Commanding Heights !!!

One of the coolest things about b-school education is the new and novel ways in which knowledge is imparted to us.

It is best exemplified by Commanding Heights, a 6 hour long documentary which is a required part of a course in global economics or macro economics as it is more popularly known in b-schools around the globe.

Commanding Heights was shown to us during the coffee breaks and a marathon session during the term and believe it or not, we will actually be tested on it. This is the first time; I am being tested on a documentary and prefer this to copious amounts of reading material any day.

Commanding Heights is actually a fantastic piece of cinema. It is by far the best documentary I have seen in my life and beats popular documentaries such as “The corporation", “Fahrenheight 9/11” and "bowling for columbine" hollow. Highly recommended for anyone who would like to know more about the economy of the world and how it is evolved or wants to answer the question “What is Macro Economics??

The music, fantastic interviews and rare footage make for unbelievable viewing and were a pleasure, hope that we are continually treated and tested on masterpieces such as these, might make studying a pleasure....

when my friends came to isb

How an MBA program i ssupposed to kick-start your career.

1. the guy on the right depicts a student writing his application
2. the guy on the centre going through the ordeal of an MBA
3. the guy on the left - graduation followed by a plum job

Markstrat - The essence of an MBA

Let me start this post by apologising for an inordinately long absence. The incessant partying and ... partying, which took place at the end of the first term caught me off guard.

However as all good things must come to an end, instead of partying I am now Blogging.

Term 2, arguably consists of the finest selection of subjects. One of the them is a subject called Marketing Decision Making, taken by 2 fantastic faculty - Pradeep Bharadwaj and Jagmohan Raju.

40% of the grade for this eminent subject is allocated to an activity called markstrat, which MBA students are aware of.

Blessed with a really kick-ass team, consisting of the Marketing club president and the batch topper till now, we were extremely bullish on our performance. Notice that I said WERE.

markstrat for the uninitiated is marketing simulation environment, where each team is given the reigns of a company and a starting position and over 8 rounds, the team has to earn as much money as humanly possible. the amount of moolah you acquire determines your grade.

Our first experience with markstrat lasted 7 hours. Starting at 2300 and going on till 0600. These 7 hours in my opinion captured the essence of an MBA. Optimistic about our chances, we delved deep into it and often discussed issues, such as firm A must be thinking this, hence we should be doing this.

After hours and hours of debates and naps and coffees and football breaks we thought that we had come up with an unbeatable solution. However when the results came out today ...... we were far from being numero uno ....... its obvious isn’t it, that we came last.

Confidence dented; today we shall aim to find the reason why we might have missed the top spot by so large a margin ;-) I would attribute it to over-confidence, excessive strategy planning, too much investment in the future, too many naps and variability of knowledge in the group. 2 are fantastic and 2 insipid.

The moral of the story in Prof Richard Waterman’s words is KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid