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NewCardinal
Joined: 28 Dec 2012
Last visit: 30 Aug 2016
Posts: 20
Own Kudos:
Given Kudos: 1
Concentration: Entrepreneurship, General Management
Schools: Sloan Fellows (M) Darden GEMBA (A)
GMAT 1: 700 Q48 V38
GPA: 3.1
WE:Management Consulting (Internet and New Media)
10 Aug 2014, 01:01
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| FROM SLOAN LIFE - Sharing my journey through Stanford GSB: STRAMGT 321 – Create A New Venture |
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Here’s the class information website for last year (doesn’t look like it has been updated). As I mentioned in a previous post, this class was hands-on with a pre-formed team. I partnered with Erik Wittreich and Randy Sternke to create Hinted (actually it started as uLooped – thankfully we were able to figure out a better brand) – we intend to take the feedback-rich environment out of Stanford and bring it to enterprises and consumers. Prof. Dennis Rohan admitted a number of teams into this class, each having already submitted an idea for a business concept. Our class ranged from coffee honey beverages and artisanal cheeses to investor certification, liquor retailing and, of course, feedback. Some of the teams stayed very true to their original concepts and made minor tweaks to accommodate business or customer realities. Other teams made drastic changes – but this is all expected – the key learning in this class is not to drive your original idea forward to become a business, but rather to start with an idea and see where it leads. Structurally, this class was comprised of whole-class lectures (often with a guest speaker), section seminars (mostly teams presenting and giving feedback to each other), individual group / instructor meetings (a short private meeting with Prof. Rohan for him to asses your progress and give direction, advice and critique) and also mentor meetings (Prof. Rohan arranges for each team to be assigned a mentor with entrepreneurial or venture capital experience). The lectures often brought in guest speakers to cover different topics: from d.school methods to Touchy-Feely concepts, we repeatedly heard the advice to get off-campus and talk to the real world. Go find experts and talk to them – it’s often surprising who will take the time to talk to a Stanford GSB student under the cover of research. For some reason, the idea that they’re talking to a student seems to open up avenues that would otherwise be closed to a cold-call. It also helps to have your own contacts to reach out to – people who know you will generally be your biggest supporters and often look forward to being a mentor. Our assigned mentor was Eric Chen – a former GSB’er who was co-founder of TinyPrints – another GSB Startup. Yes, the team with 2 Erik’s got an Eric as a mentor… Eric generously met with us several times and was a valuable sounding board for our ideas and changes of direction. It was helpful to have more than Prof. Rohan’s POV – sometimes they would give us the same advice, but often their ideas were diametrically opposed, so it fell to us to hear both, think critically ourselves and decide upon a path to follow.  Gerard at Beecher’s Cheese (Seattle Study Trip) On top of the scheduled sessions, the groups are expected to do a lot of field-work, individual and group work. What exactly each team did varied greatly – after all, each team had very different needs and customer prospects. For example, Gerard Tuck’s cheese team were actively conducting focus groups – feeding the groups marinated cheese and asking for customer marketing data. How much do you typically spend on cheese and other snacks? Is cheese an impulse buy? Have you ever heard of … These types of customer interactions are only a small fraction of the total effort required. Another team, Elevado (formerly Coffee Honey), experimented with different recipes for their natural sweetener – testing beverages, snacks and other ways to use their product. Hinted conducted experiments on the Sloan/MSx ’14 cohort – our first embodiment involved a mocked up test using Excel spreadsheets and hand-selected test candidates. This process largely validated our original assumptions, so Randy proceeded to build our alpha-test tool – since he was simultaneously taking CS 142: Web Applications, he was able to build the tool for his class project and share his effort across two classes. Once the web tool was working, we continued testing with a larger group within the cohort and eventually collected more than 10,000 data points from self- and peer-ratings. Later, in the Spring Quarter, we would eventually use this same tool in Prof. Gary Dexter’s OB 374: Interpersonal Dynamics class. If you are contemplating taking this class, consider the following:
STRAMGT 321 is a two-quarter class (second Quarter is, unsurprisingly, STRAMGT 322). However, our team found it impossible to make the schedule fit – so we opted not to take the second half of the class. But unlike many of the teams formed in S321, we are still actively working on Hinted.  
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Whiplasher
10 Aug 2014, 10:01
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| FROM The Oxford Comma: Trinity Term: Week Ten |
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As a continuation to my last post, I thought it might be useful to share my opinion on the electives that I took in the Hilary term. MBA’s take three core classes and two core electives in the Hilary term. Macroeconomics: The course content is self explanatory. Topics covered include national accounting, growth, taxes, currency, inflation etc. I’m someone who reads a lot of economics blogs and I consider myself well versed on macro and microeconomics. I found a lot of microeconomic lectures to be quite basic and was thus hesitant about taking this course. However, I decided to take it after receiving strong recommendations from several alumni. The course was at just the right level for me and I learned a lot from it. Even areas that I thought I understood well, my understanding deepened after completing this course. Conversely, if you are someone who does not already understand the basics, you will find this course challenging (which may or may not be a good thing). The professor is excellent and the lectures are quite entertaining. You may not directly apply the concepts learned in this course in your career, but I think that every MBA student should be familiar with the material covered in this course. Note that as part of the upcoming MBA revamp, this course is being merged with Microeconomics (into a new course called Firms & Markets) and hence this elective may not be offered in the future. Highly recommended. Strategy & Innovation: Strategy & Innovation (S&I) focuses on nascent markets, organisational capabilities for innovation, and the strategic management of emerging technologies. As a software engineer who is looking to transition into product management, this course was great. There is a lot of reading and advance prep required for this course (case + required readings) and if you show up to class without any preparation, you will not get much out of it. Additionally there are three assignments and one formal coursework and an exam. After completing this course I gained an understanding of how innovation occurs and why technology companies have adopted some of the policies that they have (open layouts, flat management structures, restrictions on working from home). I did not find every lecture interesting, but the ones that were relevant were invaluable and if you want to work for a technology company post MBA, you should take this course. For a taste of what this course covers, watch Steven Johnson’s TED talk on innovation. Highly recommended. Finance 2 (Audited): I was torn between taking this course and S&I and finally settled on auditing Finance 2 because I knew that it would be hard to do the three S&I assignments and formal coursework and readings without the incentive of being graded. Finance 2 on the other hand only has one exam and hence you don’t really miss out by auditing. An alum recommended the course as an excellent intro to the finance electives that would be available in the Trinity term and I tend to agree with him on this. The lectures on IPO’s, and Private Equity were the most interesting while the lectures on trading, options, and bonds were quite dull (I’m referring here to the topics and not the professor who is excellent). Note that as part of the upcoming MBA revamp, this course is being merged with Finance 1 and hence this elective may not be offered in the future. The week ended with the Digital Marketing exam. This was the only exam that I needed to take this term and hence was quite bearable. After completing the final exam, the tradition at Oxford is to get ‘trashed’. This involves being showered with flour, champagne, shaving cream and other materials by other students. As we walked home, we were congratulated by the local people and students who recognised that we had completed all our examinations. We also attracted many stares from the hordes of curious tourists who seem to have overtaken Oxford now that summer has arrived. And with that the third and final term at Oxford is now complete. I plan to stay back in Oxford for the summer to work on my SCP and get down to job hunting. I will keep this blog updated until Capstone week which will take place during the second week of September.  
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stevenfuqua
Joined: 24 Nov 2013
Last visit: 07 Oct 2016
Posts: 95
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Given Kudos: 9
Concentration: Healthcare
Schools: Duke '15 (M)
12 Aug 2014, 20:00
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| FROM From Bench to Board (Fuqua): 2014 MBA Health Care Conferences |
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MBA health care conferences are an amazing opportunity to learn and network in the Health Sector. The latest topics on news articles and text books come alive and attendees are brought to the cutting edge. People who dedicate the time and energy to go to these events are also very passionate about the topic and are great to meet and talk with. I know that many fellow MBA students would like to attend a few of these conferences. But how many are out there, and when and where are they? I've always assumed that all the top MBA programs held a health care conference. I now share with you a comprehensive list of all the Top 20 MBA programs that have at least one annual student-run health care conference. Continue reading » |
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