MBA Class of 2010 : IIMC : PGPEX

Moving to old blog

2009-05-20T03:21:00.000-07:00

I'm finding it difficult to maintain two separate blogs...The difficult part is to decide where to post what...So, I'm closing this one and moving all the contents to my all time favorite NoGoodButGod blog.

Ecosystem...

2009-04-30T04:24:00.000-07:00

They are everywhere....all around us...you see them in case discussions, you see them when you file your taxes, when you read wall street journal...when you watch CNBC....you have been ignoring them all your life, but dear friends now the time has come to embrace them...

Below this line, you'll see two links, You click the blue link and the story ends. This browser of yours will take you where you need to go and you can continue to believe whatever you want to believe.

You click the red link and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Remember : all I am offering is the truth. Nothing more.

Blue Link Red Link

If you are still around... reading this, you probably clicked the red link, well in that case, you already know what we are talking about. Now let me tell you what this knowledge could do to you. I am not claiming that it'd help you in winning arguments with your better half...nothing would...but I promise that next time Amits or Bardas throw something like this at you:

Sir..sir.....In my first venture, I created an ecosystem...hmmm...no actually I built an enabler that in turn facilitated the creation of an ecosystem. We recruited best-of-the-breed programmers and followed all the best practices. At the end-of-the-day, I took myself out of the supply-chain to bring myself to the table here.

You can give it back to them this way:

Huh...let me see...your value-proposition is nothing but a zero-sum game. You need to bring a paradigm-shift in your style and maybe apply some out-of-the-box thinking. Also, you don't look like a very sustainable (business) model to me. What kind of ecosys...whatever it is that you are...going forward, please bring some actionable items to the table..not yourself.

Enjoy...

What to do during your MBA

2009-04-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

An interesting read about what to do as one goes thru an MBA program. I found it here.

What to do during your MBA

As You Begin….

Write down your goals: What are the top 3-5 things you want to accomplish during your B-School run? Review these goals regularly – hang them on your wall or keep it in your planner.

Get organized: If you do not already have one, get yourself a Palm Pilot, Treo, or paper-based system (Franklin Planner) to keep track of your (1) schedule, (2) rolodex, and (3) to do list. The rolodex is especially important – as you meet people (classmates, interviewers, professors, alumni), enter them in so you have record. Entering their names also will enhance your ability to remember them – repetition is the mother of skill.

Keep your resume up to date at all times! There is no official “resume season” – you could be asked for it at anytime, and failure to present one may preclude you from a great opportunity. Before you get knee-deep in classes, add your last experience to your resume if you haven’t already.

It’s all about Networking….

Get good at small talk: The best way to engage someone in small talk is to (1) remember their name when they tell you and (2) ask them questions. I always have four questions ready to go for anyone I meet:
– What is your name?
– Where are you from?
– Where do you/have you worked?
– Where are you living? (on campus/off campus)
Any of these four questions can lead you to “Level 2” questions: For example – “where are you from” leads to things like “I’ve never been there – what is it like?” or “did you like living there?” or “sounds like paradise on earth – do you want to return there?” etc.

Meet, Greet, and Meet Some More: Meet as many people as you can. Even if you do not regularly socialize with them, you will be surprised how your former classmates will welcome an email from you 10 years down the road, even if they barely remember you.

Keep Your Guard Up: One of the things I learned from my 1st year Negotiation class is that there are two broad sets of negotiators: Givers (“Pie Makers”) and Takers (“Zero Summers”). Givers are people with loads of integrity and are willing to work with you to create a bigger pie before negotiating on how to divvy it up. Zero Summers are in it for themselves; their sole purpose is to take as much as they can off the table. When a giver negotiates with another giver, there is huge potential for mutual benefit, but when a giver negotiates with a taker, the giver gets royally hosed every time. If you are, by nature, a giver, be very wary of the takers. (I typically assume someone is a taker until they prove they are giver.)

Don’t Become a Social Outcast: You are going to meet plenty of people who are just plain intimidating (Perhaps, you will recognize these people by the fact that they are going to pull up in Mercedes/BMW’s, talk about the CEOs they play golf with, and come from esteemed families/social circles). But there are plenty of people there who DO have things in common with you. Also, your social circles will develop over time, so don’t get freaked out if by the end of September, you have not found a group to hang out with.

Watch the Gossip: This probably won’t be an issue for you, but there will be plenty of opportunities (usually around beers) to make fun of people based on their classroom comments or other social gaffes. Try not to participate – it has a habit of coming back around, and you never know when you will have to work with that person on a team project.

Sometimes You Gotta Force Yourself: If you find yourself not feeling like going to a meeting, extracurricular, company brief, or social function, go anyway. I can’t tell you how many times I have dreaded going to one of these functions only to have learned something important or to have met someone that helped me down the road.

Today’s Professors are Tomorrow’s Colleagues: Meet your professors, get to know them. They value you – you keep them young and energized. Down the road, you will want to network with them. I did a horrible job of this.

The Classroom….

Go to Class: Not sure how classroom participation works at Berkeley, but at HBS it was a significant portion of the grade. Regardless, go to class – you will learn more that way. And don’t show up late – it is unprofessional and you will look bad – very bad. If it came down to being late or not going at all, I chose not going at all.

Recognize that you bring value to the table: Don’t be intimidated (as I was) by the I-bankers and Management Consultants. They will have really good, strategic work experience. But you have an equally relevant base of knowledge and experience. You have the advantage of having worked in an operational role, and knowing what works day to day amongst people who make the strategy happen. More importantly, not many have your experience in web marketing. Use these as your base.

Learn the jargon: You will find that the consultants and I-bankers will come in with a certain level of business savvy that you do not have (and I did not have going in to HBS). These people have operated at a more strategic level than you; learn from them. Listen how they talk and write down phrases you hear that sound good. Also write down phrases that sound equally ridiculous – you may be able to start a game of Business Bingo or even write a B-School comedy.

Have fun learning new stuff: You are paying a lot of money for this – focus less on grades, and more on learning.

Leverage other people’s knowledge: Form a study group with people with diverse backgrounds. Aside from the learning aspects, it is a good way to socialize.

Get the Wall Street Journal: Read it everyday, even if only for 15 minutes over coffee – it is the best way to get educated on business, and gives you tidbits to contribute to conversations in and out of class.

The Future….

View yourself as your own business: You officially work for YOU Inc. You are your own business. Figure out what things interest you (e.g. web marketing), and become THE expert on it. Then find opportunities (not necessarily “jobs”) where you can leverage your expertise. There will be times in the upcoming years where these opportunities will take the form of a job. Other times, these opportunities may take the form of a consulting/freelance role. Ultimately, these opportunities lead to the development of new skills and expertise, which open up a whole new set of opportunities.

Don’t settle for a job: Figure out something that interests you and go from there. I was interested in technology, I researched a couple of industries, and decided to go into telecom; I did not waste my time learning about other “hot industries” like Financial Services. Perhaps I could have made more money, but it did not interest me and I would not have been successful because I did not have the interest.

Don’t wait ‘til “interview season” to look for an opportunity: Devote time each week to learning about industries/companies/opportunities you are interested in. Get yourself a small notebook to jot down statistics or quotes that you can use in interviews, cover letters, and conversations. This is all part of the building expertise theme – you need to come across as an expert and part of that is industry knowledge.

Watch Your Burn Rate (a.k.a. Beware of Clothing Companies): In keeping with the “view yourself as your own business” theme, the #1 reason why startups fail is they run out of cash. So don’t let YOU Inc run out of cash. Rest assured, Hickey Freeman will try to sell you a $1500 suit, claiming that “you need this suit to be successful in your interviews.” Unless you are headed to Wall Street, a tailored $300-$400 suit will do you fine. The more general idea behind this is don’t do anything that unnecessarily raises your burn rate. Doing so will raise the amount you have to borrow and puts you in a deeper hole.

Organize Your Finances: Consider getting Quicken – it is a good time to get your finances organized. Also, keep good paper records around your school loans. We bought a plastic, portable file box with 2-3 accordion files to go inside – one was for our School Loans and the others were for bills, etc. Just don’t do anything to screw up your credit rating. You will need it later.

Debt Fears: Don’t worry about your debt – you will find a way to pay it off. We emerged from B-School/L-School with over $100K of debt; we paid it off, and we don’t exactly have Wall Street power jobs. (In fairness, they kinda do have big important jobs)

Entrepreneurial resources at IIMC

2009-04-27T06:11:00.000-07:00

1. Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI)
The Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI) at IIMC is an initiative to achieve greater understanding of this process as well as stimulate its development for societal benefit. CEI’s vision is to be acknowledged as a program of international renown, where students, faculty, alumni, industry and policy makers collaborate, learn and innovate. The team comprises of faculty from different functional areas and disciplines. The Centre is currently led by Prof. Anjan Raichaudhri and headed by a core team of student representatives.

2. Entrepreneurship Cell (E-Cell)
The Entrepreneurship Cell of India’s premier B-school, IIM Calcutta, continues to promote the vision of spreading entrepreneurship with enthusiastic passion. The club renowned for organizing international B-school events maintains the tradition by organizing its flagship event Ascent’08 a manifestation of the fact that Entrepreneurship as a career is spreading rapidly in Business Schools of India.

3. Yearly Entrepreneurship Summit
The Centre for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at IIM Calcutta, in association with National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), organizes Annual Entrepreneurship Summit every year starting from 2007 in the IIM Calcutta campus. The main objective of the event is to create awareness among students about entrepreneurship, create synergy between academia and the practitioners, and align entrepreneurship with management education. The speakers for the event include eminent entrepreneurs and stalwarts from the industry. It is expected to be attended by several faculty and heads of institutes and hundreds of students from across the country.

4. Business Plan Competition - i2I
The Annual International Business School Meet of IIM Calcutta is widely recognized as the Largest Business School Meet in India.

Other resources for budding Entrepreneurs:

1. Indian Angel Network
2. NEN
3. Indavest
4. Your Story
5. The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE)
6. IDG Ventures India
7. StartupCentral
8. VentureWoods

If anyone has a comprehensive list of Business Plan Competitions held in India, could you please share that with me. I will update this post with your list. It'll be very useful to have that kind of info in one place.

One year is all you need : The new age MBA

2009-04-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

Even though many Ivy league European b-schools have been running one year MBA programs for last several decades, for some reason it never became as popular in the US and Indian schools. The equations, however, are all set to change now. In fact, in India, the third-wave of MBA programs has already begun. Drawing a very crude analogy from Alvin Toffler's book The Third wave, a one-year MBA program can be compared to the third wave (post-industrial) and a two-year program to second wave (industrial) society.

Whatever was designed to serve the industrial society (whether punching cards or a two year business program) is running the risk of getting obsolete unless it is re-architected to embrace the onslaught of the electronic age. An age that is driven by Moore's law - my interpretation of which is - "future will empower us to accomplish more and more things in lesser time". It shouldn't come as a surprise that the legendary czar of electronic age, Bill Gates, couldn't afford to waste two years at HBS and dropped out after first year.

In the Indian context, ISB should get credit for spearheading the new era of one year MBA programs in India. It was setup at Hyderabad in 2001 in association with Wharton, Kellogg and LBS. IIMA joined the bandwagon in 2006 and then came along IIMC, L, B and I.

A one year MBA offers several benefits that one cannot realistically expect from a two year program but it comes with a price, the price of managing your time in the most efficient way. It is certainly not for the light-hearted. You cannot survive the program without becoming an expert in time management and prioritization skills, arguably the most important skills successful managers possess.

Most one year program take people with reasonable work experience, which essentially means the participants have tested the waters and have a fair idea about where they are going in life. Imagine the breadth of perspectives one can develop sitting among such classmates!!

I could go on and on but I think I made my point and besides, I'm enrolled in a one year program myself :-) and got lots of assignments to compete... I'll write more about the IIMC-PGPEX one year MBA program in a subsequent blog.

Take care.

Life in the fast lane

2009-04-15T12:10:00.001-07:00

My blog/journal for next one year...