The holiday season

This holiday season was a wonderful one for Aidah and I. We had a great time with our new friends in Cambridge (especially Christmas and New Year's eve). Here are a few pictures from the Christmas day and New Year party.

The Christmas Party at Sir Paul Judge's house

We had a bash of a Christmas party at Sir Paul Judge's house in London. It was a great place (a penthouse overlooking the Thames river). Almost everyone from the MBA class was there for the party.

A few pictures from that event.

Leadership seminar with Lord Swaraj Paul

Lord Swaraj Paul did a talk about Leadership and Innovation at JBS on the 5th of December. He was more of an old style speaker and read most of his speech. However, it was a very punchy and influential talk. It was about the lessons he learnt on his journey establishing a company that has a revenue of over £600 million. He started his first company in Cambridge with a sum of £5,000, which he had borrowed.

One of the important things he did (and the best in his 16 years in his business career) was the de-listing of his company from the stock-exchanges. His view is that once the company is listed, it becomes essential to please the city and the short-term goals of the business takes priority. It is much easier to borrow money from the banks and the borrowing also ensures that you get a free consultant on board who gives free advice and ensures that money is efficiently spent. His company is going gaga about India and China and are setting up a number of plants in both countries.

The Christmas Party

We had our Christmas Party at the Business School hosted by Cisco. It was a lot of fun. Yours truly was the Santa Claus. In the afternoon there was a special event for kids and partners.

Leadership Seminar by John Fraser

On the 26th of November we had a Leadership Seminar by John Faser (Chairman and CEO of UBS Global Asset Management).

He talked about financial markets, the weak dollar, asset management business, sovereign funds and leadership.

It was a plain straight and frank talk. It was very useful for me to understand the way the asset management business worked.

The key take-away was that the dollar might not see much of a down-side now and might appreciate in the future.

For more information check this out
http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/news/spotlight/2007/0712_speaker_fraser.html

Learning in and outside the class-room

Cambridge provides a safe environment to learn and experiment new things. One thing I really enjoyed learning during this term was Cuban Salsa. This has been a unique experience for me as I had never before tried any form of dance. Every Tuesday at Darwin we have a Salsa session and it is really cool.

In the class-room I learn as much from my fellow class-mates as I do from the lecturers. For example when we were talking of Japanese Business Culture, our Japanese friends were a greater source of information than any text-book written on the subject.

Outside the class-room, we have so many guest lectures and leaders from the industry providing insights. Most of them are inspirational and practical in nature. A few of them turned out to be a bit boring. However, it is a good practice to attend these sessions as there is always some information that is interesting in all these session.

Moving on to the teaching quality in JBS. The quality and the involvement of the lecturers/professors has been great. They are quite open to ideas and spend a lot of time to get the basics right. During this term we had 11 lecturers teaching us.
In terms of the quality of the lecturers/professors, I would like to classify them in the following categories
1) Excellent - 20% (I would love to attend any class on any subject conducted by these folks)
2) Good - 20% (Subject Matter experts who can give good practical examples and capture the audience)
3) Meet Expectation - 55% (Real cool folks who have great knowledge and can teach in a very systematic and nice way. They are folks who are great teachers and meet my expectations).
4) Below Expectation - 5% (Folks who are subject matter experts but cannot entice their audience for a long time)
5) Poor - 0% (Have not come across anybody who fall in this category)

This opinion and classification is purely based on my observations and may be different from the opinion of my other class-mates.

On-line social networking - what does this mean for big businesses (Jeff Patmore)

The Business Technology Special Interest Group organized a talk by Jeff Patmore (Head of Strategic University Research at BT) about Online Social Networking and its impact on big businesses.

It was a very delightful and insightful talk about Web 2.0. I learnt more about the latest trends and fashions in the networked world. Jeff brings along a lot of enthusiasm and experience in his interaction and I should say it was contagious.

Please find below a few links that I found very useful.

1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE (Web 2.0 ... The Machine is US/ing US)

2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o (A vision of students today)
3) http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/ (The most successful online daily news capsule)

The world is changing all around and it is very essential to learn and collaborate in the Web 2.0 world.

Silicon Valley Connect comes to Cambridge

From the 15th through the 17th of November, we had the Silicon Valley Connects comes to Cambridge program at the Business School. It was a great event and an opportunity to know as to what was the buzz on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean (or should I say Pacific Ocean).

There were quite a lot events (including debates, panel discussion and networking events). I attend a few of them and found it very insightful. The events I attended are listed below

1) The teams behind the "Hi-Tech" companies....How do we do it now? Who do we need now? - A panel discussion with Megan Smith (Google :VP - New Business Development) and Reid Hoffman (Founder LinkedIn).

2) Enterprise 2.0: How big companies use lessons from customer Internet so they survive? - A panel discussion with Ellen Levy (Founder of Silicon Connect), Allen Morgan (Managing Director of Mayfield Funds), Ted Shelton (Managing Partner -The Conversation Group) and Julie Farris (Founder of Scalix)

3) Working for a big company versus a start-up. Why Choose? - A panel discussion with Megan Smith (Google), Julie Farris (Sclaix) and James Slavet (General Partner, Greylock)

4) Hot trends in the valley - A panel discussion with Chris Coffman (Library House), Brett Bullington (Angel Investor), Hans Peter Brondmo (Plum), Kara Swisher (AllthingsD) and Ted Shelton (TCG)

Quite a great time to learn about the new things that are driving businesses.

Creation of Indian Multinational Corporation (Alan Rosling)

Today we got a chance to listen to the views of Alan Rosling about the creation of an Indian Multinational Corporation (Tata). Alan is the Executive Director of Tata Sons (one of the largest conglomerates in India with a revenue of about US$ 22 billion). His presentation was based on facts and numbers and was very useful. In terms of the long-term, he believed India is definitely a place to invest and grow the business in. Indian companies have been very active in the merger and acquisition space. Indian companies are now providing quality service/goods (there are three times the number of SEI-CMM level 5 companies in India in comparison to the rest of the world).

On a one-to-one comparison with China, India is way behind in attracting foreign investments and providing infrastructure. However, India has a good knowledge base and can build up on its Intellectual Property. Alan sounded like a firm believer in the Indian story and I really appreciate his grasp on numbers related to India and Indian businesses.

I believe that India is at the threshold of a great opportunity and should effectively use its strengths to foster international trade and build great companies.

Enterprise Tuesday 2 (Lifestyle or Global Business" by Eric Baker)

The talk about "Lifestyle or Global Business" by Eric Baker founder and CEO of Viagogo and StarHub was an inspiring one. It was a frank talk about Entrepreneurial aspirations, markets and global business.

The key factors for a successful entrepreneur according to Eric were
1) Independent Thinker
2) Deal well with uncertainty and risk
3) Willing to take responsibility
4) Tenacious and persistent
5) Passionate - enjoying the journey
6) Ability to communicate and lead

Above all "You cannot succeed if you do not try".

I was really moved by his passion and ability to communicate so well.

For more information, please link on to http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/enterprise/timetable.html

Enterprise Tuesday 1 (Motivation - Why we do it? )

Cambridge offers great opportunities for people aspiring to be entrepreneurs. Judge Business Schools Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning orchestrates the entrepreneurial interest through various programmes. One of the key programme is the "Enterprise Tuesday", where in entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and angles take about enterpreneur-ship.

This Tuesday (23rd Oct), we had a talk by Alex van Somersen and Dr. Nicko van Somersen about their motivation to be entrepreneurs. They are founders of nCipher (http://www.ncipher.com/) and ANT (http://www.antlimited.com/), which are listed on the London Stock Exchange. They spoke about their passion and the motivating factors that led to establishing their companies.

The key mantras to take away from their talk were
1) Idea
2) Team
3) Investors - They got their investor by accident at a Hotel lobby in the US
4) Market
5) Customers
6) Advisors
7) Luck

It was a real cool session and I enjoyed it as well. Looking forward to next session by Eric Baker (who sold his company to eBay for US$307m) about "Lifestyle or Global Business" on the 30th of Oct.

For more information, please link on to http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/enterprise/timetable.html

The first month

A few pictures to highlight the fun and excitement of the MBA.

Wow !!! We just completed one month of our MBA programme. It's been a real quick month. We have our first exam in a couple of weeks. The MBA is an intense program and teaches the importance of prioritization.

Its been a good week for me. I started attending some of the career events. I attended presentations by Delloite, Morgan Stanley, BCG and Diamond Consultants. Next week I plan to attend a session by the Barclay's Retail arm.

I started playing baseketball again. It's been a while since I entered the court. Enjoyed playing with some of the good players from my college (Darwin). I plan to play at least once a week.

Term-1 : Week-3 (Quick Turns)

Living in Cambridge has great advantages (don't worry too much about the weather:) ). We get a chance to meet a lot of people (academicians/entrepreneurs) who are experts in their fields. The college season has just started and the town is bustling with student activities.

Oh !! Yes !! I have started to do things I have never done before. My friends and I went to the Wolfson college for our first Salsa session, and it was real cool. I enjoyed it so much that I plan to take Salsa lessons whilst in Cambridge.

We now have a our first MBA project called the Cambridge Venture Project (CVP) and it is the first real project we do as part of the MBA. There are two more big ones coming down the lane. We are a team of 5 people working on the CVP and being in a great amount of varied experience to the project. Our team comprises of

Dr. Abel (Spaniard/French who has been working in UK as a Genome research expert at EBML-EBI)
Jaison (Brit who has been working in the mining industry in Argentina and owns a company as well)
Marisa (Malaysian who has been working in the UK for Texas Instruments)
Tao (Chinese guy who has been working in China for a Telecommunications firm)
and finally your truly :)

We have started lesson on Accounting, Corporate Finance, Management Science and Management Practice. Some of these sessions have been real eye-openers and inspiring as well.

We have tons of pre-reading, assignments, career (ad)ventures and events to attend. MBA is slowly teaching me to prioritize things. Its a great adrenaline rush with so many things happening all around me.

The most important thing is that I'm enjoying every moment of my MBA; with so many new friends and new things I'm learning each day.

Week-2

It's just been two weeks and it seems as if we have been together as a group for a very long time. It's cool as we get to know everybody even better at school. So many parties, pub nights and get-together. I'm slowly fitting back into the vibrant college mode.

This week started with a session with Kevin Roberts (CEO, Satchi and Satchi), wherein he highlighted the importance of doing things differently, rather than just falling into the eternal follow-the-leader mentality.

We finished our course on Economics (wow!!! that fast). We even started working on our CVs and case interviews.

I guess the highlight of the week has been the large number of pub-nights and celebration of the Chinese Full-Moon festival.

The first week

The first week is now over and I enjoyed every bit of it. It was a slow start with introductions and a few classes. Most of the time was spent in interacting with class-mates and knowing each other better. Even though I cannot remember the names of 149 of my class-mates yet; I can remember something (e.g., name, country, industry or background) about each of my class-mates.

The three most inspiring and cool session during this week has been

1) Team building - Complex High Performance Teams with Mark de Rond (JBS Staff who worked closely with Cambridge's rowing team): A wonderful insight into teams and performing in very difficult situations.
2) Branding a City through Olympics with Lois Jacobs (President International Operations - Jack Morton) - An inspiring talk about how Jack Morton managed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2004 Athens Olympics with about 4.5 million people watching the event.
3) Simulating Innovation for a More Competitive Europe by Prof. Around de Meyer (JBS Director) - The presentation had some very interesting numbers about outsourcing and how Innovation is viewed from the European perspective (Even though I don't concur to some of the finer details presented:)

The first two weeks will be a bit slow, but after that it going to get really busy starting October.

We had an Alumni meet on Saturday (22nd) and it was a Black-Tie event (The first black-tie event of my life). I chipped in £48 to attend this dinner. At first I was a bit sceptical about the huge amount (especially when you are student) for a single dinner. However, after attending the dinner and meeting the people at the dinner, I realized that it is not about the food. It was more about networking and getting one-self acquainted with formal dinner events. There were about 30 odd people from my batch who had attended, and it was real cool to see everybody dressed so wonderfully. I will post some pictures of the event at a later point of time.

Next week we have a few Case Study boot-camps conducted by the Career Services team.

Overall, I'm quite happy with how things have transpired so far. So much fun and what a wonderful batch of new friends.

MBA: Term-1: First Day at School

My first day at school (today) was real fun. We got to meet the entire batch and get a brief introduction about the whole programme.

The day started at 8.30 AM with registration and formalities. It then moved on to introductions and welcome notes. The whole day was spent pretty much in introductions, getting to know my fellow class-mates and collecting course-ware. We even had a few students from the previous batch come over and provide us a few practical tips.

Our batch consists of 149 students from 45 countries. We have people from very varied and different industries (from Plastic Surgeons to Investment Bankers).

I found it a bit too difficult to remember the names of all my class-mates in just one day. It is so much fun and a great learning experience to be amindst such a talented and diverse group.

Aidah (my wife), had also come for the tea session, where in partners were also invited. Some of my friends had even got their kids for the tea session. The kids were all over the place and having a good time as well.

At the end of the day(6.30 PM), we were quite exhausted and a few of us headed to the pub near the school.

I now look forward to head back to school tomorrow and get into our first session on Economics.