MBET Blog
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
"The Billies"
Greetings from 610 class. Carla is giving us feedback on the CD-based "high-risk business startup" simulation.
Raghavan got the "Best Use of Other People's Money" award for creating $309M of personal wealth vs an average of $87M. I think I made about $50M or so, but I defend myself by saying I didn't try very hard.
Henry got the "Made in the Shade" award for making an $4.5M of personal value per average hours of work per week - the highest hourly pay by quite a margin.
Finally, Fahad got the "Silver Tongue" award for the best write-up.
It was a good simulation and fun was had by all.
In other news, we had our term 2 finance quiz this morning, marking the end of exams for this term. All that's left is handing in the law & tax papers. Nearly there!
Monday, March 29, 2004
From the Globe and Mail
- Conglomerates depress value
- Private companies are passe
- Religion has no place in business
An interesting article. In a program that focusses on technology, equity financing and the value of having an exit strategy, what lessons can we learn from Pattison?
Easily Confused
So, upon reflection, I had it all wrong.
Campaign Waterloo is indeed selling benefits and not features in its marketing campaign. Chair sponsorships are a "feature". "More talent" is a benefit. But I got it backwards. And there's a reason.
I'm a feature buyer.
In spite of trying to hold on to marketing dogma, I, personally, buy on features and not on benefits. If I'm buying a Java development tool I know what the benefits are. I want to know what it does and how it works. When I buy a laptop,I know that wireless ethernet "untethers" me. I want to know whether it's 802.11b or g and who made the chipset.
So there's no huge earth-shattering conclusion here, other than that you shouldn't forget to mention the features in there somewhere with the benefits. Don't lose the trees for the forest.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Campaign Waterloo
So, Campaign Waterloo kicked off and I've been having a devil of a time trying to figure out exactly what they want to raise $260M for. They finally sent me a link to the campaign web page and if you dig hard enough they do have a project list... and what a list it is. It looks like there's a lot of "small" projects in the sub-$5M range, which makes for a lot of projects. There are some interesting ones that I think will really catalyze great improvements in CBET and the MBET program. These include:
- Research Innovation Fund: this includes $250,000 for start-up seed money. Woo-hoo!
- UW Entrepreneurship
- Chair in Entrepreneurship: this would be in addition to the Eyton chair, which Prof. McNaughton currently holds. It would be in the Engineering faculty, but I imagine CBET would benefit and make use this person as well.
Plus there a lot more of them, all of which look exciting as well. As a marketing person, I have no clue why they're so cagey with what they're going to use the money for. They keep on nattering on about a "talent trust" but you know what that says to me - nothing. I mean, it's like a slogan for pop: "The Real Thing". Ok, so I know it's "real" as opposed to some sensory illusion (take that Plato!) but I'm still a bit fuzzy on what kind of "thing" it is. Could we work a little further down the taxonmy of physical objects here please?
They have a lot of projects so I suppose it would seem unfair to hold up any one or the other and academics always loathe giving examples that are only subsets of the actual population, but really - if you want my money show me BENEFITS not FEATURES. This is basic marketing stuff here. You want to ask me for $100 to help build a "talent trust"? What colour is a "talent trust"? Tell me you want to fund another chair of entrepreneurship, a health informatics institute or a center for german studies. Those things I can get behind.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Nipper's Patent Law Blog
An interesting, if somewhat technical, blog on US patent issues, news & case law.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Queen's wins Samusing MBA Case Competition
OK, I know that MBET isn't a full-blown two-year MBA program. Still,I feel like we're missing out on all the MBA competitions out there - cases competitions, business plan competitions and so on. Nobody tells us about this stuff. Which isn't surprising I suppose as the profs are as new at this as we are. Nevertheless, future MBET students, keep an eye out for this stuff. The LES Business Plan competition was an amazing experience. Don't miss out on these opportunities.
Monday, March 22, 2004
An Economic Analysis of a Drug-Selling Gang's Finances
Steve Levitt is my new hero. There was a piece on him in the New York Times last week and he's amazing. I never thought of economics being particularly, well, creative, but this guy is bringing economics to a whole new level. It's interesting stuff.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Ephemera
So I'm nearly done marketing... nearly.
The capstone sim runs on Friday mornings, making Fridays a bit of a treat - at least for capstone nerds like me. We hit $308M in sales with profits of $25M. We hit a stock price of $87 which is even better than I would have imagined. I'll give away a secret now that the game is almost over - in my analysis you need to come out of the gate running. Build up fast. Not too fast, but fast. And in the last two round, cruise... don't build any manufacturing plant capacity, don't spend huge amounts on marketing & promotions. Reap the huge market share you've built. If we get out-sold in the last round I don't care much because I can guarantee that we'll be the most profitable team anyway.
And in out-of-school news I swam for the first time this week this morning. Future MBET students, don't forget to take sometime out to work out. I signed up for "swim training" this term and wow - what a workout. I would normally swim 1000 yards and in swim train they put up a 3000 yard workout of which I do somewhere between 2k and 2.5k. This morning I only swam about 1.2k - the pool at the PAC is a yard pool for those of you that can tell the difference between a 25 yard pool and a 25 meter pool.
Finally, winter term classes are almost over. Nearly there...
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Linked In
So I finally joined LinkedIn. As far as social networking apps go, this one seems a lot more useful than other ones I've used. It's very focussed on professional contacts, specifically job hunting and sales. I loathe even mentioning it as there has already been so much written about social networking apps that it seems overkill to say anything else about them. So I'll leave it by saying that I hope it manages to get me a job.
Monday, March 15, 2004
Real Question?
Someone asks if any of us are watching The Apprentice... which is either a real question or there's someone using blog comments for advertising. I suspect it's an honest question as there's more than enough media coverage of the Apprentice, what with both the Globe and the Post running a weekly analysis of the latest episodes.
Yeah, lots of us watch it. Some of us were even glad when Omarosa and Heidi were fired. One guy (who shall remain nameless) even caught Trump on The View. He claims his wife taped it for him. Sure.
We figure that the next MBET class should be run like the Apprentice. Only one person graduates. And we're trying to picture the various profs taking turns firing people. Which is really only amusing if you know who all the professors are. Most are not quite as bold as Herr Trump. I, like many B-school students no doubt, think the show has a lot to say about being a business person. The tasks range from interesting to downright dumb, but people's actions and reactions are always interesting. Like Jesse getting fired in week 6 for not standing up to Omorosa.
In other MBET news, this is a horrible week as marketing is due and it's huge and I have far too much to do on my marketing assignment. Plus my kids are on march break as they've decamped down here for a few days... argh! Why can't winter be over!
On the upside, team Chester continues to rule the Capstone simulation, now topping all of share price, market cap and cumulative profit. We're at $59M in cumulative profit, which is pretty short of the "Hall of Fame"ers with their $300M cumulative profit figures, but there's still a couple of rounds left to get us to $100M. Some of us are going to enter the Capstone "Spring Challenge" which pits teams from all sorts of different schools against each other. It should be interesting.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Lorem Ipsum - All the facts - Lipsum generator
For the irrelevant department, my lifelong fascination with "Lorem Ipsum" continues. Ah, Aldus PageMaker, such find memories.
Monday, March 08, 2004
Blame India Watch
Alright! Blog on. Excellent blog covering anti-Indian and anti-outsourcing sentiments.
Sick
Heavens, was I sick on Friday. I came down with this fever Thursday night and I was basically confined to bed until Saturday. Luckily the family came up to Waterloo to take me home where I seem to have recovered. I still feel wiped out though. It could be the virus (or whatever) or it could be that I've eaten maybe 2000 calories total over the last 3 days which would make you feel a little sluggish even in good health.
Interviews for next year's MBET program are coming up soon - March 13 to be exact. And the faculty even have their own space this time as the CBET space wasn't finished at this time last year. Good luck to candidates and remember to try not to look too panic-stricken if they ask you wierd, open-ended questions. I didn't personally find it to be a useful approach.
And for those who get the nod, start getting ready for next March right about, hm, now... we have papers and assignments due for strategy, marketing, tax, law and another simulation project for 610. This time it's a standalone PC-based simulation, "Launching a High-Risk Business" (which can be found if you dig around from here). I'll go into some more detail on the simulation later on but we're not supposed to discuss it with one another so I'll wait until after the due date. It's fun, but not without flaws.
Oh, and last but not least, a present for the holiday that we don't have in March - the new 610 readings cost $162 including tax. Yay.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
Software Trade
I got this image from an Industry Canada report...
Interesting that software is the only area where Canada runs an internation trade surplus for "high-tech" goods. I guess even with the relative downturn in the market it's still a great market to be in.
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
For Those Who Have Not Visited
Someone on campus (the Science helpdesk?) runs a webcam allowing you to view how lovely Waterloo campus looks... or how bad it looks today.
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Moitvation, Lack Thereof
As we hit the halfway mark in the academic year (which goes until August for me) I find myself struggling to stay motivated. Ironically, I find that reading week made things worse, rather than better. It interrupted my flow and helped remind me of how much I miss seeing my wife and kids every day. Spring is here but that doesn't see to be helping any - Waterloo turns into a pile of mud in the spring, somewhat negating any relief from winter.
This is reflected in my lack of posts lately but maybe with a bit more sunshine you'll hear more about the winter term.
