Entrepreneurial Hubs around US
Ted Zoller shares his research on different entrepreneurial hubs around US and evaluates Social structures that fuel entrepreneurship in these regions (Research is 37min into the lecture).
Message worth spreading: Don't text while driving
Product Marketing & Product Management -- A panel discussion at Stanford GSB
A Better Mouse Trap
If I make a better mouse trap, they would come.. This is a sure way to fail for any entrepreneur and it is funny how many times we see people get stuck in exactly the same mouse trap. Here is an excellent article by Robert M. Metcalfe, the founder of 3Com, on the importance of Sales in bringing innovation to life.
Zen and the Art of Selling On the same note, I am pleased to have passed first round of the MIT MBA Sales Competition, and will be representing Duke in Boston on November 5th, 2011.
Optimize for the journey, not the destination
Excellent advice from Omar Hamoui:
- optimize for the journey, not the destination
It’s hard to understand this without going through it, but it’s extremely important not to optimize for or aggrandize an exit, or any particular goal represented by a single point in time. The thing is, whatever that goal is, it will be a temporary and fleeting moment, and it simply starts another journey."
Russia -- The past and the present
Few interesting videos that I found while researching on Russia:
Comannding Heights from PBS talks about evolution of communism and later the rise of oligarchs:
The World History of Organized Crime: Russia
Bill Browder, MBA '89, founder and CEO, talks about Hermitage Capital Management's investments in Russia and the fall out from the widespread corruption that still pervades Russia's economy.
Are we there yet?
I am believer in the journey rather than the destination. Nevertheless, the happiness of accomplishement has its own charm. The MBA journey has been rock and roll so far, from Shanghai to London and from Dubai to New Delhi, and the next stop is going to be beautiful St. Petersburg, Russia. Past month has been full of interesting events -- Finishing term end deliverables, including the Strategy Report (Research In Motion), giving final exams on Strategy & Finance, ramping up internship work with Toniic--an Angel impact investing network--on Regional and Sector Analysis of Africa for Impact Investments and finally selecting the electives for term 6.
As I sit down this weekend to look at my todo-list today, I am afraid to say that it has failed to get any shorter. We already have a quiz due for CCL class, a warchest of readings from two core courses for the next term--Managerial Accounting and Operations, final edits of the Toniic report, a writeup for another business case competition that I have decided to participate in and finally, extra readings for the Entrepreneurship Workshop organized by P4E.
Unlike previous batch, our batch has shown much more interest in concentrations (the law of nature--each new generation gets more and more ambitious). As I mentioned above, we are required to pick our courses for the term (list attached). The list is impressive, and if I had enough time, I would have taken most of them, if not all. Given the limit of 4, it is a challenge to drop courses from my top picks. I always wanted to do Strategy Concentration, but the way the courses are laid out, I am afraid I would have to drop the concentration Idea.
So far my book bag includes Negotiations (A very highly rated class at Duke from Rosette Ashleigh), Entrepreneurial Strategy by Ashish Arora, Product Management by Andres Musalem and Corporate Restructuring by Vish Vishwanathan. My selection in a way is a good mix since it includes a course each from General Management, Strategy, Marketing and Finance. Given that I am a masochist, I also plan to audit two more courses, most likely Venture Capital/Private Equity and Entreprenuership and New Venture Management.
Photo courtesy Ed Yourdon, Flickr.
Salman Khan on Colbert
Shades of Earth
The Arctic Light from TSO Photography on Vimeo.
Term 2 wrap-up
Finals week is here. With one final done, and one more to go, Term 2 is almost wrapping up, bringing me 33% closer to the MBA. I feel more settled with the class pace now, getting better at juggling between work, school and family. Although, I must say that my extra-curricular activities such as supporting local non-profits have suffered due to the extra work load. Nevertheless, there are other extra-curricular activities I have picked up at school. I am trying to bootstrap Social Entrepreneurship and Non-Profits club at the Cross-continent program and at the same time co-chair the Bootstrap Initiative, a functional branch of Entrepreneurship Club of CCMBA. Starting new fun activities with your peers at school has always been a good selling point for the top MBA programs and Fuqua is no different. The only caveat with Cross-continent MBA is that, it becomes more challenging to organize such events in the distance portion of the program. Well, who said running a multi-national would be an easy task anyways. Real world experience with real people around the world!
I thoroughly enjoyed the classes this term. Decision Models by Prof. Peter Regan and Managerial Economics by Prof. Leslie Marx were phenomenal. The 4 term long courses viz. Global Markets and Institutions and Culture, Civilization and Leadership made little progress, as the work load there is quite minimal as opposed to the two main ones. I like the way Fuqua MBA program is structured that all the classes are interlinked with each other and build on one another. For example, we heavily used the auction related material that we learned in Managerial Economics in the Global Markets and Institutions class, while the Decision Modeling concepts learned in Decision Models were applied to Managerial Economics case studies. I am too excited about the tools I have learned in this term and can’t wait to apply them back at work. Currently, I am exploring different units inside Nokia Siemens Networks where I could apply my new learned skills.
