OwenBloggers: Sam - MBA 2008

HBS cases I'd like to see - the AAPL NDA

In part three on an ongoing series, we take a look at one of my favorite companies, the almighty Apple...

Launched just last month, the iPhone 3G has already sold over 3MM units. Taking advantage of the "computer in the palm of your hand" concept, Apple has opened up the platform for development by 3rd party software companies. Current favorites include Twitterific, Facebook, Google, and a whole host of other applications sold exclusively through the iTunes store in the hopes of presenting a seemless and integrated user experience.

Or is it?

There has been much discussion around the blogosphere about the Nondisclosure agreement (NDA) that goes with becoming an iPhone developer. You see, the only way to get your application onto the iPhone is through iTunes, and the only way into iTunes is through Apple. In order to do that, a developer has to be certified by Apple, a process that involves, amongst other things, signing an NDA that severely restricts the developers' ability to discuss anything iPhone related with basically anyone anywhere.

As I understand it, NDA's preventing developers from disclosing details to the public aren't that uncommon, but ones limiting access to their peers are. By imposing these restrictions, which are effectively the price of entry, Apple is limiting the developer community's ability to help each other troubleshoot and offer other forms of support. Which in turn slows down the development/revision cycle and pretty much guarantees a crappy 1.0 product (the NDA also precludes beta testing).

All this from a company that's notorious for their secrecy and "proprietariness," so much so that there are those that say that it's the sole reason that APPL and MSFT aren't revered in scale and scope.

This one feels like a job for Dave Dilts, Oh He of Strategic Management of Technology. Some of the things I'd like to see discussed include:

• AAPL is a relatively small (but growing) fish in the Koi pond of personal computers. But when talking about the iPhone, are they a computer company, a phone company, or something else entirely?
• No help with debugging, troubleshooting, or beta testing means inherently less stable products. Are program crashes blamed on the software or on the iPhone in general? Are you more likely to hear "#$%^& Facebook crashed on me again," or "#$%^& iPhone, why doesn't it 'Just Work'?" What are the long term implications of that for AAPL?
• Developing for Windows or the web represents a larger market than developing for the Mac. At what point does AAPL start to worry about alienating all their outside developers? Or is that their strategy, to make sure all the toys are their own?
• If this is a case of "His Steveness" being his oft-referred micromanagerial self, at what point does the company start feeling hamstrung by that attitude? How does the Pepsi Incident factor in to that decision?

[Photo credit: Chris Radcliff via Flickr]

HBS Case I'd like to see - MFST and YHOO

In part two of the series, we look at the attempted MSFT takeover bid for YHOO.

According to the bloggerati, MSFT's take-over bid for YHOO stemmed from their desire to shore up strategic holes in the online search area, specifically tied to search-based advertising revenues (currently dominated by GOOG). Whatever the real reason, Chief Yahoo (his real title, if the ads are to be believed) Jerry Yang responded with a resounding "Ummm, yeah ... I don't think so." A subsequent proxy "fight" involving the never-good-news-when-he-gets-involved Carl Icahn and a week of Ross and Rachel style will-they-won't-they guessing led to MSFT's abandonment of the negotiating table followed by YHOO's utter lack of a public response. And while it seems that this might be best served as a finance case, I'm again thinking strategy and would love to read discussions about:

 
• What were the real reasons behind rejecting the buyout offer?
 
• Who made that decision? Was it Yang? Was it the Board? Was it both?
 
• How much was communicated to the employees during the talks? Who made those decisions?
 
• When Icahn got involved, how did the strategy change? Or did it not change?
 
• Rejecting the buy-out suggests that YHOO thinks their long term strategy is more profitable than the buy-out. What is that plan?

[Photo credit xenolon via Flickr]

HBS case I'd like to see - the Netflix meltdown

Your thoughts on their relative effectiveness aside, its hard to deny that the case study is a staple of the MBA diet. From Erik-with-a-"K" Peterson in first mod's LTO to Wal-Mart in mod 3's Core Strategy, stopping briefly in mod 2 to visit with Arthur Dief as well as the gang at Southwest Airlines during Core Operations, my first year at Owen saw a significant number of hours devoted to pouring over the pages of the all-too-familiar classpack, highlighter in hand and Excel standing at the ready. Add to that the hours spent discussing, writing, polishing, and paring down to fit inside the sometimes-questionably-low word limit, and its fairly safe to say that the case study represented a significant portion of our lives at the Owen School.

Now that I'm out and in "the real world," a handful of recent events have me wondering what would appear in the pages of the HBS case if there were a HBS case written about them. Over the course of the next few posts I'm going to explore a few of those stories.

Netflix's August meltdown

Like a lot of people, my wife and I subscribe to Netflix. The combination of easy online tools, no late fees, and set-and-forget movie rentals appeals to both of us. In fact, we spend less on Netflix than we did in late fees at Blockbuster, which in itself translates to an incredible amount of value for us. Just last week Netflix found itself in crisis mode. Its normally storied operations went dark for 3-4 days. And while the details haven't yet been forthcoming, what we do know is that the "outage" affected nearly 50% of its distribution centers. As it turned out, operations were restored by the end of the week. In a show of good faith, Netflix has offered to refund 15% of the monthly charge to those affected. Not being familiar with Netflix's books, I can't say how that will impact their bottom line for the quarter/year, but I'm thinking it might be recouped in customer goodwill.

Some of the questions I'd like covered in the case include:

• What happened and how was it fixed?
• What were the disaster recovery plans in place?
• How was the decision made to pull the plug?
• How were the decisions made to inform the public?
• Who was on the crisis management team? How were they organized? And how was the team built for nimbleness?
• What discussions went on around the decision to compensate those customers affected by the outage?

This one feels like a Core Strategy case to me, perhaps written by the Dynamic Duo of Deans (are they still teaching Core Strategy?).
Up next, the second part of the series: YHOO and MSFT: the take-over wars.

[Photo Credit super-structure via Flickr]

Death by Powerpoint

Given the sheer tonnage of PowerPoints I've found myself wading though recently, I thought I'd share a bit of comic relief poking fun at that all-too familiar presentation tool.
Enjoy.

Think like a CEO

Yesterday I had the chance to sit over a cup of coffee and catch up with one of my mentors here at The General.  That's not a typo - I did, in fact, write "one of"; as cheesy as it might sound, it turns out that I actually have a personal "Board of Directors" on which I lean for various modes of support, advice, and whatnot.

I can just hear Susan nodding vigorously in the background, perhaps throwing in some snaps and an "Amen" or two ...

At some point, the discussion turned to the idea of "Thinking Like a CEO."  During my time at The Owen, it seemed like not a single day went by that I wasn't challenged to put myself in the shoes of a CEO, suddenly promoted to the level of CEO, reminded that I *am* the CEO, or something similar (unless it was one of Mike Shor's classes, but that's a discussion for another day altogether).

The wonders it did for my ego aside, I can't help but wonder whether that was the best use of our time.  Sure, being able to think big-picture-strategically is important.  Sure, setting lofty goals are important.  And sure, we should be preparing for the job we want rather than the job we have. 

But don't we have the more immediate challenge of being able to think like a team leader who has to manage both up and down?  Or how about thinking like a product leader that has to integrate multi-functional teams?  Or perhaps a division/department head who has to navigate cross-vertical political/operational/company objective issues?

And more to the point, won't we have to be all of those things if we're to be CEO?  Won't those experiences inform how we "Think Like a CEO" when we're actually the CEO?

Rather than being about bashing the teaching style at the Owen School (or, I'd suspect, every single other MBA program in the whole entire world), my point is to wonder whether variations on the theme might be useful.

What do you guys think?

 

[Photo Credit: Peter Kaminski via Flickr]

Stretch Management

 

The leadership of General Electric introduced the management concept of "stretch" in the 1990s. The idea was not just to create extraordinary goals higher than those thought achievable for the coming year. It was to set outlandish, almost unthinkable goals that business groups might achieve in the longer-run.

Has the Time Come for "Stretch" in Management? — HBS Working Knowledge

Topicality and timeliness are funny things. No sooner had I returned from two weeks of GE Corporate Training than this piece appears in the pages of HBS Working Knowledge. The ever-so-slightly ironic thing is that one of the major themes running through training was the idea of the stretch goal.

In the paper, Professor Heskett describes the idea of a stretch goal on the corporate level. Put simply, rather than setting quarterly or yearly targets, management sets longer term goals and then intermittently measures progress towards them. So, for example, rather than looking for a 5% reduction of cost in the coming 12 months, management sets a goal of 15% reduction over 5 years. And its relatively ease to see the relative merits in a) effectively communicating the Big Picture Vision to the entire organization and b) giving the organization a rallying cry.

When put to my class of ECLPs at training, the concept of a stretch goal was framed slightly differently. Rather than being a variation of the ever popular "Where do you see yourself in 5/10/15 years?" - which, I'm sure Susan will agree, is a valuable tool to use in charting your career trajectory - the stretch goal was put to us as one of personal development: on what do you need to work to get you to the next level of your career. One hint would be that DCF's, cost accounting, or figuring out how to work the office printer are a bit too narrowly defined. Another hint would be that everyone needs stretch goals.

Life after school - the first month

Like most of my classmates, I spent the first two weeks of my post-MBA-"working for the man" life locked in a series of ballrooms attending one training session after another. As part of the Experienced Commercial Leadership Program at GE (and more specifically at GE Healthcare), I spent two weeks learning about the business, listening to talks by senior management (Jeff Immelt, Beth Comstock, and the ever-popular "Q," to name but a few), and, well, eating and drinking on the company's tab.

Before I get an irate email from my program manager(s), I'll mention that there were many many other things; those were only the highlights of a week packed with fun and interesting yougetthepoint ...

I'll just briefly mention that ECLP is not limited to GE Healthcare; ECLP is a cross-company organization with members in very nearly every business out there. For those of you at the Owen School interested in ECLP outside of healthcare, drop me an email from your OGSM account to the blog (owenbloggers@gmail.com) and we'll see what we can do to get you connected with someone in your target business.

Now, on to the list:

• Day 1 was spent learning how to lead teams. My very second class at the Owen School was the Professor T-Love taught Leading Teams and Organizations, so its only fitting (and by fitting I mean "comically ironic") that my very second session at Corporate Training was a crash course in LTO. Judging by the puzzled stares drawn by my laughter, I was among a very select few who thought the "Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing" slide was even remotely amusing. The balance of the afternoon was the soundcheck version of LTO's greatest hits, minus the rap interludes and Dawson's Creek references.
• You're expected to know stuff. While that might sound like a "well, duh!" statement, I'll mention that we spent quite a few days learning about the business: how GE is organized, how GE Healthcare is organized, the products we offer, as well as a full day of human anatomy. We didn't spend any time whatsoever learning about the healthcare system; they just assumed we knew all about that. So however painful those healthcare classes are (and let's be honest: some are painful and others are downright excruciating), take the time to learn it now, because the question "How do you not know this?" is not a fun question to have to answer.
• The only constant is change. On the first day of my second week, the CEO of GE Healthcare resigned to take a job at another company. On the same day a new CEO of GE Healthcare was announced, a man who had been, until that very day, in charge of one of the Industrial Businesses. And on the first day of my third week, a brand new organizational structure for the whole entire company was announced. The overall corporate structure was changed from 6 major businesses (of which GE Healthcare was one) to 4 major businesses (with GE Healthcare now being part of the newly formed Technology Infrastructure business). And all of this after the announcement that both GE Money (credit cards and other consumer finance properties) and GE Consumer & Industrial (appliances, lighting, and other consumer items) might be leaving the fold. GE might be an approximately $180BB company with about 320K employees, but "stagnant" might not be the best descriptor.
• There's more to marketing than <insert misconception here>. *Here I'm talking in general, not just about GE* I know its easy to dismiss marketing as print/radio/television advertising for toothpaste and hair gel (I'm looking at you, finance concentrators), but there's a whole lot more to it than that. In today's world, the really successful companies are the ones that make things that people want, and the only way to figure out what people want is to ask them, and that falls under the marketing function. Marketing feeds into product development, marketing feeds into long term strategic planning, marketing feeds into pricing, and it even bleeds into production. So while DCF's, Black Sholes, and asset pricing are cool and impressive, you'll always need to know how to position yourself to take full advantage of the results.
• This blogging thing is really taking off. Although many of the bloggerati will bristle, when the CMO of a fairly large corporation has her own blog (which, unfortunately for you guys, is behind the GE firewall) and actually updates it bi-weekly, its pretty safe to say that blogging has made its way into the mainstream. The public facing blog of GE is called "From Edison's Desk" and is for the more technology-minded amongst you.

I'm sure there's more, but this post is already a bit on the long side, so perhaps I'll post a follow-up in a few days.

ECLP, GE, GE Healthcare, T-Love, Untitled, LTO

How Starbucks' Growth Destroyed Brand Value - John Quelch

How Starbucks' Growth Destroyed Brand Value - John Quelch

But none of these moves addressed the fundamental problem: Starbucks is a mass brand attempting to command a premium price for an experience that is no longer special. Either you have to cut price (and that implies a commensurate cut in the cost structure) or you have to cut distribution to restore the exclusivity of the brand. Expect the 600 store closings to be the first of a series of downsizing announcements. Sometimes, in the world of marketing, less is more.

By now I'm sure everyone has heard the news that Starbucks plans on closing some 600 of its stores. While many analyses (including Business Week, The New York Times, and the Financial Times) have delved into the financial and economic implications of this move, none have ventured too far into the brand implications of Starbucks' recent exponential expansion and subsequent pull-back.

John Quelch of the Harvard Business School takes a look at how the expansion of product lines diluted the "brand equity" and alienated the early adopters. And while its true that a company must grow and evolve, its also true that there has to be some good balance between growth and remembering those who got you there.

I wonder what Mr. Quelch (or the Owen School's very own David Dilts, for that matter) would say about the recent iPhone 2.0 announcements from Apple and AT&T?

Customer loyalty cuts both ways

Like many people out there, I have a credit card or two. And while I use my bank's check card for most transactions, there are times that, for whatever reason, I pull out a credit card, whether it be for security when ordering online, rental car insurance, or the 6 week delay in payment.

When it comes to credit cards, my particular "go-to" card has been, for the past few years, a Discovercard. For more than a few years, I've paid my bills on time, never called for a credit extension, and been, for the most part, a trouble free customer.

That is until today...

In the process of moving, it would appear that paying my most recent bill had slipped my mind. My payment posted this afternoon, some 2 days after it was due. This morning, however, it seems that Discover had put a hold on my account for non-payment.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I should have paid my bill on time. I'll also freely admit that it is no one's fault but my own that the bill did not get paid on time. I'm a (some would say overly-) grown man who's perfectly capable of reading a calendar and planning ahead.

In my time at "The Owen" I spent a significant number of classes discussing the concept of customer loyalty (Product and Brand Management with The Hoeff comes to mind). Whether it be the special introductory prices, bonus miles on your credit card, subsidized hardware, or any number of other gimmicks, companies spend a great deal of time and energy optimizing the cost of capturing a new customer. Stealing market share, they call it.

And while some have gone so far as to institute ongoing customer loyalty programs - most of which come in the form of point based reward programs - I think most have missed the point: rather than adopt the "lap dance model" of "I'll be nice to you as long as you keep paying me," companies might want to focus on being a little bit more human with their customers. Because let's face it, most of those "reward programs" suffer from a bit of a baby-and-the-bathwater existential crisis.

I'm much more interested in a company that treats me like a real person than whether I get a free soda at the movie theater. Hopefully I'm not the only person that feels this way.

[also posted on my other blog]

Customer loyalty cuts both ways

Like many people out there, I have a credit card or two. And while I use my bank's check card for most transactions, there are times that, for whatever reason, I pull out a credit card, whether it be for security when ordering online, rental car insurance, or the 6 week delay in payment.

When it comes to credit cards, my particular "go-to" card has been, for the past few years, a Discovercard. For more than a few years, I've paid my bills on time, never called for a credit extension, and been, for the most part, a trouble free customer.

That is until today...

In the process of moving, it would appear that paying my most recent bill had slipped my mind. My payment posted this afternoon, some 2 days after it was due. This morning, however, it seems that Discover had put a hold on my account for non-payment.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I should have paid my bill on time. I'll also freely admit that it is no one's fault but my own that the bill did not get paid on time. I'm a (some would say overly-) grown man who's perfectly capable of reading a calendar and planning ahead.

In my time at "The Owen" I spent a significant number of classes discussing the concept of customer loyalty (Product and Brand Management with The Hoeff comes to mind). Whether it be the special introductory prices, bonus miles on your credit card, subsidized hardware, or any number of other gimmicks, companies spend a great deal of time and energy optimizing the cost of capturing a new customer. Stealing market share, they call it.

And while some have gone so far as to institute ongoing customer loyalty programs - most of which come in the form of point based reward programs - I think most have missed the point: rather than adopt the "lap dance model" of "I'll be nice to you as long as you keep paying me," companies might want to focus on being a little bit more human with their customers. Because let's face it, most of those "reward programs" suffer from a bit of a baby-and-the-bathwater existential crisis.

I'm much more interested in a company that treats me like a real person than whether I get a free soda at the movie theater. Hopefully I'm not the only person that feels this way.

[also posted on my other blog]

Customer Service

Yesterday over on The Twitter, NotAnMBA quipped:

finance is *not* the language of business.. customer *needs* are the language of business..!

As a guy that just got done with his MBA, where NPV’s, DCF’s, and other large Excel documents are considered the language of the trade, I have to say that I couldn’t agree more. Obviously there are many skills you learn over the course of an MBA, each with a rightful place in your proverbial bag of tricks.

But the bottom line is that businesses exist for one reason and one reason alone: to make money. Sure, there can be other goals, but as Bob Nardelli once quoted, “No margin, no mission.” In today’s world, that means treating people right (unless you’re a wireless or an internet company, but their times will come).

Case in point: as part of our upcoming move, I’ve had to schedule connections for cable and internet service. As it turns out, the cable company can’t schedule a service connection until the previous tenant has scheduled a service termination. On the phone with the cable company this morning, I told them that I had been calling for two weeks, trying to get new service scheduled. The customer service rep not only offered to call the current tenants and leave a message, but also offered to keep a watch on the account and call me back as soon as the termination order had been placed by the current tenants.

It seems like such a small thing - “How about I call you back?” - but its turned out to be a relatively big selling point for me. Rather than explore other options for my television and internet needs, I’m willing to work with them a little and see what happens.

Of course, whether the cable guy shows up on time is anybody’s guess.

Information overload

For the past few weeks, I've had very little to do with my time. Sure, there's been a round of golf here, an errand or two there, flurries of calls over the impending house purchase (cleared the last contingency last Friday, we're good until the walk-through and close), and some moving logistics to deal with, but the vast majority of my calendar has been, as they say, "unscheduled."

But I don't really do all that well with tons of unscheduled time on my hands. My wife would disagree, but I'll point her to my use of the word "tons." The difference, as they say, is *all* the difference.

Sure, a vacation, such as it is, has been nice, but even *I* have my limits. And apparently 4 weeks is my limit.

As the uber-geek that *always* plugged in, I've spent some time recently playing with all the new and cool social web 2.0 apps cropping up on the net. Of course there's twitter, one of my favorites. But there's also Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Pownce, FriendFeed, Tumblr, and the brand new Plurk.

Oh, and let's not forget my *ever-popular* blog at OwenBloggers.com ...

Yes, many of these "services" are simply glorified time-wasters (I'll let you pick which is which), and once I start actually working for a living many of them will most likely fall by the wayside, but it does get me thinking about my already over-fragmented lifestyle.

Do I really need *more* ways to split my attention? The horcruxian promises of web 2.0 aside,do I really need more places to look, more windows to keep open, and more media to track?

No, I didn't think so ...

[Re-posted from my Tumblog]

Information overload

For the past few weeks, I've had very little to do with my time. Sure, there's been a round of golf here, an errand or two there, flurries of calls over the impending house purchase (cleared the last contingency last Friday, we're good until the walk-through and close), and some moving logistics to deal with, but the vast majority of my calendar has been, as they say, "unscheduled."

But I don't really do all that well with tons of unscheduled time on my hands. My wife would disagree, but I'll point her to my use of the word "tons." The difference, as they say, is *all* the difference.

Sure, a vacation, such as it is, has been nice, but even *I* have my limits. And apparently 4 weeks is my limit.

As the uber-geek that *always* plugged in, I've spent some time recently playing with all the new and cool social web 2.0 apps cropping up on the net. Of course there's twitter, one of my favorites. But there's also Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Pownce, FriendFeed, Tumblr, and the brand new Plurk.

Oh, and let's not forget my *ever-popular* blog at OwenBloggers.com ...

Yes, many of these "services" are simply glorified time-wasters (I'll let you pick which is which), and once I start actually working for a living many of them will most likely fall by the wayside, but it does get me thinking about my already over-fragmented lifestyle.

Do I really need *more* ways to split my attention? The horcruxian promises of web 2.0 aside,do I really need more places to look, more windows to keep open, and more media to track?

No, I didn't think so ...

[Re-posted from my Tumblog]

Full Circle

Just under 2 years ago I had the good fortune of being introduced, through the wonder that is Owen Orientation, to 8 of the coolest people. Introduced via Consuela-mail (no, that's not the official term, but I'd like to see it *become* the official term) in the middle of the summer, our first official meeting was a tentative and semi-awkward Coffee Talk at the local Starbucks with 9 people trying to figure out exactly how the dynamic was going to work.

Being brand new business school students, our first collaboration was, of course, a major motion picture production (The VUsual Suspects, which is a story in and of itself). Over the weeks and months that followed we made our way through discounted cash flows, the black tie only "Midterm Celebratory Experience," "factories brew!!," little dogs in funny hats, broken legs, new career goals, "Real Men of Genius," starting and growing a blog, new marriages, new relationships, old relationships, kids, and the wonder that is Froebenomics.

And now as the curtain begins to fall on our time here at the Owen School, Miss Kathleen made the wonderful suggestion of getting the band back together for one last hurrah. Last night, as our waiter Mark kept "firing" the family style dishes, we got together, shared a drink, and enjoyed each others' company for another night.

For those of you out there who are skeptical about all the claims of culture and community repeated by members of the Owen Family, I'd ask you to simply consider this: two years later we all bent over backwards to make it to dinner. One person drove 5 hours after closing on a house, one cut a trip short, another boarded a plane at 7 in the morning, and Isaac actually left work early.

Our travels here at the Owen School didn't always take us in the same direction, but in the end it turns out that we still went through them together.

Sappy, yes. But also true.

Is 41 points considered a rout? A shellacking? Or just plain old gettin' schooled?

Oh.

My.
God.

I don't really know what else to say except that that was one of the best Vanderbilt basketball games that I've ever attended.  Neltner was on fire, equally effective on both sides of the court.  He was making plays underneath, he was shooting from the outside, he even got a couple steals in the first half.  Shan Foster missed only 2 shots all night, with the first one coming deep in the second half.

That's 4 in a row for the boys, 2 of which were on the road.  This gives us some much needed momentum going into the Florida game this Saturday afternoon (2pm CST).

Technorati Tags: basketball, Business School, MBA, Memorial Gym, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Vanderbilt

Is 41 points considered a rout? A shellacking? Or just plain old gettin' schooled?

Oh.

My.
God.

I don't really know what else to say except that that was one of the best Vanderbilt basketball games that I've ever attended.  Neltner was on fire, equally effective on both sides of the court.  He was making plays underneath, he was shooting from the outside, he even got a couple steals in the first half.  Shan Foster missed only 2 shots all night, with the first one coming deep in the second half.

That's 4 in a row for the boys, 2 of which were on the road.  This gives us some much needed momentum going into the Florida game this Saturday afternoon (2pm CST).

Technorati Tags: basketball, Business School, MBA, Memorial Gym, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Vanderbilt

No trees were harmed in the writing of this post.

The other day I got "looped into" an email conversation that was somewhat tangentially related to an ongoing project in one of my classes.  For me, getting CC'd on the 15th email of the chain has always felt a little like walking into a room full of laughing people - you don't exactly know what's going on but you really hope they're not laughing at you.

As I dug through the impossibly long email chain, I ran across an email signature that just made me laugh.  No, it wasn't one with a joke or a cool quote; rather, it was one of those "this email is privileged information and we will come for you in the middle of the night if you cross us" email signatures.  You know, the ones typically appended to the bottom of emails from lawyers and/or consultants.  The ones that are attached to UNencrypted emails ...

This morning as I avoided doing actual work (also known as cruising the RSS feeds), I ran across a post by Mike Arrington at TechCrunch in which he ... expresses his displeasure ... with the "Please don't print this email" signature that's all the rage these days.  And while I don't share Mike's level of distaste for those signatures, I do, from time to time, question their effectiveness.  I sometimes wonder how many people have said, "Well, since you asked nicely, I guess just the once I'll skip printing it out!!"

Now, back to avoiding doing real work ...

Technorati Tags: consultantese, MBA, Net Impact, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Techcrunch, Vanderbilt

Overheard this morning

MBA #1:  Actually, my goal is to be in a Harvard Business School case study.

MBA #2:  But a good one, right?

MBA #1:  No.  A bad one.  (pause)  I want to be Eric Peterson.

Technorati Tags: Business School, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Vanderbilt

Data (in)security - Georgetown joins the fold

A few weeks ago my wife received a letter from the Davidson County Election Committee informing her that her name, social security number, and address was, along with similar information on many many other people, saved on a laptop that was stolen from a downtown office.  At the time I wrote a somewhat irate blog posting that made its way on to Nashville Metroblogs.  At the time we decided to post it some place other than OwenBloggers because of its limited bearing on life at business school.

It seems like a week doesn't go by without a story about unsecured data.  A quick Google News search for "stolen laptop personal data" reveals a disturbing number of stories, many covering events from the past 6 months.  This week is no different, with a piece from the Washington Post about yet another stolen laptop that contained unencrypted personal information.  This one was from the Georgetown University Student Affairs office and contained information on some 38,000 students and alumni.

Georgetown finds itself in some pretty esteemed company, including the likes of the British Royal Navy (600,000 people's information stolen), the State of Maryland (10,000 people), Boeing (382,000 people), Home Depot (10,000 people), and ING U.S. Financial Services (13,000 people). 

Personal laptops that contain unencrypted sensitive personal data are one thing, but these are all major institutions that, presumably, come with their own IT departments that get paid (or perhaps, got paid) for thinking about this sort of stuff.

I understand that its hard to keep track of every single employee's laptop and, more importantly, exactly what they have on it, but can we not agree that an Excel file with sensitive information on 38,000 people might need to be tightly regulated? 

Technorati Tags: Business School, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Vanderbilt

Case studies - are they enough like real life?

The case study is a staple of the MBA diet.  Most of the classes I've had here at the Owen School have partaken in that age-old tradition - most were in print, but some actually embraced the new media revolution and presented online or video versions of themselves, including my personal favorite (think: dog and checkered hat).

A recent article in BusinessWeek profiles the Dean of the Columbia Business School, R. Glenn Hubbard.  In response to complaints from prospective employers that MBA grads weren't good at dealing with ambiguity, Dean Hubbard and his team created the Decision Brief.  The key to the Decision Brief is data, or the lack thereof - briefs intentionally contain very little data in an effort to replicate the murkiness of the real world.

Its true that many cases are presented very linearly - by the time the hero/heroine settles into their plush, Italian leather chair and turns to stare at the snow falling outside the window of their corner office, you pretty much know where the case is headed.  A couple pages further into the case and you pretty much know which parts you can skip/skim and which parts you should read more carefully.  And by the time you get to the exhibits you know which one or two are the most important, neglecting development of the skills needed to sift through piles and piles of junk and pull out the one or two gems of information.

Perhaps what's needed is a progression from the traditional case - which would teach, among other things, how to think about this sort of stuff - to the more ambiguous Decision Brief.  Or perhaps we should eventually do away with the traditional case study altogether, throw students into the deep end, and let them figure it out.

Incidentally, anyone who's taken Mike Shor's Game Theory class will find this oddly reminiscent.  Shor forgoes the traditional HBS cases (and, as a happy consequence, the accompanying $100 class pack) for short memos of his own composition.  Typically only a page long, Shor spends fully half that space extolling the virtues of the leather that covers the chair in the office overlooking the snow (seriously, some of the funniest $%^& you'll read in business school).  The problem is only defined in a round-about way, and there's very little data provided.  Its up to the team to "make it work".

What do you guys think?  Are cases too linear and straightforward?  Or is it necessary to learning?

Technorati Tags: Business School, Columbia Business School, HBS case study, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Decision Brief, Vanderbilt

Yes, we're *that* nerdy

Overheard at lunch today:

MBA #1:

We could sell them Montana.

MBA #2:

We could ... what's the appropriate discount rate for an entire state?

Technorati Tags: Business School, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, corporate valuation, Vanderbilt

Multitasking, continuous partial attention, and mindfulness

The other day I sat in yet another team meeting.  Like most meetings, this one saw a handful of people sitting around a table, each separated from the larger group by an open laptop.  As has been the case many times before, this group was trying to do entirely too many things at once.  In addition to the multiple conversation threads bouncing around the table (only one of which, I'm sorry to say, had anything to do with the assignment that was the actual basis of the meeting), each of us had multiple things going on our respective computer screens - feed reading, Twitter, IM, online shopping, and the ever present time and attention stealer of email.

The consequence of this, somewhat obviously, is that none of us were paying as much attention to the tasks at hand as we should have been.  And although we had outlined a semi-clear agenda for the meeting, at times it felt like we could have made our way through the list somewhat more expediently if we had simply focused on one thing rather than many.

In a world that's becoming increasingly crowded with all manner of gadgets and gizmos that are supposed to help us reclaim our time by making us more efficient, it seems that all we're really doing is becoming more efficient at splitting our attention.  Many people I know are not only proud of the fact that they do multiple things at once, they say that its the only way they can get everything, or even anything, done.

Linda Stone at the Huffington Post wrote a nice piece about Continuous Partial Attention.  Put very simply, Stone argues that while "traditional" multitasking (the act of pairing one action that requires higher level thought with another that is more routine - walking and chewing gum, eating lunch while filing papers, writing a blog post while listening to music, etc) seeks to create opportunities to be more efficient (aka get more things done), CPA seeks to keep continuously informed.  Those deeply immersed in CPA (like yours truly, I hate to admit), are, much like Johnny 5, always looking for input - email, news, videos, or whatever our shiny nifty device can put in front of us right this very second.

On the other side of the proverbial coin we have the idea of "mindfulness," or being fully invested in the moment in which you find yourself.  Some people advocate reducing distractions by minimizing or quitting applications, turning off email notifications, putting the crackberry in your bag, and many more.  Others say we should remove all possible distractions by making liberal use of Quit and Off buttons.  Still other say multitasking makes up stupid and should be avoided at all costs.

For the typical professional-type (including MBA's), there's the constant struggle between focus and not shutting yourself off from the world around you.  But understanding that there's quite a bit of situational variance, together with the realization that you can, in fact, go "off the grid," if even for an hour of two, might help in getting us to focus and cross off the to-do's that much more quickly and with higher quality output.

Technorati Tags: Business School, continuous partial attention, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Productivity, multitasking, puppy, Vanderbilt

For the Apple Faithful - Fake Steve Jobs is liveblogging on Twitter

For the Faithful amongst you, check out FSJ's live Twitter feed from the MWSF Keynote.  I'm laughing so hard that people in the library are starting to stare.

http://twitter.com/fakestevetwit

PS - you don't need a Twitter account for any of this.

UPDATED - He's a bit on the graphic side, so anyone who is easily offended should probably look elsewhere for MWSF coverage.

For the Apple Faithful - Fake Steve Jobs is liveblogging on Twitter

For the Faithful amongst you, check out FSJ's live Twitter feed from the MWSF Keynote.  I'm laughing so hard that people in the library are starting to stare.

http://twitter.com/fakestevetwit

PS - you don't need a Twitter account for any of this.

UPDATED - He's a bit on the graphic side, so anyone who is easily offended should probably look elsewhere for MWSF coverage.

The Weekend Reader - Friday January 11, 2008

Richard Branson's Virgin Group Gets Healthy [WSJ]

Apparently taking on the airline and music industries (not to mention all the hot air balooning) isn't quite challenging enough for Sir Richard.  The Virgin Group has announced plans for 6 Virgin Healthcare Centers in a country, as the WSJ so aptly puts it, where "... doctors are employed by the government and healthcare is free."  VHC would offer a second tier of services on top of the National Health Services primary care.

Figuring Out HIV's Protein Diet [WSJ]

Scientists at Harvard Medical School have published a preliminary list of 270 host cell proteins on which HIV depends.  This is the first step in a new approach to defeating the virus - instead of trying to attack the virus directly, the thinking is to remove things provided by the host cell that HIV needs to survive and perpetuate itself.

Scientists Create Stem-Cell Line [WSJ.com]

A new technique for generating stem cells that doesn't destroy the embryo from which they are derived.  This is yet another way to get around some of the ethical concerns surrounding this incredibly important, and incredibly controversial, line of research.

Autism and the Limits (For Now) of Genetic Screening [WSJ.com]

Two different reports (here and here) suggest that a certain mutation on human chromosome 16 is present in nearly 1% of patients with autism.  As the health blog so accurately points out, this does very little to inform us about the other 99%, but it does begin to chip away at the genetic causes for this disease.

U.S. Worst At Beating Death From Preventable Illness [Health Affairs - REQUIRES SUBSCRIPTION]

The US comes in at the bottom of the 18 country pile.  Even more heartening is the fact that rate of improvement in the six years between 1997 and 2003 was the smallest of the bunch as well.  While the death rate did decline by 4% (people under age of 75), the rest of the list showed an average of 16% decline over the same timeframe.  The "winning" numbers were put up by France, with 72.6/100,000 for men and Japan with 54.3/100,000 for women.  The US came in with 123.4 for men and 96.4 for women (both per 100,000 patients).

Mass. Greenlights Drugstore Clinics [WSJ.com]

Massachusetts joins the growing trend of in-store retail clinics to treat minor ailments.  CVS and Wal-Mart are two of the more recognizable names getting involved in this movement.  Doctors are, predictably, not wild about the idea, as it "... might not have enough oversight from MD's."

Teva To Spend $1B In India On Deals And Plants [Pharmalot]

The world's largest maker of generic prescription drugs announced plans to expand operations into India, spending nearly $300M in the coming years in building and acquisitions.  These are in addition to the already established Teva India and research facility near New Delhi.  The move offers them not only access to lower cost manufacturing but also entrance into the Indian market, whose economy is experiencing an incredible amount of growth.

D.C. Bill Could Require Licenses for Drug Reps [WSJ]

In the ongoing struggle to enforce more order on the marketing and promotional juggernaut that is pharma sales, the District is considering a bill that would require drug reps to register and obtain licenses.  The bill prohibits off-label marketing and promotes the education of doctors on generic substitutes.

San Francisco Hearts Compulsory Health Insurance [WSJ.com]

Another ongoing struggle is that of universal healthcare.  The City by the Bay is one step further down a path they believe will lead them to nirvana - a federal appeals court ruled that the city can, in fact, force employers to either offer coverage to their employees or pay into  city-run fund.

Technorati Tags: Business School, Health Care, Healthcare, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Vanderbilt

VU men's basketball goes 16-0. Best start *ever*.

Earlier tonight the VU men's basketball team hosted the Fighting Gamecocks of the University of South Carolina in the SEC opener at Vanderbilt's Memorial Gym.  The 'Dores came into the regular season undefeated and ranked 13th (AP, 12th in the coaches poll).  With Ole Miss falling to Tennessee, that leaves Vanderbilt and four other teams (Kansas, UNC, Memphis, and Washington State) with undefeated records.

Shan Foster hit two from outside the arc early in the game to move into the all-time lead for 3 pointers at Vanderbilt and then couldn't seem to find his shot for most of the remainder of the game.  Aside from a pretty sweet fading jumper late in the second half, most of the late game scoring was left to freshman center AJ Ogilvy, who delivered 21 in the second half for a total of 25 for the game.

The students (pictured at right) were out in full force tonight.  It looked like the entire section was SRO tonight.  They made so much noise that at times it was hard to hear the band, which is no small feat.

VU faces the Kentucky Wildcats at Rupp Arena this Saturday afternoon (12:30pm central).  The game is listed on CBS and should be a good one.

Technorati Tags: basketball, Memorial Gym, owenbloggers.com, Vanderbilt

Jumping into the WayBack Machine on the interwebs

Yesterday a friend of mine asked me about graduation requirements for the Marketing Concentration here at the Owen School.  As is the case with most graduate institutions, the Owen School is continuously learning and reevaluating itself and its requirements for graduation.  This past year the marketing department changed the requirements for the incoming first year class, while the second year class had the choice of following the old or new requirements.

The only problem is that the department's website only lists the new requirements.  While it makes sense that most people visiting the department's website are prospective students and therefore need the requirements to which they'll be held, it does make it a bit more difficult to find the information that for some reason I forgot to save on my computer.

Enter the Internet Archive.

Over at archive.org they have a tool called the "WayBack Machine."  You type in the URL and hit the conveniently titled "Take Me Back" button and the archive spits out dated links to different versions of the page in question.

Once again, the interwebs save my bacon ...

Technorati Tags: Business School, Marketing, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Internet Archive

Only 122 days until graduation

Mod 3 is now officially 2 days old.  My schedule this mod (and next mod, for that matter) is a bit on the peculiar side in that I only have classes 2 days a week (Tue and Thu this mod, Mon and Wed next mod).  Whereas in my six previous mods I've had a fairly even distribution of classes (2-3 per day every day), this mod they're all stacked up one right after the other.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you ...

A few notes from the first two days of class:

• The day kicked off with 3 hours of Healthcare Marketing.  Seeing as I'm going to be a marketer at a healthcare company, it sounds right up my alley.  The professor quoted OwenBloggers.com not once, but twice this morning, which was nice (even if one of them was a Jared quote).
• I had to take a placement quiz of sorts for one of my classes.  In the email I got back from the professor, the subject line says "High Pass."  The body of the email, however, urges me to attend the review session as I might fall behind in the class.
• I spent the entirety of one class listening to the two guys sitting behind me talk, and not in that whispering-because-you-know-you-shouldn't-be-talking voice, if you know what I mean.
• I finished the day off with Consumer Analysis, where we learned, among other things, that:

• Apple was named for an orchard, not for the Beatles, Adam and Eve, or Newton.
• The 1957 Edsel is a collector's item.  So is the 1957 Chevy Bel Air.
• One of the TA's has a Ducati motorcycle (it might be that he wants a Ducati - I wasn't clear on that part).
• The Oxygen Network was named for ... well, it complicated.

That's all for now.

Technorati Tags: Business School, Health Care, Marketing, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Vanderbilt

Viral marketing - word of mouth or something more deliberate?

We've all seen those videos that rip around the 'net, seemingly taking on a life of their own.  In marketing classes we've heard about the Viral Revolution and how a campaign that goes that way is some of the most effective marketing around.

This morning I stumbled across a post on TechCrunch (as well as the follow up) written by one of the founders of the Commotion Group, self-proclaimed "Viral Marketing Hired Guns" (their description, not mine).  In the post Dan Greenberg outlines a few strategies his company employs to nudge videos along the viral path.

Some of the highlights include:

• Content is not king - so long as its either shocking or features scantily clad women.
• Use MySpace, Facebook, blogs, and forums to get the word out (not very surprising)
• Make sure the thumbnail is appealing - apparently YouTube has an option that lets you take a frame from the middle of the clip  The guys pay special attention to that frame.
• Start a flame war in the comments section ... with yourself.
• Tag to control the "Related Videos" stream and push your own content rather than someone else's.

Whether you condone this sort of thing or not, it does make for an interesting read. Check it out.

The video is a personal favorite from the Duke University Business School's annual FuquaVision.  Check out the "Real MBA's of Genius" clip while you're at it.

Technorati Tags: Business School, Facebook, MBA, Myspace, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Techcrunch, Vanderbilt

Viral marketing - word of mouth or something more deliberate?

We've all seen those videos that rip around the 'net, seemingly taking on a life of their own.  In marketing classes we've heard about the Viral Revolution and how a campaign that goes that way is some of the most effective marketing around.

This morning I stumbled across a post on TechCrunch (as well as the follow up) written by one of the founders of the Commotion Group, self-proclaimed "Viral Marketing Hired Guns" (their description, not mine).  In the post Dan Greenberg outlines a few strategies his company employs to nudge videos along the viral path.

Some of the highlights include:

• Content is not king - so long as its either shocking or features scantily clad women.
• Use MySpace, Facebook, blogs, and forums to get the word out (not very surprising)
• Make sure the thumbnail is appealing - apparently YouTube has an option that lets you take a frame from the middle of the clip  The guys pay special attention to that frame.
• Start a flame war in the comments section ... with yourself.
• Tag to control the "Related Videos" stream and push your own content rather than someone else's.

Whether you condone this sort of thing or not, it does make for an interesting read. Check it out.

The video is a personal favorite from the Duke University Business School's annual FuquaVision.  Check out the "Real MBA's of Genius" clip while you're at it.

Technorati Tags: Business School,