Entries tagged as ‘MBA’
Note: this was written 21 May 2007 at 9:30 PM Beijing Time.
I arrived in Xi’an this afternoon for a few days of recovery following four days of classes in Beijing. In addition to recovering I can have a chance to update everyone reading the blog on the China trip.
Thursday through Sunday were spent in class. This is one of two electives that are part of my Executive MBA program at the University of Maryland. The class was Service Marketing, which was a very interesting topic. A lot of the marketing activity built around a service offering involves making the intangible elements tangible, whether it’s the environment, collateral, people who will deliver the service or processes that will support service delivery.
One of the things that I really enjoyed about the class was that it was divided in such a way to favor case discussions and presentations by teams. The professor had assigned some pre-course reading and a case write-up to familiarize the students to process of analyzing a service case and developing sets of recommendations relevant to service marketing. This equipped us to review additional cases and make team presentations of analysis and recommendations. This was much more interactive and educational than a straight lecture.
I really enjoyed getting to know my classmates, and I enjoyed the team that I was on. The class was actually very diverse with a number of countries represented, which was a bonus that I hadn’t originally expected. The students were working in a number of very impressive functions both for local Chinese firms and multinational firms. There were locals and ex-pats as well as big-company executives and entrepreneurs. I hope to keep in touch with my classmates, and I was actually sad to say good-bye when the class came to an end.
Today I am in Xi’an and really taking more of a recovery than heading out for any sort of night on the town. Tomorrow I am off to see the terra-cotta army, and I am sure that I will have many pictures to post after that particular trip.
Categories: Today
Tagged: beijing, china, MBA
As I write this I am in China. I’ve come to attend an elective course selection with the Beijing cohort of the University of Maryland Executive MBA program. I’ve come a few days early to see the sites in Beijing and catch up with my friend Laura and her boyfriend Bruce.
After classes end this weekend I’m off to Xi’ain to see the terra-cotta army and be a shameless tourist. After that I’ll have three days in Shanghai to walk along the Bund, shop on Nanjing Road and generally just exerience a few days of really big city living.
The flight from Washington was the new United Airlines direct flight to Beijing. I treated a 13.5 hour flight pretty much like a camping trip. I also had a lot of work to get done as prep for the MBA classes in Beijing: a huge amount of reading that needs to get done and a case write-up on Starbucks. I’m not done, but I made good progress on the flight. I was really amazed that or trajectory took us very close to the North Pole and even more amazed at the view out the window. Thankfully I managed to sleep for several hours, too. For a 13.5 hour flight it all went pretty fast.
I met Laura and Bruce at the Beijing airport and came back to their place to get cleaned up. After some catching up we went for a walk through the city. It was a hot, clear afternoon. Despite a clear sky there was still some dust in the air, and I know the climate will take just a little getting used to. We went to an open air market full of really fresh fruits, vegetables and spices. The food was very fresh and fragrant, and I can still almost smell the spices from the spice vendors. We had dinner at a restaurant near the market.
At about 8 PM I basically collapsed from fatigue. Now it’s 3:30 in the morning and I’m awake. No surprise– I’ll be caught up with the local schedule after a few more hours of sleep this AM.
I hope to find some time every day (or at leas every few days!) to jot down some thoughts on the day preceeding. I am also going to be posting photos as I take them, and you can see my shots from my flight over and first day in Beijing here: August’s China Trip, Day 1.
Categories: Today
Tagged: beijing, china, MBA
It doesn’t take a detective to deduce that the blog silence during the month of February is due to several very busy weeks. The MBA program is going gangbusters, and February was marked with several take-home exams and even one in-class exam (the fastest 90 minutes in the history of the universe ever). Challenging though the program is, I am learning a lot and have enjoyed working with everyone in the cohort and in the different group projects in which I’ve been involved.
In the next section of the program we will begin our entrepreneurship Action Learning Project. Watch this space for future details on the project I’ll be doing with a classmate. I’m not the lead so I’ll defer to him on when and how to make details available. It’s a wicked sexy project, though.
It’s been silence of the podcasting front as well. I should have a new episode out sometime this weekend. I conducted a very interesting interview with a fellow CI practitioner this past week. The topic is quantitative data analysis using data gathered from free and inexpensive sources. My interviewee is a really smart guy, and I hope the listeners come away with some ways to conduct this kind of analysis without spending an arm and a leg. Usually when I hear about data-intensive analysis I see dollar signs, so this conversation gave me hope.
The other big project on my plate as of late is finalizing my presentation with a former coworker for the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) conference in May. The slides are due this coming Monday (eep!) and I’ll be glad when that’s all done and dusted. The topic is on application of Social Networking Analysis in Competitive Intelligence, something we’ve scratched the surface on at EBR. There is a lot of potential for applying the analytical methods of SNA to CI, and I’m particularly interested in how to use SNA to track government contracting, where personal connections and coopetition among firms is the norm. R&D-heavy industries such as IT, consumer electronics and pharmaceutical are also prime candidates for SNA as well. It’s very exciting stuff.
I also learned that I will receive the Catalyst Award at this conference. The Catalyst is given to those who are considered to have made significant contributions to SCIP or the field of competitive intelligence in the past year. I’m not sure who nominated me, and I was surprised and honored to have even been considered.
Now, if you will excuse me, I’ve got IS and LM curves to plot and market forecasting methodologies to evaluate.
Peace.
Categories: Today
Tagged: MBA
Yesterday brought to a close my week in residence that is the beginning of the Executive MBA at the University of Maryland. It was a pretty exciting week, but definitely exhausting as well. Spending over 9 hours per day in the classroom most days of the week was an exercise in endurance. The amount of time spent in class contributed to the week feeling that the experience actually lasted much longer than a week. I really enjoyed it, but I’m eager to move on to the phase of the program where we’re meeting for class two days every other week.
Our first classes are in marketing strategy (woo hoo!) and managerial economics. Between now and the start of regular class sessions on 01 December I’ve got quite a bit of reading to do. I also still need to get on-line and spend some time with the MBA Primer modules I’ve purchased.
In other news, I ordered and received one of the new Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro laptops a few weeks ago. It is a fine, sexy machine! This was primarily to have a high-end laptop to use in the MBA program. I’ve installed Parallels and will shortly be installing Windows XP. I had considered holding out for Vista, but decided that the wait just wasn’t worth it.
Continuing with the news update, I received word a few weeks ago that my proposal to present a session at the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals 2007 conference was accepted. The topic I’m going to be talking about is the application of Social Network Analysis in competitive intelligence. I think this is a really excellent topic, and with only an hour to talk I have to decide which elements I’m NOT going to cover.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a ton of reading to get done and work to catch up.
Categories: Today
Tagged: MBA, SCIP07
To prepare for my soon-to-begin MBA program I took a skills assessment of my knowledge in managerial and financial accounting as well as business statistics and finance. Having not taken an accounting class and my only academic exposure to statistics being through a political science class I took a decade ago, I had to reach deep into my memory to take this test. Going in I expected to break out the party hats if I broke 50 percent. I’m happy to say I actually got 68 percent of the questions correct. No doubt part of that had to do with a skill for weeding out incorrect answers and making good guesses on multiple-choice exams.
Never mind having a better-than-expected score, I’ve purchased some refresher modules to raise my skill level so as to not embarrass myself when classes start.
Categories: Today
Tagged: accounting, finance, MBA
I’ve been a bit lazy keeping up with the blog the last several weeks with vacation and work taking up much of my time and energy. I wanted to break the seal and share some good news:
I’ve been accepted into the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business Executive MBA program.
I chose Smith for a couple of specific reasons. One is that I didn’t want to go to school full-time or move, and Maryland has the best MBA programs in the Washington area. I chose specifically the Executive MBA because it’s more structured than a part-time program and includes an executive coaching component. The latter is a very important element of executive education, because the best and most inspiring leaders that I’ve observed are very self-aware and conscious of the emotions and talents of those around them.
The program will start in November, and I’m extremely excited to get started. Classes will be held all day Friday and Saturday every other week. Throw in reading, homework and project work and I’m well aware I’ll have no social life for the 18 months of the program.
Categories: Today
Tagged: MBA
