Yesterday was awesome. It was full of surprises from our faculty, each one better than the last. Because some prospective students read this blog and because the surprises were critical to today’s success, I’ll refrain from any real explanation. The cool part was that it was our first day of cross-functional project work: addressing aContinue reading “Brazilian High”
Category Archives: IMD & Switzerland
Learning Russian
It’s approaching midnight as we’re working on accounting problem sets; seven guys holed up in a room all night after spending most of our day in here as well. Just spoken in Russian by our Czech to our Belarussian: “Odkryt okna byla tvoja lucnaja idea sevodna.” Excusing the probable misspellings, this translates to “Opening theContinue reading “Learning Russian”
Accounting
If I had to choose one word to describe Accounting professor Stewart Hamilton, it would be “curmudgeonly.” He’s a crotchety old Scot who is very emphatic that we should not question the “why” of accounting practices; we should just accept them. He has already yelled at me in class because I applauded him. I can’tContinue reading “Accounting”
Long night ahead of us
Our group’s ICA/E presentation on the electricity generation industry is due this week and we’re far from completion. We’ve just ordered pizzas to give us an energy boost (CHF 80–$70–for two pies!!!) and I think it’s going to be a long night. At least we’re not the only ones. People are whistling in the hallways.Continue reading “Long night ahead of us”
WalMart
ICA/E revolved around a WalMart case today. How did it grow to dominate its much larger rivals such as K-Mart? Why and how could it diversify to include Sam’s Club? Why and how could it diversify into other countries? At what price to the small, rural town comes WalMart’s strategy? The case was set inContinue reading “WalMart”
Marketing
What Ralf refers to as “tra la la” is actually quite interesting. Co-taught by Martin Koschat (Austrian) and Dominique Turpin (French), this course is a case-driven exploration of the entire marketing function, from understanding a market to taking products and services to that market. So far we’ve studied DVD production machine manufacturers, discount airlines, sportContinue reading “Marketing”
Happy Chinese New Year!
Welcome to the Year of the Mouse! It has been a wonderful weekend of work, wine, and winter weather. When I woke up this morning to work on a Leadership paper, the crescent moon was bright over the snowy mountains, the stars were reflecting off the serene lake, and there wasn’t a cloud in theContinue reading “Happy Chinese New Year!”
Ralf Boscheck
It’s funny that I chose to introduce our Industry and Company Analysis/Economics course in last night’s blog because our prof was in fine form during this morning’s class. Some Boscheckisms: Why are we going into such detail? BECAUSE IT’S GOOD FOR YOU! You’re tired? Why? Because you’re only sleeping four hours a day? That’s justContinue reading “Ralf Boscheck”
Industry and Company Analysis / Economics
Aside: the soup du jour at IMD’s restaurant was French onion today–delicious! ICA/E is taught by Ralf Boscheck, a crazy (in a good way) German who throws chalk at students who ask inane questions. His first lecture was essentially the complete economic history of the world in four hours–step up to the fire hose andContinue reading “Industry and Company Analysis / Economics”
Leadership
A deep, personal approach to growth and development–it’s why I’m here. Nowhere has this IMD quality been more apparent than in our Leadership stream. Since day 1, professor Jack Wood has led us down a path of self and group analysis, inward reflection, and study of leadership. Although this course is exactly as described inContinue reading “Leadership”