (should?) be interesting.

It's the launch event for the Tanaka Business School Venture Capital Club this evening. I'm hoping that there will be some bubbly on offer or, at the very least, Imperial College claret.