OwenBloggers: Sharran Srivatsaa

Christmas Home Stretch

I cannot believe it is December already.

I normally don't get nervous about final exams. I try to put in the work during the term and normally the final does not seem to hard. These last few weeks have somehow flown by and I don't know if I am really ready for my finals.

I am definitely nervous about the final exam I have at the Law School. Vandy Law is a different beast... with many horns, many teeth, many trunks, many fire-spitting orfaces, and many claws. I dont even know how the exam software works there. The professor bascially told us that we could bring in any material that we wanted... open book, open notes. He also very clearly said that he would even give us parts of the questions beforehand but was confident that it would not help. Okay, if that does not make you uncomfortable, I dont know what will. I am going to have to crack down and study for this puppy.

Today I got together with the wise men to talk about schedules. We looked at everything that was due for the rest of the semester, and blocked off times on our calendars to meet and crank it out. Sometimes I dont know what I would do without my Outlook calendar. I would definitely not make it through the semester without my study friends.

Owen is an interesting place. Some people work in groups, some work individually, some use a blended approach. But I have noticed that there are very few students who study individually. There is a very strong culture of studying in groups at Owen. Professors encourage collaboration, not sharing of answers. Most of the classes are built around group work, so I have very few assignments which I have done individually. Everyone learns differently... and I am a big fan of group work. The hardest part is finding the right teams, but when you do find the right team, the learning is rich and is filled with many different perspectives. The true spirit of a diverse skill set comes to bear when different team members contribute in different ways to the same assignment. Its awesome to see someone else do something better than you, and as a result it affects your grade and your learning positively. If you have a dysfunctional team, good luck. But that's why you get to pick your teams after the core classes. But I must say that I have always had great teammates.

I cannot wait for the semester to be done. I want to be able to read for pleasure, workout everyday, see if I can get back on the tennis court and watch football. I am pretty sure I will be doing a good chunk of wedding planning, which I am actually excited about.

I am also using the rhythm of the samba to fight the flu. Sun Tzu would be proud.

Tags: sharran, srivatsaa, owenbloggers, vandy, owen, ogsm, mba
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Chill with people who change the world

I like learning new things and the learning has been awesome over the last academic year. I am starting to like different topics within each functional area. I like the consumer preference side of marketing, the queuing theory side of operations, the strategy and alignment ideas of human capital, and the options/derivatives side of finance.

Options are amazing. I feel like if a person can understand options, they understand the markets inside-out because options tug at the very root of the speculative spirit of the financial world. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to hang out with Dr. Hans Stoll on the tennis court. (this is the time you go... whaaaaa? noway!)

Hans Stoll is the guy who came up with the Put-Call Parity. You can read about the Put-Cal Parity on Wikipedia here but it is one of the coolest things that the options world has seen. Hans is a great guy... and has a mean serve. I am going to take a couple of his classes next year. Pretty cool.

My lunch with the CEO of Wal-Mart

Yesterday I had lunch with Wal-Mart North America's CEO Eduardo Castro-Wright (Corporate America's Rising Star by Fortune) as a part of Owen's Distinguished Speaker Series. This is one of the favorite parts of my Owen experience, a chance to connect with business leaders from around the world in a small group setting. I see Webcast's of successful individuals giving lectures and presentations at different schools, but I wonder if those students get to have lunch with the speaker, sitting right beside the Dean of the school, engaging them in great conversation. After the presentation we also had a reception where the Owen community was able to meet and speak with Mr. Castro-Wright in the lobby. There was brain-food for the famished students :)

At lunch I jumped in line right behind Mr. Castro-Wright because I wanted to ask him a question about a potential connection with his past position at Nabisco. I was a part of the Britannia Amritraj Tennis (BAT) Program, a joint initiative between the Amritraj Brothers and Britannia/Nabisco to build the future of Indian Tennis Players. Indian Davis Cup player Leander Paes is a product of this program. Mr. Castro-Wright ran the Asia-Pacific operations for Nabisco at that time and I wanted to see if he remembered the BAT program. Of course he did, and what was better... he is a tennis player himself, a common thing that brought both him and me to the US.

I began to look at Wal-Mart from a different perspective when Mr. Castro-Wright said,

"We at Wal-Mart save people money so that they can live a better life."

He is the first big-time CEO that I have met that actually answered the questions that I asked him, instead of beating around the bush. Glad to meet you Sir.

Technorati Tags: wal-mart - sharran - owen - srivatsaa - vandy - vanderbilt

Managing Innovation - Day 1: Thirsty Dog + H2O Backpack

I am taking  Managing Innovation this Mod with Prof. Dave Owens. Here is Dave's unofficial website, here is a link to his official profile at Owen, and here is a link to the class blog.

We spent the first portion of the first class talking about what we thought about innovation... its "definition," what it means to us, what we consider to be innovative, why it matters, etc. This was one of those discussions that I just wanted to hang back and listen... how many times have you thought about the meaning of "innovation?"  Its one of those words that just finds its place in our vocabulary but we never really explore its true meaning and impact on our everyday thinking.

 

The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds 

And few have the imagination to see beyond them.

 

Dave said, "I want you to think about a cool idea right now..." and then KL said, "Oooh I got one..."

+

I think KL was referring to some kind of CamelBak for her dog!

I am particularly excited about our class project which we get to choose and define ourselves. The assignment describes it best:

As a group, find someone with a problem you are willing to solve. Your innovation should address a challenge that your client faces in his or her professional context. Your team is free to address any problem of any size in any way that you find to be appropriate, but you are required to implement it by the end of the course.

FYI: course is 7 weeks long, ha!

Isaac and I will be working on this project and I will write more about this as we flush out the details.

___
Managing Innovation: Mod 4 2007
Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management
Professor Dave Owens: Bio | Personal Site
Class Blog

Technorati Tags: owens - owen - vanderbilt - innovation - sharran - srivatsaa - owenbloggers - mba

Feed me fuzz

No rhythm of the samba!

Hawaii B-School gets donation and new name

Of all the places that I have had the chance to live in, Hawaii felt the most like home. The University of Hawaii campus is gorgeous - and their new tennis facility is absolutely awesome. I was very excited to see that they received a $25M donation from an alum towards their business school - the largest gift they have ever received.

Here is the BusinessWeek Online article that talks about the donation. Go Rainbows, oops... they are the Warriors now!