Interview: Markus Rudolf of WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management

Leave a reply

Markus Rudolf

The financial crisis has taken center stage in business school classrooms around the world. Rightfully so, says the finance chair at one of Germany’s leading business schools.

How is the financial crisis affecting the way you teach finance?

One positive thing about the things that are going on right now is that we can learn a lot from them. You can empirically analyze how markets react in extreme scenarios. This is something you find in our lectures. Our lectures are focused on recent developments anyway, but this year we are teaching a lot about the financial crisis.

Of course, we also have conferences where we invite academics, as well as professionals. One example was the Campus for Finance New Year Conference recently where we had a lot of CFOs and CEOs here, one Nobel laureate, and a lot of professors. We were talking for three entire days about the financial crisis – what the reasons for it are and what can be improved in the future in order to avoid these developments that we have right now.

Continue reading →

Student Interview: Clarissa Tan at CEIBS

Leave a reply

Clarissa Tan

Clarissa Tan left her native Singapore to pursue an MBA at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai. We asked her about her aspirations, and how it’s been observing the financial crisis through a Chinese lens.

Why did you decide to do an MBA in China?

I wanted to switch careers from business unit control (primarily accounting and control) to private equity.  There is substantial and increasing private equity activity in China compared to Singapore, which is why I am committed to building a career in China.

By doing an MBA in China, I can re-tool my skill sets, gain some China-specific knowledge of its economy and industries, and network with China-focused individuals.  Doing an MBA in China also gives me adequate time and opportunity to form friendships and bonds in China.

Has studying in China given you a unique perspective on global finance?

Yes, studying in China has given me a unique perspective on global finance. One example is to learn about and to see first-hand the Chinese perspective on the current financial crisis.

Continue reading →

Interview: Emily Cieri of the Wharton School

1 Reply

Emily Gohn Cieri

Entrepreneurship cannot be just learned in the classroom, says Emily Gohn Cieri of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. You have to get out there and do it. Cieri is managing director of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs at Wharton. We asked her how an MBA can help aspiring entrepreneurs.

How can an MBA benefit aspiring entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurship cuts across every business discipline – management, marketing, operations, legal…. – studied in a business school. For an entrepreneur, it’s critical to have a broad understanding of these various disciplines, but also to understand how to these disciplines work together.

When an entrepreneur builds a business, he or she cannot focus only on one issue at a time, but must be able to understand how to integrate them. From my experience, many times students seek an MBA to complement their strong technical or engineering background or industry-specific skills, with a full range of business skills that are needed to be an effective entrepreneur.

Continue reading →

Student Interview: Naveen Sikka at UC Berkeley Haas

Leave a reply

Naveen Sikka

If you’re interested in “clean tech” or any other emerging sector, it’s important where you go to business school. Second-year MBA student (and now fresh graduate) Naveen Sikka tells why UC Berkeley Haas and the San Francisco Bay Area were perfect stepping stones into the green energy sector.

How did you get interested in clean tech?

I actually come from a very untraditional undergraduate background. I went to Columbia University and graduated in 2000 with a degree in political science and French. At the time, the economy was really hot, so I just moved into consulting. I did that for seven years before coming here.

I got really interested in green tech right before I came to Haas. I did a finance project in energy and really took to it. Clean tech is the confluence of a lot of different forces. You see a lot of people who maybe aren’t energy people coming into this space, because it combines basic technology with policy, geopolitics, climate change, human dimensions. I knew that Berkeley would be a good place to study this, but I didn’t really appreciate fully the magnitude of that decision until I got here.
Continue reading →

Student Interview: Michael Ross at UCLA Anderson

Leave a reply

Michael Ross

After ten years working on the East Coast, Michael Ross came out West to push his comfort zone as an MBA student at UCLA Anderson. With his first year almost behind him, we asked him how it’s going.

How did you end up at UCLA? And why Los Angeles?

It’s like the admissions interview all over again. I had about nine years of professional experience before I started. I graduated from UPenn with an undergraduate focus in computer science, and I took a couple of classes at Wharton, as well. I was interested in marrying business to technical applications.

I joined an incubation services and information technology firm backed by Kleiner Perkins called Silicon Valley Internet Partners. I was there for four years. It was 1998, and nascent Internet times. And you had a lot of start-ups with venture backing and large companies that wanted to be entrepreneurial and wanted to understand how to use the Internet.

So I was there for four years. I loved it. I was in a product management role, and I worked across disciplines, with strategists, graphic designers, interface designers, technologists. It was an incredible experience, and left me desiring to have that experience I progressed professionally. Unfortunately, those were anomalous times.  I progressed, those experiences became fewer and farther between.

Continue reading →

Interview: Cynthia Wharton of South Carolina Moore

Leave a reply
Cynthia Wharton

Cynthia Wharton

For prospective students in their thirties and forties, an MBA can be a great way to remarket yourself, says Cynthia Wharton, director of Employer Recruitment and Outreach at the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina.

Do you get a lot of older students in your MBA programs?

Traditionally, we have several programs that attract older students. Part-time MBA students have the opportunity to work; classes are in the evenings and on weekends. Students may want to gain additional knowledge through an MBA program, but not let go of a job if they have one. In other instances, students may want to be in job-search mode during the day and continue with their schooling at night.

In our traditional MBA program, we do see some older students come through. The mean age is around 27-28 at Moore. Some years it can be a bit higher or lower. We aim to find students with at least two to four years of work experience.
 Continue reading →

Interview: Zelon Crawford of Temple-Fox

1 Reply

Zelon Crawford

Going back to school can be a jolt if you’ve been out for a decade or more. We got some tips from Zelon Crawford, director of Graduate Career Management and Corporate Relations at Temple University’s Fox School of Business and Management.

Would you recommend part-time MBAs over a full-time program for prospective students in their thirties or forties?

Full-time students tend to be younger. Some of the older students do get frustrated in this environment. I would recommend a part-time program to older students. Because of the varied age range of students, older students acclimate to the part-time or EMBA programs. I would encourage that.

Part-time students also do not want to leave their companies and want to navigate the corporate structure internally. Sometimes they want to do something more entrepreneurial, change industries or use the MBA as another credential. For the full-time program, there is a required internship in the summer. For older students who are currently working, they generally are not interested in participating in the internship component.

What should older students look for in an MBA program?

Although there is nothing definitely specific to age, older students may want to investigate informal tutoring services. Sometimes students find it difficult to adjust to statistics, economics, etc. Other courses are more straightforward, but for some courses older students may need extra help. However, this advice is relevant for other students of any age.
Continue reading →

A Sneak Peek at Stanford’s Annual Cool Product Expo

2 Replies

Video games that read your mind. A bike that you run on instead of pedal. Really, what could be more California than Stanford’s annual Cool Product Expo?  We spoke with Amanda Kaye Boaz, a second-year MBA student at Stanford GSB and co-organizer of this geek- and green-friendly celebration of innovative  products.

Four products at this year's event: 1) Elliptigo Glide Bike; 2) D.Light Design's efficient LED lighting; 3) Siftables; and 4) NeuroSky's video game

First of all, what is the Cool Product Expo?

Last year we had about 800 attendees, including current students, alumni, local professionals, press, etc. It’s open to anybody. It is the largest student-run event on campus, and we are really fortunate because of our location in the Bay Area. There are a lot of start-ups that come out with really cool, innovative products.

We typically get about 50 exhibitors from around the area who are launching products that we think are really innovative and cutting-edge. For instance, this year we are having someone over who found a way to let you play video games with your mind. They have neurosensors that they attach to your head, and with these you can actually move the characters on the video game.

So, I assume most of the “cool” products are high-tech things.

By the nature of where we are located we have a little more technology, but it’s not just technology. We will have clean-tech cars, and Cal Cars that convert Priuses into plug-in electric vehicles. Last year, we had GM come with their electric vehicle. We are hoping to get them to come again this year.

It’s a lot of everything. We have a number of booths for current student projects. We’re having people in the engineering school who made irrigation systems for developing countries, and another student coming who is bringing an extension for people who don’t have use for their hands, so they can actually play golf.

Continue reading →

Interview: Paola Cillo of SDA Bocconi

Leave a reply

Paola Cillo

From her vantage point in Milan, Paola Cillo at SDA Bocconi sees marketing as increasingly tied to innovation.

What do you think makes a strong marketing program?

Strong and leading-edge research is a necessary condition to make a program strong. Yet, it is also very relevant to integrate good and rigorous research with strong managerial practice. This is the reason why in our program, we work closely with companies and integrate case studies into our courses. I think the bridge between the scientific approach and more managerial action is critical to have a good MBA program, not just for marketing, but for other fields, as well.

I think in some MBA programs this might be missing, because many people that teach either come from companies or are completely focused on academic research. I think it is very important to have a faculty that is very active in research, but I wouldn’t say that a very strong faculty automatically means that your MBA is strong. They have to be able to share their knowledge with students. We have tried to reach a good balance between these two aspects.

How is marketing changing these days?

Marketing is changing in the sense that the word marketing is more and more associated with the word innovation. What we are trying to do in our courses is to explore how to take an innovative approach to marketing – a new way of communicating with consumers and collaborating with consumers.

And the other side is the technology, which is not just an enabler of this interaction, but also shapes the way that some marketing processes are applied. That means, generally speaking, all of the CRM (customer relations management). This is the way we are trying to grapple with this evolution of marketing. Our electives in marketing are very much focused on innovation, and we have courses focusing on how technologies can enhance marketing performance of companies, and how they – especially the Internet – can shape how companies interact with their customers.

Though, I have to say that the basic approach to marketing – how companies actually consider marketing – hasn’t changed that much. What is changing is actually the opportunities that they have to put this general approach into practice.  What we try to use different cases and examples to show what it means to do marketing in today’s context.

Continue reading →

Interview: Dominique Hanssens of UCLA Anderson

Leave a reply

Dominique Hanssens

Location, location, location – it also matters for MBA students looking to focus on marketing. We spoke with Dominique Hanssens, who chairs the marketing faculty at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, about what makes a good program, and why the West Coast might have its finger on the pulse of future trends.

What makes a good marketing program? Not all top-ranked business schools necessarily have strong marketing programs, right?

There’s not a one-to-one overlap, that is true. There are many places that have good marketing teaching, but not that many that have a state-of-the-art research program.  But the following generalization is true: all of the top programs are world-class in their research, but not all of the world-class research programs are among the top programs at the MBA level. The reason is that there is a certain amount of inertia in reputation development.

Let me give you an example: One of the reasons why the Kellogg School at Northwestern does so well is Professor Philip Kotler. He has written some very important marketing books at a critical time in marketing’s history as a discipline, and is widely recognized for that. A lot of the MBA students from 20 or more years ago have read these books, and many of them are now in senior managerial positions. That established a reputation, a long-term effect that Kellogg is able to capitalize on.

There are some other equally strong marketing research faculties – including Columbia, Stanford and UCLA for example – that don’t have such pioneering book authors. As a result, they haven’t communicated their value proposition as effectively with the MBA audience. That’s the fundamental difference, as I see it.

Continue reading →