Tanaka MBA

Five-Eighths is Too Much Already

Exam 1 or rather exam 5 this afternoon. Business economics. I was quite getting into economics. Perhaps not now. I think I did quite well on one question. I saw the catch in the algebraic part and think I came up with several reasonable points in the discursive part including what might have been the killer one (which I only came up with I was describing the other more obvious (to me) ones). On the other two questions, I think I might have done OK on the discussion of competitive advantage (I hope), but the algebraic part I could think of what to do with the marginal revenue function (maybe nothing). I waffled terribly on the discussion of elasticity of theatre ticket prices. And we know Stefan doesn't like waffle. It's a good job I did get that A on the assignment part of the course.

Accounting Management Analysis tomorrow. Oh, my God.      

Glad It's All Over

Only it's not, of course. We've four exams straight after Christmas (OK, the New Year, strictly). Real exams. Not case studies.

Today's exam (Strategy Management) wasn't too bad, expect for Question 2, in which we had to calculate something. Well, that wouldn't have too bad. IfI'd had any idea how to calculate it.

If I've got 4 Cs this week, I'll have passed. I won't be happy, but I'll have passed.

It's the Christmas party tonight at 43 South Molton Street. I think I'll have a Cosmopolitan tonight. I've never had one.

On the Third Day

People & Organisations this morning. We weren't given the case in advance, so the exam was half an hour longer to give us time to read it. At least, we had plenty of time to answer the questions, although they were very samey. I'm not sure if I gort enough P&O buzzwords in, although i did mention transactional v. transformational leadership/management a few times, although I didn't get the chance to explicitly name Max Weber. It seemed more a strategy/human resources case really, which could be slightly worrying. Oh, well.

It'll all be over tomorrow. Better get revising for Strategy Management. It's a HBS case on wheelchairs from the mid-90s. Rather dull. I'm afraid. But I've got to get on.

Another One Bites the Dust

Marketing Management. That was a tough one, much than I'd been expecting (hoping for). Basically, it was a three hour exam that we had to do in two. Actually, it was worse than that because the questions were purely framed. There was one on the potential profit of GolfLogix that was presented in such a open-ended manner that to answer it properly would have taken three hours easily. Well, if I get a B (or even a C, Heaven forbid), I'll be alright.

In other news, we got our Strategy Management surprise tests back. I'd been quite proud to learn on Saturday that I'd got an A+. I was gutted to discover that virtually everyone else got either an A or an A+. I'm surprised that Annabelle inflated the grades so much. Never find. I got "truly excellent" on my mine. Which might be better than someone else who also got an A+, but "excellent" written on the script.

In other other news, I got an A for the Business Economics. Many people were complaining that the lecturer had graded the assignments very harshly and were particularly upset by some comments he made in an email. I'll admit that the subtext of the email that everyone else picked up passed me by. Did I get the same email? The general standard of the assignments was described as "OK". I suppose that's not so much as damning with faint praises as simply damning. But  maybe it's the difference between British and American academic cultures. And we are in the UK. (So, what's the US got to do with it?) We, OK can mean "quite good" as well as... urgh... "OK".

Anyway, it's People and Organisations tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

One Down...

...seven to go. Exams that is. We had our first exam today (if you don't count the Strategy Management "surprise" test, which we probably should as it was worth 30% of the course mark). The exams this week are case study exams. Today was Human Resource Management and we had to write about the recruitment strategy for "NewCo". (That's the petrochemicals arm of BP, which is being soun off next year. They do actually call themslves NewCo at the moment.)  Their head of HR came in to give us a briefing first, which means this was a live and current case.  Unlike the traditional  HBS case!  We have one of those tomorrow for Marketing Management.  It's the GolfLogix (GPS device) case. Of course, just because we can find out what GolfLogix did, doesn't mean that's the right thing to say they should do in the exam.

After Christmas, we have four real exams!

Better get on with some revision.

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.

...Fruit Flies Like Bananas

Wednesday of Week 4. Already. Say what you like about bschool (or what you don't like - our innovation management class, for instance), but The Days Are Just Packed.

Con Tricks?

We had another careers workshop on Wednesday from Penhela, this time on management consulting, not given this time, unfortunately, by the delectable Dana. Do I want to work in MC? Well, my feeling is that if you are going to work in MC, there is no point doing it unless you are doing it for The Firm. The idea of working for Accenture spending years project managing a SAP implemention for American Express definitely does not appeal to me. But why do people want to work in MC? You can't say the money. I want to get hold of Martin Ashford's Con Tricks: the Shadowy World of Management Consultancy and How to Make It Work for You, but sadly it is out of print and the library here does not have a copy. I found the library portfolio on the MBA student committee thrust upon yesterday. I intend to crusade to improve the business section of the IC library, but I don't think that will help me get hold of the book. As I was saying, the thing about consultancy (as opposed to management consultancy) is that it is such a broad area. The research consultancies such as Analysys and Gartner definitely do appeal to me. Even better would a consultancy that does actual real research rather than just speculating about industry developments. I would like to do some programming in my next job. I can dream, can't I?

AGM of the Tanaka Venture Capital Club tonight. An MBA is mostly about networking. Or so they say. Also it means that it will be later before we get down the pub. Which is probably a good thing. I can't afford to be as jaded tomorrow as I was last Saturday. I also need to get my aircut. Sadly, The Refinery is not positioned at a price point to suit self-funded MBA students. Anyway... back to VC. One of my ambitions is to work for a VC in an office in Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park as a nanotech/AGI analyst. However, I think working for a startup in London is more likely. I can dream, can't I?

I need to get a laptop. At some point, we are supposed to receive some super offer for cheap HP laptops. Problem is, when is that going to be? Can I afford to wait to this (possibly mythical) offer eventually appears. Thing is, I knowe that if I order on this weekend, we'll get some amazing offer next week. What to do? Wait, probably. But it would be good tob have connectivity during lectures. I could certainly blog more often. Live coverage of business economics lectures? I can dream, can't I?

Banker's Bonus

We had a career session on investment banking yesterday given by the formidable Dana Gluckstein of Penhela Associates. Ibanking is one of the three sectors that all MBAs students pretty much want to work (the others are management consultancy and venture capital/private equity). Of course, the vast majority of MBAs, even from Harvard, end up as product marketing manager for Procter & Gamble. But we can all dream. Ibanking as it all: glamour, status, money. Some of the work is probably even quite interesting. I'd quite like to be a rocket scientist or a technology analyst. But I'm 36 years of age. I'm too old. If I burningly wanted to work in ibanking, it might be worth applying. But the truth is I don't. I missed my window of opportunity ten or more years ago (the truth is I never really had one, but in alternate worlds, I might have had). I suspect I'd hate it after a while. I want to help create something.

I was awarded an MBA assistantship in physical science/technology transfer at Imperial Innovations, the company that attempts to commercial the research produced by the college. The assistantship is worth £5k off the MBA course fee (normally £22k). Today, I had a very positive meeting with one of their collaborators, discussing issues associated with how I might be able to help with the patenting and bringing to market of a new idea. More up my alley than ibanking, I think. I'm not a natural entrenpeneur. The size and hierarchical nature of ibanks appeals to me. But I working in a high tech start-up would be different, might be fun and is a better fit with experience and aptitudes, I suspect, than ibanking. So, I'm not going to bother applying to them. I've got better uses for my time, I think. There are plenty of other career possibilities available to me. I hope.