Day 120 – I am still alive!

No, I’m not dead and I have not given up this blog. It’s just that the previous post a month ago was really our last study day so far, after which we had a revision week, then 4 exams crammed in one single week (Accounting on Monday, Marketing on Tuesday, Business Economics on Thursday and Corporate Finance on Friday) and then two weeks off over Christmas and New Year.

I haven’t posted anything about the exams, because we won’t get the results until February in any case, and even though I feel that I’ve done fine on all of them, it’s really hard to assess precisely.

Otherwise, the break is almost over – on Wednesday (i.e. the day after tomorrow) we have our Brussels presentations (I am in a team that is supposed to make one about energy and we haven’t yet done anything!) and then on Thursday we are actually travelling to Brussels.

Day 82 – Marketing Presentations

Group presentations are always fun – or actually, a bit stressful when your team is presenting, but otherwise great fun watching what other bright creative minds came up with 😉

So this morning we had 4 hours of Marketing, where we all had to present our benefit cases and then grade each other. I have to say, I really liked all the presentations, some were slightly better than others, yet all of them were of very high quality and reflected a lot of effort put into them. And our team was actually very generous, when it came to grading! Among the proposed ideas we heard about the revivals of Nokia and Virgin Concorde; a plastic bracelet for elderly people living alone, to monitor their pulse, blood pressure and to detect falls, sending a signal to their children or health care providers; different sorts of online platforms – for luxury dining, for property rentals, for crowdfunding, for betting; an app allowing university students to print for free; a device measuring fitness levels of pet cats.

Our team’s presentation was targeted at the Imperial College Business School Advisory Board, the idea being the the Business School should provide MOOC’s (massive open online courses), as a lot of top business schools do, which will lead to increased brand recognition. I personally didn’t present, because that was how we divided the Marketing and Strategy coursework within our team – everyone contributes to both, but only three people present each, as unlike for some other modules, there was no requirement for every single team member to present.

After the presentations and a virtually nonexistent break (I barely had time to get some chicken tikka pockets from the Business School Café!), we had our Strategy lecture, during which we discussed the Renault and Nissan case that we had to prepare for today. I have to admit – I hadn’t read it. I know it’s not a good thing to do, but we have had our surprise test already, so I simply concentrated on higher priority things: Innovation and Entrepreneurship coursework and exam revisions. Therefore, unfortunately, I couldn’t take part in the discussion. Apart from talking, we spent a good half an hour watching a video interview of Carlos Ghosn (the CEO of both Renault and Nissan), after which the discussion resumed on his leadership style and how he managed the cultural differences.

By the way, the elective sign up system opened today, so I chose my 6 electives: Advanced Corporate Finance, Managing Negotiations, Leadership, Venture Capital Finance, Design Management and Hi-Tech Strategy.

 

Day 78 – Lots of Coursework Again

For some reason when I think of Marketing, I also think of Strategy, and vice versa. I guess, the two modules have a lot in common, but also it probably has to do with the fact that we tend to have the lectures on both on the same days!

This morning we have had our last Marketing lecture (there are two more sessions on Friday, but that’s when we are going to present our final group projects) and it was about innovation. Here we talked among other things about the willingness to cannibalise your current success (its the lack thereof which can result in companies’ inability to catch up with the changing environment) and future market focus. Overall, the course was really interesting, but I’m slightly worried about the exam, as I am still not sure how exactly this material is testable…

During the lunch break we spent some time with the syndicate team on our Strategy group project. We seem to be in a good place with regard to both Strategy and Marketing presentations, so hopefully things will go well for us.

The Strategy lecture started an hour later than it should have, because our Professor had a family emergency, so we only had time to go through the Marks & Spencer case (the one we had a test on last time). After the discussion, I feel even more that I’ve done pretty well on the test, because I think I covered all the important points!

After the lecture I met with the small group with which I am working on the Innovation and Entrepreneurship coursework. We were supposed to form pairs, but because some people are not going to be present on the presentation day, some teams had to be formed of three people, which is my team’s case. The teams are assigned either the Entrepreneur or the Investor role and should amend the provided Business Plan to align it with their interests, based on the profile of the team, that is also provided. The business plan is about a solar powered mobile charger, which is aimed for use in rural Kenya, and our team’s profile is that we are investors and a Friends of Africa charity, which focuses on social impact rather than commercial aspect. What we have to do now is read through the business plan, bearing in mind our profile.

And finally, late in the afternoon I had a coffee meeting with two Azeri guys, who are also Imperial students and one of which I knew before.

Day 75 – Surprise Test

I already had one post called Marketostrategy – today was exactly the same combination of lectures.

At the Marketing lecture we continued talking about leveraging and enhancing the value of a brand. The discussion built on the ‘3 E’s’ we had talked about at the previous lecture – how brands can be Enticing (pleasing one’s senses or creating an emotional touch), Enabling (reliable, versatile and conserving one’s mental, physical and psychological energy and time and money) and Enriching (identifying with or expressing values or the status of a brand or a group) through three phases (more 3 E’s): establishing, elaborating, extending. Another thing was the concept of Zeitgeist (i.e. the spirit of the time) and how it affects the efforts to sustain the relationship.

For the Strategy session we had to prepare two cases: one on McKinsey and another one on Marks & Spencer, and we were expecting the surprise test on either of the two today. Everyone was hoping that it wouldn’t be the McKinsey case, as it was very long-winded and boring. I personally read – or should I actually say skimmed through? – it just once, really struggled to follow the story and grasp the key data, and even though I knew I had to read it again, just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was also motivated by the fact that our Professor Annabelle had made some subtle hints that this case wouldn’t be tested. So I prepared really well for the Marks & Spencer case instead, which was pretty interesting.

So luckily things went exactly as anticipated. The first hour of the lecture was dedicated to discussing the McKinsey case in class. Annabelle acknowledged the fact that it was pretty boring, too detailed and full of unnecessary information, but also made the point that this is how the case was meant to be, as in the modern world where everything is focused on big data, the ability to process detailed (and often also boring!) information, filter it and grasp the essence out of it could well be our distinguishing and competitive advantage over our peers (and machines!)

The surprise test came as a not-too-much-of-a-surprise during the second half of the lecture. In 45 minutes we had to answer 4 out of the 6 questions that we were supposed to have prepared at home. I feel like I should have done pretty well – the first two questions were the easier ones, asking about the M&S value proposition, how it was delivered and what went wrong during the late 1990’s. The second two required more of a thought and judgment, but were still okay – they asked for our assessment of Luc Vandevelde’s strategy (he was the company’s chairman in 2000-2004) to turn the business around and what questions we would pose about the company’s future strategy.

Day 71 – Variety of Lectures

A new week has started, supposedly a long and tiring one… Today was long and tiring enough already – we had three different lectures. I might have got to the point where there is nothing terribly exciting to describe – just normal routine lectures.

The first one was Corporate Finance, and by the way I got 16/16 for the previous homework, quite happy! Otherwise, the lecture topic was painfully familiar – capital budgeting decision rules: NPV, IRR (including the problems of multiple and no IRR’s and lending vs borrowing IRR), PI and payback period.

And then there was Marketing. We’ve had so many of those Marketing classes already, that somehow I get the impression that we have one every day! Not that I’m complaining though – the course is really interesting. Today we discussed the value of brands and how it can be leveraged or enhanced. There are basically two relationship strengthening strategies: new markets for extension of the existing product line or a new product (either for the existing or a new market). The example we looked at was the Arm & Hammer baking soda one and how the company pursued each of those strategies. Then we did an exercise, thinking about how each strategy would work for our Business School Cafe.

And finally, Strategy. The whole session was dedicated to discussing the EasyJet case which we had to prepared at home, answering questions about the competitive advantage and the value proposition of Easy and whether the company has been successful in leveraging its strength for the diversification of its business, when it got into car rental, cybercafe and other businesses.

Day 68 – Strategy (and McKinsey)

I came home pretty late last night and was too tired to write a post, so catching up today. We had three lectures, out of which two were Strategy. We are currently going at a very slow pace, and the Professor explained that she was simply adjusting the pace to our knowledge – according to her, our cohort does not seem very knowledgeable in the subject matter, but it is pretty strong intellect-wise, so she is confident that we will pick up at a faster pace soon.

We continued with a very deep and in-detail studying of Porter’s Five Forces and then went through our Cola Wars case and how the Porter’s Five framework applies to it, with a small blind tasting exercise in the beginning, where five students had to taste Coke, Pepsi and Waitrose cola and tell which is which, and only one of them got all three right.

The third lecture was Marketing, the topic of which was customer-brand relationships and brand management. For the context, we discussed some theories, like:

• Social Comparison theory – we evaluate ourselves and what we own not in absolute terms, but in comparison to other people.
• Equity theory – in the long term we stay in various relationships if we get out of them as much as we input.
• Social Identity theory – we can identify ourselves with abstract concepts, external to ourselves (e.g. a country or a football club), sometimes as strongly as to put our lives for them.
• Self-Expansion theory – we often include others in our concepts of self (our children, for example, or even football club once again!)
• Values theory – each of us holds different values with differing levels of importance assigned to each.
• Social Exchange theory – exchange never occurs in a vacuum and how we feel about relationships largely depends on a subjective cost/benefit analysis.
• Attachment theory – in customer-brand relationships context, which were the focus of the lecture, it means that obviously the more attached consumers feel to a brand, the more likely they are to remain loyal to it and the more willing they are to pay a premium price for its products.

So basically, we examined the brand-self gap, brand prominence and attachment-aversion concept. Apparently, the critical drivers of attachment-aversion are how a certain brand is enticing or enabling or enriching.

Finally, in the evening I visited the McKinsey office for their Experienced Hire Women event, which consisted of a panel discussion and networking. The panel members were five female employees at different levels , and they shared their stories and of course, as it always happens at these events for women, emphasised how flexible the company is in terms of the work-life balance and explained how they manage to do it. One of them even brought her 17-month-old child to the event! I like it generally, it was interesting to listen to those ladies, plus a good networking opportunity!

Day 64 – Amazon

Study-wise, there hasn’t been that much going on today. In the morning we had another Marketing lecture – fourth one already, and it’s only been a week! Not that it feels too much yet, though – at least those lecture continue being interesting, interactive and engaging. The topic today was communication process and covered the ideas of price as a signal (e.g. it communicates the additional effort spent on producing a higher-end product) and of translating the message into a symbolic form, so that its source is easily memorable and identifiable and the roles that customers and company employees play in the communication process.

That was the only lecture of the day, and I was planning to go home straight after it, yet somehow ended up hanging around the College for another 2.5 hours at least! This included a syndicate group catch up for picking our topics for the Marketing and Strategy group presentations (to create proper suspense I’m not revealing them here yet!), a gym session and – the most “useful” pastime of all! – printing out papers for homework and for Schengen visa application, I don’t really know how this happens every time, but I never spend less than 35 minutes in the Library when trying to print stuff out!

In the evening I came back to the campus for the Amazon recruitment presentation. Apparently, they do have a special MBA programme with roles in Supply Chain & Transportation, Customer Services, Prime Now and Amazon Logistics. I am not entirely sure whether I would be interested in these operations-type of jobs. What the presenter MJ Wheble (Talent Management Leader) did sound really interesting, but I had never considered neither the function, nor the industry previously, so really don’t know… Anyway, the prospects sound pretty optimistic – the company has been growing almost exponentially and is projected to continue doing so. There seem to be a lot of opportunities and challenges to face and they provide their hires with the autonomy to think strategically and the opportunity to work in a network of increasing scale and complexity. What they are looking for in their applicants is strategic thinking with tactical execution and the ability to make data-driven decisions.

Day 61 – Marketostrategy

The third Marketing lecture of the week was about the meeting place (i.e. distribution). We talked about brand experience (what brands do to differentiate themselves) and discussed the need for shopping outlets in hospitals (as well as the whole idea of underserved markets in general), the concept of flagship store and in which cases it would be useful (e.g. for Apple and M&M’s as opposed to Microsoft, HSBC, or Arm & Hammer the baker soda producer) and e-commerce.

During the lunch break we got together with our syndicate team and tried to brainstorm ideas for the group presentation for Marketing as well as for Strategy. The two seem quite related to each other, and I expect the assignment for the Innovation & Entrepreneurship course, which starts next week, to be somewhat similar. So the dilemma we had during the discussion was whether we would be better of picking one single firm or industry for both Marketing and Strategy or completely different ones, the trade-off here being between studying something in depth from different perspectives and gaining a broader understanding of different firms in different industries. I personally supported the latter idea, and seems like we agreed on that. We decided to think about possible ideas over the weekend and come with suggestions on Monday.

The second and the last lecture was Strategy, and I totally enjoyed every minute of it! Despite the fact that the topics covered – Porter’s Five Forces, value creation and capturing, company’s mission, vision and values – were pretty simple, straightforward and intuitive, the lecture was delivered in such an engaging, interactive and fun way that it was as far as the Moon from being boring!

Even though we didn’t have time to look at the case that had to be prepared for today, it didn’t feel that this time had been spent in vain. The case itself was not the most exciting one (it was about Cola Wars, i.e. the long-lasting rivalry between Coke and Pepsi), and I remember having to push myself to read it and answer the questions, but then I really enjoyed a lot doing the latter. The whole exercise was different from what I was used to, when you have to pick up the answers right from the text – here it really required some thinking and analysis. And overall, I think this particular course will be extremely useful for me and will meet one of my biggest objectives for doing the MBA in the first place (learning how to think strategically), so I will try my best to take the most out of it!

Day 58 – More Marketing

Another new module that started this morning, and it was Corporate Finance. Looks like out of all the modules this term this is the one I will feel the most comfortable about – I mean, if I can’t do well in Corporate Finance, then what in this world can I do well in??? The first lecture was pretty much an introduction, where we covered very basic concepts – starting from microeconomics with its indifference curves (which for some reason hadn’t been covered during the actual Business Economics curves) and ending with present and future values, perpetuities and NPV’s. The assessment for the course will be consist of class participation, some weekly homework and a final exam.

After a very short break, which wasn’t even a proper lunch break we had another Marketing session. Something I notice about myself is that I find it much harder to concentrate on lectures which involve a lot of talking and little or no precise concepts. For example, Corporate Finance seemed so much easier to me, because you are precisely told: X is Y, Z is calculated like this, etc. Here, though, I am not even sure what the exam may consist of and can hardly imagine how this material can be examined at all.

Shortly, the question to be answered during the lecture was – how to deal with customers? – and we looked at transaction barriers, 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place and Promotion), methods for new product design (interview vs observation) and other concepts.

We were done with the lectures so early, that I could actually go home afterwards, shower after the gym, have a proper meal and come back for my weekly Mandarin class. We learned a few more characters and a few more words and expressions, like how to say that it’s raining, how to speak about things happening yesterday, today and tomorrow, how to ask someone what they would like to drink, and how to count.

Day 57 – Core Modules 2

It’s Monday again, but it almost feels like vacation – a new set of modules has started, not much to do so far, apart from some pre-readings (I definitely feel a change of attitude: I cared a lot more about the pre-reads for the first set of modules!)

The first lecture today was Marketing. The lecturer is very enthusiastic and energetic, he almost runs out of breath when speaking, and he made the lecture material sound pretty simple, with lots of examples about himself and his family. The question which we addressed today was “What do you do if nobody cares about what you are doing?”, in the light of which we looked at the overall design of business plan and areas like consumer perception and product positioning.

The second lecture was quite remarkable too – it was Strategy, but I would rather say that it is the lecturer who made it remarkable, rather than the material itself. She is also very enthusiastic and engaging, and also really fun, to the extent which almost seemed intimidating, for example she would randomly call on students and ask them questions. The assessment is also quite interesting: apart from the group presentation, we are going to prepare answers to various case questions at home, which would mostly be ungraded – only once, and no one knows when, will we have a surprise test during the lecture, when we will have to write the answers to the relevant case’s question right there. In terms of the material, we only covered some very basic concepts, and were suddenly interrupted by a fire alarm, which put an abrupt end to our lecture!