It's been a year - the MMM program

It's hard to believe that it has been a year since I attended the MMM Prospective Day. Around one year ago, I was one of the several students trying to get to know more about the MMM program, by coming to Kellogg for one day. Today I attended the same Marketing Class taught by Prof. Henessey that I did one year ago at the prospective day, this time as a student, rather than a prospective student.
Speaking of MMM, we had our first Design class taught by Professor Don Norman. He gave us an excellent understanding of what the Design Thinking aspect of the program brings to students. He described it as follows. Before the Design curriculum, the MMM program tried to build a T - shaped specialist. The operations specialization of the MMM program added deep expertise in operations, while the Kellogg MBA curriculum added the broad expertise of a general manager.






















With the Design Curiculum, the MMM program introduced another horizontal bar, emphasizing Design Thinking in addition to Management thinking.


















But why this this important? This is because Engineers, and MBA's are great at solving the given problem. What are Designers good at? They are good at discovering the right problem to solve in the first place. Prof. Norman's philosophy is "Never solve the problem you are asked to Solve!'

The MMM program also emphasizes SOS - Systems, Operations and Services. Systems because the most successful products come with a full system of complementary products and services e.g. the iPod and iTunes. Services because everything we consume is ultimately a service, we just think of it as a product. E.g. Digital cameras give you recollection of memories, pictures are just a by-product. And Operations, cause you gotta make the damn thing work!

After 2 years of MMM, I do not hope to be a designer. That would take 6 to 8 years. I do hope to inculcate Design Thinking in the way I approach business and life. Looking forward to the next year, and beyond!

Listening to Former President Bill Clinton

This past Saturday, I had a chance to listen to former President Bill Clinton address the Pan IIT 2009 conference.I had heard a lot about President Clinton's abilities as a public speaker, but I was not expected to be left so much in awe.

President Clinton started by talking about globalization, and its relevance in todays economy. He discussed the merits of globalization, and the demerits of globalization. For example, with globalization, one can source product from anyplace in the world, wherever it is most efficient to produce those goods. We are hence increasingly interdependent. This also comes with increased risks of failure of the system when a few parts of it start failing. The recent recession is a good example.

Then President Clinton spoke about the kind of work he has been doing on a global scale. Taking into account that the crowd was a group of engineers, entrepreneurs, technologists, and business leaders, he discussed Entrepreneurship in emerging economies that he supports through the Clinton Foundation.

He told us a story of a group of Entrepreneurs in Haiti, who have created a profitable business, and simultaneously help alleviate the problem of deforestation in Haiti. Most of the wood in Haiti is used to make charcoal, which people use to cook food. In addition, Haiti has no trash collection system in the residential areas. These entrepreneurs started collecting paper from people, and saw dust from the furniture factories. They developed a very simple, mechanical way of rolling the paper mesh with sawdust to create these oval blocks, which could be used to run the stove for two meals a day. They are less than half the cost of wood charcoal, yet are made at a 50% profit for the entrepreneurs. We need people like these to solve the world's problems. President Clinton emphasized that he intends to solve problems not by charity, but by supporting such people.

There was one funny moment in the speech. Right in the middle, his phone rang. He said,' It must be Hillary. She is the only one who has this number.'

He then picked up the phone, told her that he was addressing 2000 people at that moment, and asked her if she wanted to say hi to her. He talked for another ten seconds, told her 'Good for you,' said bye and shut the phone, and said 'Hillary said Hi from Zurich!'

Overall the speech left me highly inspired about entrepreneurship, and the impact it can have on the world.

Analysis

I would not be a true MBA student if I did not analyze the reasons why this speech was so powerful. If I look at the approach Chip and Dan Heath suggest to make ideas stick in people's minds, they suggest the approach of SUCCESs. The idea should be simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and have stories. The components that made this speech inspiring for me was that it was emotional, and it had statistics. President Clinton complemented statistics like 'x% of the world is malnourished' with emotional stories about people. You could relate to these people, you could visualize them, just like you, they had dreams, aspirations, hopes.

I hope I will get another chance to hear former President Clinton speak at sometime in the future.

Professor Ulrich's talk about Innovation Tournaments

Innovation and Design have always been fascinating topics for me. Yesterday, Professor Karl Ulrich, a renowned professor of Entrepreneurship and eCommerce spoke to us at the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern. Professor Ulrich has been instrumental of launching companies such as Terrapass Inc. and Xootr LLC.

Professor Ulrich recently wrote a book called Innovation Tournaments, which demonstrates how to systematically identify exceptional opportunities for innovation. The process consists of a generator phase and a refinement phasr. The generator aims to develop a large number of ideas, which have as much variability as possible. The filter/refinement component then rates the ideas based on a set of criteria, in order to eliminate most of the ideas, narrowing down to the best couple of ideas available.

While both the generating mechanism and the filter generally have a lot of noise, and are highly subjective, I feel that the central idea could be very useful when looking at entrepreneurial opportunities. After all, the most important resource for an entrepreneur is his or her time. Why not generate multiple ideas and select the best, as rated by a large group of people? As per Professor Ulrich, better ideas did have a strong correlation with eventual commercial success.

Professor Ulrich also discussed Design Thinking, and described it as the second best process for solving problems. The best? Exact science. Unfortunately, in most cases, exact since does not exist, and using the process of innovation tournaments seems to make a lot of sense. There are a lot of tools available here, including Darwinator, an interesting, free, web-based tool for group evaluation and filtration of ideas.

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Linkedin and Facebook Etiquette

So when is it appropriate to add someone as a friend on Facebook or Linkedin? For some reason, this issue has come up several times in the past few weeks. Let's explore some situations where this occured:

1. If I even talk to someone from my school, my year or senior, I add him/her as a friend on Facebook and Linkedin. It always seems appropriate.

2. If I talk to an alum, what do I do? This issue came up in a Career Management Center presentation. The center says that it is appropriate to add the alum on linkedin, but not on facebook, unless you two are really good friends. This seemed to be fine until...

3. I spoke to another alum (all names not mentioned, of course). He complained of a neighbor who knew him, and added him on linkedin and Facebook. He felt that building networks was all about creating value for the other person, and if the neighbor had never added any sort of value for him.

4. Last, but not least, what about Professors? A classmate added a professor on Facebook, and the professor told him (and the rest of the class) that it was fine to add him as a Facebook friend, but only after the grades for the class had been released. Now I am certainly friending him on Facebook the moment the grades are released.

5. At another event, three speakers said completely different things. One said if all the participants did not add him on linkedin, they were losing an opportunity to engage with a potentially importnt contact. Another speaker said that she did not take linkedin requests from anyone other than people she knew very well, but would gladly allow everyone to join her linkedin group. And the last speaker said that he would not accept anyone on linkedin unless he had known them for a while.


So where does this leave us in terms of Facebook and Linkedin etiquette? Nowhere. Like all good cases, there is no one correct answer (notice the effect B School has had on me!). It all depends on the context. The best thing to do is to ask the person, and only then send them a linkedin or facebook request.

More Amazing Things about Kellogg

My first week of classes is over! My pre-term, with CIM and a course on Leadership in Organizations ended with a final examination of the course, and of course, lots of parties.

We recently had the 'CIM Ball,' a prom style party to celebrate the dn of CIM. It was hosted at the Navy Pier Ballroom in Chicago. It was very well put together, with great music, lots of drinks and food, and plenty of place to sit, stand or dance.

There is no doubt Kellogg throws some awesome parties. It is reputed to be a party school, and it is. Not in the sense that people do not take academics seriously, but in the sense that parties and socializing and drinking are such a big part of the culture. Many of my peers have actually complained about it; why should this socializing be limited to only drinking and going out, which are often not very conducive to conversations. I agree; I participate in the Thursday morning 8 AM coffee sessions which one of my classmates started, and hope to have a lot of small dinners where I can build stronger friendships with my peers.

Another amazing thing about Kellogg is the Honor Code. People trust each other. I assume that my peers will not cheat. For example, we might have a closed book, 3 hour time limit final exam that the professor will give us to take home and do at our convenience in a 3 hour period. The exam would account for 40% of the grade in the class, yet there would be no monitoring for the students. This related directly to one of the most importance principles of Leadership we learned - voice and choice inspire people.

One of the things that our Dean mentioned at the start of CIM was to lead with your weakness. Do things at Kellogg that you would typically not do, and use the safety net the school provides to step outside of your comfort zone. I did that the first week, by standing for election for a representative of my section to the Kellogg Students Association. The process of campaigning, asking my peers for ideas, generating thoughts myself and asking people to vote for me was awesome. Ultimately I did not win. An awesome peer of mine did. But the experience was great. And i made several friendships - both by meeting new people and strengthening ties with people I already new, by finding common areas of interest. I am very glad I did it.

The courses I am taking this semester are Accounting For Decision Making, Marketing Management, Business Strategy and Analytical Methods for Operations. The classes are all over the map; from being very quantitative to being very entertaining. I do feel that international students sometime have a disadvantage. I do not include myself in this category, as i have lived in the US for over seven years. I mostly refer to people who just came to the US for the first time, and for whom English is not the first language. Some cases are confusing; for example in the first Strategy class, we did a mini-case on Baseball, a sport most of the world is not familiar with. Often, I have found some of my international friends struggling with some jokes cracked in class. For example, we were studying a case where a manufacturer of nylon cords was trying to diversify, and was launching an initiative to manufacture pet leashes. It was his pet project; get it?

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Classes about to start!

We are nearing the end of our pre-term at Kellogg. This means that our class on Leadership in Organizations is coming to an end, and the regular term with four classes is about to begin. I am taking hour classes: Business Strategy, Accounting, Operations and Design (a MMM core) and Marketing. The Operations and Design is actually half of an operations course and half of a design course put together so that we have a good introduction to the MMM core. We would take the second half of both of these courses in the winter quarter. I am looking forward to my Marketing course the most, largely because it is taught by Prof. Julie Hennessy, one of the top rated professors at Kellogg and one of the top marketing professors in the world.

I am also considering taking part in several extra-curricular activities. I need to narrow down my list from the following:

1. Neighborhood Business Initiative - the Kellogg Pro-bono Consulting club. It seems like a great opportunity to get ome real life consulting experience while helping non-profits or socially minded businesses.
2. The High-Tech club and the High-Tech recruitment trip to the west coast. Self explanatory
3. I am also considering running for the position of the MMM representative to the Kellogg Student Association. This seems just the perfect way to help shape the ever-evolving MMM program.
4. Kellogg Entrepreneurship club - self explanatory

Which of these would I end up participating in? Time (and this blog) will tell..

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FOMO

One of the most popular acronyms in Business School is FOMO, or the Fear Of Missing Out. Seniors have warned me about it; career counselors have warned against it; and all my peers are aware of it. Yet, even in the first few weeks or Kellogg's Pre-Term, I am reminded it often.

Nowhere it is most prevalent than future career/recruiting discussions. No matter what everyone's goals are, they seem to mention (other than a small minority) banking or consulting. Especially consulting, as banking is less sought after the financial melt down. Everyone (including me) fears missing the consulting salaries, the quick (expected career growth) and the variety of work, despite negative factors like travel and lifestyle. Kellogg typically sends about 35% of its students to consulting companies, so the effect is even more pronounced.

Another is parties. One of the major parts of B School is networking with classmates and alumni, and understandably, my peers and I sometimes go to events, socials, parties that we had no interest in. Especially if alumni is going to be present.

I have some goals from my B School experience, which include getting particular positions and the industry, building true friendships and growing personally and professionally. I have written my goals down, and am going to fight hard to not take on too much, and lose sight of what it is that I want to achieve. Would I succeed? That is the question..