Recently in MBA Category

When I started business school, I expected to learn about how businesses work. What I did not expect was how much it would change the way I look at everything. The changes are both subtle and profound and probably somewhat inexplicable to anyone that hasnt spent two years going through the process themselves. Needless to say, my beliefs about what it takes to succeed in a business are radically different than they were when I started.

With that in mind, I enjoyed reading the experiences expressed in this MBA diary in the Financial Times last week.

The expectations. The realization that most of one's expecations and assumptions were wrong. The feeling of directionlessness as one re-evaluates their assumptions and explores new possibilities. Recognizing that work is a team sport not a marathon and the power of social networking. The eventual coalescence of a new, clear direction and a personal "story"

Good stuff. I wish our primary K-12 education system taught more lessons are capitalism and economics. I think citizens would make better decisions if it did.

London Business School diary

By William McKenzie

Published: February 11 2007 14:37

The Financial Times

read it

What will give me the advantage is the ability to build and leverage relationships. This skill, which has come from informal interaction with classmates, alumni and teachers, is where the true value of my education lies.

This past September, I and the other confident, bright-eyed and ambitious members of the MBA class of 2008 knew what we wanted in our careers. We wanted jobs in investment banking or consulting. We wanted to work for the likes of McKinsey, Goldman Sachs and Proctor & Gamble.

But four months after our arrival, that assurance has gone. It has been replaced by confusion, indecisiveness and anxiety.

It is Fall. Business Week has just released their annual rating of business schools and thousands of people are wrestling with the decision of whether or not to get an MBA.

Consequently, I thought it was time I wrote a post about my MBA experience.

Back when I worked as a software engineer, I read the EE Times every week and I joined the ACM and IEEE as professional societies.

Now that I live in Seattle and have changed my career focus, I went looking for new professional groups to work with. I wanted to pass along the programs that I have liked the most. All of these groups offer workshops or speakers and the chance to network. In the professional sense, Seattle is a small town so networking is key.

Last Friday I attended another NWEN breakfast. As usual, there were three speakers from local companies, including two 5-minute presentations and one main speaker. I enjoyed their stories and have been thinking about their comments.

Venture Breakfast - July 2006

Topic: Building a Lean, Clean, Web 2.0 News Machine

Speaker: Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine

My summer has started off with a bang. I am doing an internship at a startup and my main task is writing an MRD for a brand new product. From scratch.

This morning my task is to come up with a "value proposition." This is a term I hear all the time (from MBA's) but to be honest, I was having trouble defining it. It was easy enough to put in my outline but what does a value prop actually look like? I just kept staring at the page...

Then I looked for some articles on VP's and ran into an article by Jill Konrath. I liked what she had to say so here are some highlights.

My MBA is finished and my first foray back into the working world is a marketing internship at a Seattle startup called Smart Desktop. Today is day two of my internship (and the company). Today also is the day SD was officially announced to the world by way of an acquisition. Exciting stuff!

July 06, 2006 09:00 AM US Eastern Timezone
Pi Corporation Acquires Smart Desktop, Inc.; Former Microsoft Executive's Start-Up Will Help Smart Desktop Deliver Innovative Software to Make Information Workers More Productive

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 6, 2006--Pi Corporation, a software company focused on creating better ways for people to organize, share and access their data, today announced that it acquired Smart Desktop, Inc. Pi Corporation was founded two years ago by Paul Maritz, a former Microsoft executive, and Warburg-Pincus of New York. Smart Desktop, which will operate as a separate brand, will create and bring to market in early 2007 innovative new products that increase the productivity of information workers. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Smart Desktop will commercialize the results of the "TaskTracer" project of the Intelligent Information Systems Laboratory at Oregon State University (OSU). The research group, directed by Professors Tom Dietterich and Jon Herlocker, developed new technology that uses machine intelligence to automatically classify, sort and organize information for people by observing and learning from their interactions with their personal computers. Smart Desktop negotiated an exclusive worldwide license to the TaskTracer technology, patents, and intellectual property from the University.

Smart Desktop's management team includes:

-- CEO John Forbes, who has more than 20 years of experience as an executive in the software industry at leading companies including Visio and Autodesk.

-- VP of Engineering Dr. Jon Herlocker, who has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota and was co-inventor of the technology commercialized by Net Perceptions, a pioneering company in collaborative filtering technology.

-- Chief Scientist Dr. Tom Dietterich, who is one of the most respected experts in the field of machine learning and is the current president of the International Machine Learning Association.

In marketing class today we discussed a case on Red Bull and guerilla marketing. It was a good discussion and I kept thinking about two things: 1) the social pressure to conform and 2) the human desire to learn.

The final term of my MBA is about to begin. With the end in sight, I find myself thinking about what I have learned from the experience. I have $30K in student loans: was it worth it?

I think it will take a few years to see the full value of my experience, but even now I cant say enough good things about my MBA at the University of Washington. UW doesnt have the reputation of a top-10 school but the small size (about 100 students per year) allowed an intimacy and accessibility that was fabulous for me.

There is a lot of debate about what an "MBA experience" should be and I suspect there is a lot of variation even with the same program because everyone gets something different from the degree. Depending on your goals, experience, age and the program you choose, your experiences will vary greatly. I am certain that I would have had a very different experience if I had gone for the degree when I first thought about as a perky 25 year old instead of the jaded 35 year old I am today.

One of my surprises has been the classes that I enjoyed the most. I expected to really get a huge lift from accounting and finance but neither class did much for me. Instead it has been the classes I didnt think much of originally that are the most memorable. Brand management, direct marketing and cross-cultural communications are three of the classes that I think will have the biggest payoff for me over time.

What have I learned?