Way2Top

Two great professors, who brought life to the class and to the subject, are leaving home this week. We really enjoyed their presence…New professors are taking over the baton from tomorrow for Marketing and Business Statistics…

This week the work pressure is bit high. What with loads of readings to do and with a Mid-term on Statistics scheduled on Friday.

There is a severe catch-22 situation going on with me. If I read a subject with an intention to learn lot, I end up spending lot of time than I can allot to it..It eats up the time for other subjects..So what I have to do? I have to read with examination and assignment point of view..If I read with examination point of view, learning takes a jolt…Where do I draw the line? A lurking question in my mind…For now, I am still following the same…”Feast on interesting topics and scan past the disinteresting ones…”

Yesterday we arranged for a Farewell party for the professors going back home. I decided to put up a short audio collage featuring some fun moments in their respective classes. The professors really enjoyed it..but surprisingly there was a mixed reactions, among selected few students, regarding the audio collage…I normally don’t take time off my schedule for unwarranted activities..but somehow the very thought of these profs and the enjoyable time we had in the class, pushed me to spend good 2-3 hours for preparing the audio collage…As the short programme came to an end, it was a photo-mania yesterday with everyone posing alongside the professors…

When I just see my calendar, I realize that half-the term is complete..The ride is accelerating…

A very private thought…”When you are in desert and you see a unheard of flower with dull colour, you admire it and you cherish it…when you are in vast field full of rich, bright and colourful flowers you don’t care to look at even the roses…” Yesterday as I was walking alone from the dining hall to my room in the scorching heat, I was comparing my life in Belgium and the life here…There is so much meaning behind this sentence…you can interpret in anyway you want

BTW, just noticed that the visitor count has crossed 15,000!! Thanks for all the visitors..you are fuel to my favourity hobby…

Since I couldn’t get hold of a copy of Microeconomics book from library, I decided to apply the knowledge and solve the problems using common sense. Voila, I was able to solve all the 5 problems and the amount of satisfaction and confidence that I received is enormous. Such exercises are the only way to flex the grey cells, which have become rusty after undergraduate days!!

I planned for so many activities today, out of which only 4 materialized. The most important thing was an interview with Marketing Professor Scott Ward. I joined Ravi and Praveen in the effort. We are planning to interview key professors on questions like Brand India, ISB, Student quality, Specific questions related to subject etc., Scott ward was the first person on our list as he is leaving to America in a week’s time. He was happy to share 1 hour of time with us…We are planning to cover Prof. Robert Stine, as he is leaving soon too..

The second thing was playing Volleyball. I couldn’t play yesterday, so compensated by playing 4 games at a stretch. Feels real good. Third thing was Economics Assignment. Fourth was to plan for the upcoming weekend. Was able to come up with a detailed plan for the next week. Completed the assignments by 2:00 a.m, so decided to play some TT with my quadmate. With a relaxed mindset, I am hitting the bed now…

Tomorrow I have to prepare for the classes on Monday. A very interesting case study in the form of FedEx awaits us. Managerial Economics has few chapters to read. I have to find some time for Statistics. I have my Mid-term next week. The next 4 days is going to be key in learning the Statistics subject. Tomorrow we have a very important event (atleast for some souls like me). Volleyball match between Section B and Section A. I am very very confident about our team winning convincingly. We star some real good players. I am average compared to those guys, but still I am improving day-by-day..After smashing Section A in soccer, it’s time to press them to ground in Volleyball too..We call ourselves (Section B) “GachiBulls”, - “Raging bulls of Gachibowli”!!

Need to find some gap to wash my clothes too…Huh!, Days are getting busier. But I am happy that I am spending quite an amount of time in sports and non-academic activities..Need to start playing Squash soon, atleast to use the racquet that I purchased!!

Atlast, a weekend really felt like a weekend. Our study group decided to go to city and have dinner. G is married and he joined us with his wife and kid. We went to Ohri’s Bunjara. Good restaurant..It was a stress-free evening…I purchased a Squash racquet. A model from Dunlop. It cost around 3100 Rs. We just pushed the shopper to give discount for ISB students and he budged by giving a discount of 25%. Atlast, we bought the racquet for 2350 Rs. Not bad!!

Yesterday, Football matches were organized between sections. Section B and Section A clashed in the first match. Section B(My section) beat Section A convincingly by 5-1. The other match between Section C and Section ended in a draw (1-1). Each team will have 7 members. A girl in a team is MUST. If there are more volunteers, rotation will happen after each goal..This is to encourage overall participation…There was a girl in Section A, who was defending their side. Whenever a forward from Section B reached Section A’s goal post, she literally hugged him and stopped the goal!! It was great fun to watch the match. Professors were there to witness the glorious game…Volleyball match between Section B and Section A is scheduled on Sunday..Will be fun..

Something about Section B. Section B has a slogan “B group rocks!”. B section is known for its all-round display. They have a balanced life between Extra-curricular and co-curricular. They are great cheerleaders and enthusiastic bunch of people..Whenever there is a game, we are the loudest cheerleaders..Our colour is RED. Great to be a part of this B section legacy…

GSB elections are around the corner. The presidential election is scheduled on coming Thursday. Elections for other posts will be conducted after that.

I am seeing some very forward-planning guys here. I am impressed with their foresight. I will take a leaf out of their book and start practicing it. A simple example..Managerial Economics assignment is given this week too. Best way to solve those problems is to refer the books available in library..Naturally during this assignment times, the books are in great demand, and one cannot lend the reference books for this term. Some guys have taken photocopies during the weekdays and are cooling off their feet now, instead of ‘rushing’ to get their hands on the book..

Marketing Management:Framework for Marketing Management Philip Kotler , 2nd Edition [Required]

Managerial Economics:
Recommended Books:
“Microeconomics for Managers” by David Kreps
“Microeconomics” - Pindyck and Rubinfeld

Business Statistics:
Basic Business Statistics (BBS): A Casebook by Dean P. Foster, Robert A. Stine, Richard P.Waterman. Sp ringer Verlag [Required]
Business Analysis Using Regression (BAUR): A Casebook by Dean P. Foster, Robert A. Stine, Richard P.Waterman. Sp ringer Verlag [Required]
Recommended Book: Statistical Thinking for Managers, Hildebrand, D.K & Ott, R.L., Duxbury Press, ISBN 0534204066, 4th Edition

Financial Accounting:
Introduction to Financial Accounting, Horngren, Sundem, Elliot, 8th Edition [Required]

Learning 4 vastly different subjects, new concepts is interesting on one hand. On the other hand, it provides ample confusion while switching from one subject to another..

Talk about grades, I have decided to leave the competition to others. So, much pressure goes away and I am little bit relaxed now-a-days..Spending ample time on topics that interests me and just skimming over the topics that are very boring or vague…

Talk about Business Statistics..Nothing that you learn in your undergrad comes close to what is being taught here. The main focus is just to harness the Statistics in solving business problems. Usage of Statistics software called JMP-IN is needed.(Student version of JMP software from SAS institute, a well-known institute for Statistical analysis softwares). Interpretation of Statistics charts and taking decisions based on that is emphasized.

Talk about Economics…Everything from Demand, Supply, Equilibrium point, Marginal cost, Marginal Revenue, to Monopoly, Cost structures, Oligopoly is covered. Again Interpretation and usage of charts is highly emphasized.

Talk about Marketing…Everything from branding, 5C’s, 4P’s, Marketing plan, Market segmentation, Pricing, Positioning is covered. Again usage of numbers for market forecasting and planning is highly emphasized.

Talk about Accounting…The most fundamental and important subject for all Managers in the world. Everything from Balance sheet, Income statements, Cash flow statement, Journal entries, Valuation methodologies, Revenue Recognition etc., is being taught. Accounting is called language of business…Very interesting subject..Again interpretation of statements is emphasized more than anything else…

So, basically they are preparing us to understand the tools, concepts, frameworks and procedures involved in conducting day-to-day business…As a manager one needs to understand the importance of all related functions in any business and able to communicate effectively in appropriate language to appropriate functions.

Very logical approach to prepare such managers….

The weekend was busier than the weekdays! A marketing case study and an economics assignments took centre-stage for past 72 hours.

The marketing case study was on Gillette Indonesia and its plan to penetrate and develop the blade market. It was interesting to read the case. It was easy to come up with all sorts of qualitative comments. But what mattered was to justify those suggestions quantitatively, which was a quite tough…To add, the group dynamics played its part. With ideas pouring in and disagreements and arguments happening most of the time, it was quite time-consuming to come to a consensus. I am sure this will improve as we move along. I am pretty confident about my study group in improving this aspect..

Just one week into the term, and I am talking quite a few jargons already. The concepts in economics, marketing, statistics and accounting are all highly intertwined. Sometimes, I think I am studying marketing, only to find that the subject is economics later. I am sensing a change in perspective while reading some of the business news in newspapers and websites. I can correlate with what has been taught so far to an extent. If the same level of knowledge influx and perspective change happens for next 1 year, definitely all of us will be much different persons after one year, equipped and ready to take on the business world.

Yesterday, Prof. Amit Bubna was mentioning about the importance of precise usage of terms. I agree with him 100%. Many a times, I have seen people confusing terms and using jargons in a generic fashion. This is more a Indian mindset. They think of a concept but use different terms while explaining that. During my stay in Belgium, I observed that europeans are very precise in using terminologies and phrases. They don’t confuse terms.

I am moulding myself into that mindset for over 1.5 years now. Today, something happened on those lines. The Statistics professor was explaining the concept of hypothesis and confidence intervals. He was using the Y-bar for denoting the sample mean. Normally, we use X-bar. The X-bar chart is an excellent evidence for the significance of the symbol. I was curious as to why he is using Y-bar and not X-bar! I just asked him “What’s the difference between X-bar and Y-bar?”. He began saying with his entertaining american accent, “Well, there is a difference, X-bar is written with X and bar on top of it and Y-bar is written with Y and bar on top of it”…There goes a heavy laughter! …The prof was just making a timely humour..and then he apologised and mentioned that Y-bar is more of his convention and he wants to differentiate the variable at different places. He uses Y-bar as a notation while estimating variations in process and X-bar in regressions to estimate the same variation. This is not a traditional convention though..

So much for sticking to the conventions and trying to be precise…

Another interesting conversation. We were talking about confidence intervals. The population mean was fixed at 5. The standard deviation of the measurement was 0.2. So, normally 95% of the time, the sample mean will be lie between 2 sigma limits(Normal distribution). So, 95% of the time sample mean will lie between 4.6 (5 - 2sigma) and 5.4(5 + 2sigma) in our case. A student posed a question, “Can we say that 95% of the time 7.5 will not lie between 4.6 and 5.4?”. Professor goes “You want to say that 95% of the time 7.5 will not lie between 4.6 and 5.4??”, There goes another heavy laughter!!!! This prof. has real sense of humour…Great pedagogy nevertheless..

Today morning, my ankle was much better..I could walk normally. But still, when bending the ankle in sideways there is a pain, so will wait for 2 days before resuming volleyball..

Yesterday while playing volleyball, twisted my ankle badly. It hurts heavily while walking. Got to show some prudence while playing, instead of going all out…It will be a week before I can run…

Before coming to B-school, Marketing was one subject I liked least. Not that it’s such a bad subject, it’s just that I didn’t know what’s in that for me…I just had the stereotypical image of “selling” about marketing. After going through some reading materials, lectures and case study, I have begun loving Marketing. This will be my favourite subject in this term…Managerial Economics, Accounting and Business statistics are other subjects in the decreasing order of liking.

I am recording all the lectures in my voice recorder, and archiving it in my laptop. I had to get permission from all professors before doing so. Not that I will be listening to them all over again..It’s just that If I want to relive some great insights, I can do so at my convenience..iRiver rocks! The quality of recording is awesome…Believe me, the recordings are of great help..Especially the case discussions..

After a series of recommendations from my friend (Karthik S), I decided to watch “October Sky”. I am glad I watched the film. Fantastic piece of work. “Inspirational”, a single word which can summarize the film..

I thought I am losing weight after coming to India [I was 66 when I came from Belgium]..Alas, I am wrong, I have touched the 70 kgs mark!! I am reaching the threshold for my height…

The Apprentice 3 is heading towards a grand finale. Two out of 3 remaining candidates are in my prediction list. Craig and Kendra..Not bad!

Some new lessons learnt in Apprentice..

Involve Customers for Sales success

Managing Emotions in Workplace

Making Effective Presentations

Getting Buy-in from your team

Utilizing Focus Groups

A special day, First class, First day in First Term of ISB. Great moment to see the names of all the section mates neatly and largely written on nameplates. Managerial Economics was taken by Prof. Amit Bubna. He is a pretty young professor, so he easily builds rapport with students. The class mainly dealt with fundamentals of economics. Since we have completed the majority of reading and since the topics were easier, the class was not memorable..

The Marketing management was taken by Scot Ward. A friendly person, more than middle-aged professor from USA. The way he carried himself in the class was striking. He remembered each and every question posed by the student and beautifully correlated his answers with those questions, whenever he came across a topic..Not easy!

The Marketing case on East Man Kodak company was interesting. I understood the ways in which a case should be approached. Our study group did a good job in doing quantitative analysis, but still we didn’t consider all the data that was provided. The professor made it clear that the data is not provided for decoration…Use it..whenever you provide a recommendation, substantiate it quantitatively, not qualititatively…

I am getting used to the long study hours and less sleeping hours. I thought of sleeping in the afternoon, but ended up in library. Played volleyball for 1 hour in the evening.

The heat in hyderabad is getting worse. Luckily, it rained today evening and there was a pleasant weather today evening.