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.

Russia

 

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.

Click here to download:
T6_CC_&_WE_2011_Elective_Pairings_6.9.11.pdf (83 KB)
(download)

Banking -- Is transformation imminent in the West?

Michael Geoghegan, HSBC Group's chief executive, presents his views on the emerging markets such as Asia, Middle East and Latin Americas in his talk at RSA.  Half way through his talk,  he also highlights the state of the affairs in the West with regards to the capital markets and suggests what role should the West play in the continuously changing eco-system. With the backdrop of slow growth and development in the West and in contrast, the east and the south charging forward with impressive GDP growth numbers, he argues that the West should take much more participative role in the world markets, rather than keeping itself on the sidelines and delineating itself from the growth prospects happening elsewhere.
The conversation ends up in a somewhat loaded question to the outgoing chief as to whether HSBC would move its HQ to Hong Kong, if the Unilateral Banking reforms were to enforce banks such as Barclays and HSBC to split up into small groups.  Capital markets around the world in 34 minutes via RSA.org. Between the first term in Shanghai, China and our next term in London, the talk very much sums up the kind of issues that we are tackling in our Cross-continent program.

London countdown begins

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While watching the Shanghai skyline fade away in the rear view mirror and tires still spitting smoke from the burnouts, the race to London-Term 2--has already begun. Program office was not shy of sending out material for next term before the official end of term1. It is a funny feeling. Yesterday, my wife came to me saying --"Honey, your schedule shows a break from 12 to 15th October". I couldn't stop myself from laughing, ironically. The definition of term break is used quite loosely in this case. Well, if you can finish the truck load of reading in less than a week, then yes you have 3 days break. Or else, you better start reading the material.

The picture shows the reading material that came in the mail last week, while we were still struggling with our finals for term1. Now that everything related to term1 is done with, the grades have started to show up. Managerial Effectiveness already has the grades out, which I think I pretty much nailed it. Not to mention, it was one of my favorite and most practical course in the first term. On the other hand, I am not too excited to hear about accounting even though final was not that bad for me as the mid-term. Let's see when Miss Katherine drops the bomb. With almost a week to the flight to Heathrow, I need to get geared up for the new Residency Blast.