Monday, January 07, 2008

Start of New Quarter

My second last quarter of my MBA program has started. My goal is to reduce my time spent on school work (relative to last quarter), in order to spend more on my job search. Well see how the plan turns out.
Last quarter was a 13 week nightmare. I consistently averaged 60+ hour work weeks. Looking back, I think the sacrifice was worth it. I gained some great project management and team leadership experience from my Experiential Learning project recommending a new product development evaluation process. While I spent more time than I would have liked on Financial Statement Analysis, I have a solid understanding of where to start in evaluating a company's financials. I really enjoyed Competitive Intelligence. In addition to being an area where I have a real aptitude, I gained a framework of how to strategically evaluate a company and its competitive environment. Combine that with Financial Statement Analysis and I have plenty of tools to help me evaluate companies. Lastly, Global Teams exposed me to frameworks of successful team development and offered a valuable experience of participating in a truly global team.
This quarter builds corporate strategy and re-introduces me to marketing. My courses:
Strategic Innovation: This is a new course designed to teach students what is needed to produce game changing innovation. So this isn't product or business process innovation, this is how do we change the game we are playing. Examples are Southwest's redefinition of how airlines can succeed and how Apple changed the face of music.
Internet Marketing: I have heard comments that the teacher is very dry, but I would like to gain more knowledge in this area as I feel that marketing is moving to the internet (or at a minimum is will be a major part of future marketing strategy).
Business Dynamics: My second strategy course this quarter, BD focuses on how to create and execute strategic change in an organization.
Macroeconomics: It looks like the professor is trying to put a practical management spin on the study of Macroeconomics. My undergrad is in Macro, so I am hoping this will be easy on my workload.

2 comments:

Sarah and Brian said...

Hey Trevor,

Its Brian from THQ (a fellow intern, but from PD downstairs). Best of luck with your penultimate quarter of your MBA. I have on semester left in mine and have been focusing on the job market, recently, much like you.

Looks like you and the wife enjoyed a nice holiday break. The wife and I spent out time with family and friends, which unfortunatley kept us stateside. Well the good news is we are talking about going to the red sea for some SCUBA diving at the start of summer.

Good luck and keep in touch.

Canada-US MBA said...

Hey Brian,
Thanks for stopping by. I tried to email you using your arena.net address only to get a bounce back. Update your LinkedIN profile so that I have the best email address to contact you.
Trevor