exam time!

Management of Organizations and Strategic Analysis of Information Technology go on trial tomorrow... both closed book devils that have to be tackled first!

group formation dynamics draw to a close...

This is an interesting phase of life at bschool... spam mails floating around asking for groups... people cold calling asking to be part of groups... "have you found a group?"... "Mind joining me in forming a study group for this course?"... we have two exms only this time around... the other two were just assignments and take home... the existing study groups and sections will get automatically disbanded and new sections and groups will take over... those groups that have managed to work together very well, are probably sticking together as much as possible... those that did not manage to work out all that well are going thru the motions of getting their last assignments done before taking leave... when it comes to new groups, its your chance to get to know new faces and personalities... courses become more dispersed with some taking only 3 courses and some 5... all of a sudden, life has changed...

the citibank scholarships were announced today... 2 scholarships, $12500 each... the essays and resumes have to be done over the term break after the exams on monday... dont know if I will make it, given my lack of interest and background in finance... fingers crossed...

A new unexpected wave sweeps the community...

Today, the section lists for the 5th term courses were out... and that means two things... an emotional last day with our sections A, B and C... and new dynamics with the new section... and the dynamics include forming new groups... since now we all know each other very well, we have been left to form our own groups... and thats something lot of people werent ready for... except for some smart ones... there is some selection happening... all the ones who have given an impression that they are free riders (ppl who dont do their work in group work for whatever reasons) are being isolated... those who are known to be good in acads are in demand... as the groups are being formed, there is clear segmentation and self selection happening... in a way, i dont think its right... though free riders dont deserve any sympathy, it is important to have ppl who are not very good in acads but are hard working, sincere and bring in interesting thoughts... anyways, i did not take any efforts to form a group... i thought i can just let people approach me and i will have a group in place... and by the time it was 7 in the evening and no one approached me, i was beginning to feel weird... i was wondering if I was being isolated until the first mail came with an offer to be part of a group... i began to feel better and finally, it did work out and within an hour, i had all the study groups done for the different courses... hope this doesnt sound haughty but thats the laid back lazy bum that I am... it was an interesting exercise... new groups, new dynamics and new people to work with... its another means to get to know different people... lets see how it goes...

Response to a comment: Kanishka's blog: http://www.livejournal.com/users/kanishka_sinha/
Just today I realised that i have tonnes of pending mail and comments here to respond to... planning to do so over the next week...

Picked this up from alum, kaniska's blog... a site which confirms (??) your gender based on your writing... interesting... i was gratified to know my blog writing is male-ish...
http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html

Presentation skills

The IT course in this term concludes today with another set of presentations... the last 3 sessions of the course have been allocated by Prof.Banker to presentations by students... We have been allowed to choose a topic that we believe will help IT add value to the business... Yesterday was the second such session... my presentation went thru ok... i wasnt really happy with myself... thought I did not manage to keep all in the audience interested enough... though many came up to me and said they liked it, and i still am discovering ways to keep everyone clued on when I am talking in a presentation...

my presentation skills have improved a lot after I have come here... in the first term leadership development course, there was some useful feedback... i had done many presentations in past life, even to clients abroad and have always felt comfortable... but i have learnt some new things I did not know about myself here... that has helped me improved further but i do have a long way to go before I can perfect this one...

In general, the presentations have been good... nobody has had stage problems, and have been fluent in talking... some used video clips, flash scoured off the web to enhance the presentations... the best aspect has been how alomost everyone managed to manage their time effectively... if ever some overshot time, it was not by much... i have been impressed...

isb has revamped its alum site... we all got a mail asking our profiles to be updated... the carrot has been job postings from alums... :) i liked the site though it has just opened and alums are yet to completely visit it... i am going to watch out to see how this develops...

In the middle of some extremely busy work, there was a mass dunking today... Dunking is throwing people into the pool... and every birthday baby is dunked in the pool at midnight... its a tradition among ISB students... Today, there was a major dunking when people went for their friends and before u could realise almost everyone who had come to just see the burthday babies get dunked was in the pool... mass dunkings have been more popular in our batch... many mobile phones and wallets have lost their color and life in the process... ;)

have a presentation in the IT class tomorrow and I am the only IT guy in my group... so it falls on my head... have to go...

A village party after long...

There are 2 student villages in ISB... SV2 and SV3... there are supposed to be 4 according to the original plan and sv1 and 4 will be coming up as ISB grows... as of now, SV3, my village, has the reputation of being the kewler of the two... parties, loud music are routine while the mood at SV2 seems sober all the time... (I only hope those guys arent reading this stuff;))

Last night we had a village party after a long long time... it had been in the waiting for a while... and all the pent up energy was let out as the music rocked the village and the booze flowed... The depression of the exams and the stress of the past few weeks had to be discarded some way... it was a real good party that went on and on until 4 in the morning... Rajat Seth, fellow student and our in house DJ, was at his best with a damn good cross selection of music... everything from english to hindi to regional... jazz tracks to hard rock to love songs... it was total fun... we even paused to celebrate a birthday when the clock struck midnight... it was fun and the best saturday night for a long time...

today, we have a informal "beer and chips" session with Gurcharan Das... The "beer and chips" sessions were started to get all of us to have a more relaxed and informal session with profs and visitors... The first one was with Ravi Bansal, discussing economics, India and China... Today, I assume its going to be everything from P&G to nishkama karma... its going to be interesting...

Yesterday was tough... and the stress got to me I guess...

and today was the investments part 1 exam... tough one... had everyone dazed... some really intuitive problems... this was not a well managed course I wud say... wasnt very happy with the first part being done over just 3 weeks followed by the exam... though the subject per se has been extremely interesting and intuitive, the fast pace did take its toll on many... given that we are suffering a 4 week term here, its been really tough on non-quant guys... its all going to change with a more evenly balanced term next year but that doesnt help me! anyway, this stuff will get applied again in the finance electives...

The elective registration started... tough go, choosing electives... some very interesting courses... its high time we decided the specialization as some basic courses are on offer...

the fee hike got announced officially today... the forex rate has not been kind on ISB and the 3 lakh rupee hike has been inflated to 30K$ by the strong rupee... I hope, just for the fee sake, that the rupee goes back to its 50 bucks a $ rate... ISB does need the money for its development but what worries me the most is that, given the high interest rates, the EMIs can go out of hand... let me see how this pans out...

Bad day... angry, disappointed and extremely frustrated... Guess if I blog now, I will end up with paragraphs of crap... As for a homepage, I have long stopped maintaining one... and havent even had the time to think abt it here... sorry guys... in a bad mood today... guess its just one of those low days...

Mathur, Microsoft and Me ;)

I like to look at myself as a linux evangelist, though I was at one point in time a full time advocate of M$ and Gates... so much so that I cleaned up all MCSD and MCSE during my college days... then I got employed and started working on Linux... and have been in love with it ever since... today, i love both these guys for different reasons, though linux takes the cake
in my mind...
The meeting with Sanjiv Mathur turned out to be very interesting until I almost turned it into a little disaster for myself... His talk about the change management project, Saratoga, that he carried out in India, as part of a global organizational change aimed at eliminating any signs of bureaucratic attitude that may have set in... was pretty interesting and more importantly candid... Sanjiv is a very candid person by nature... atleast that was the impression we all got... he admitted his failures and is proud of what he and M$ have achieved... His detailed description of how the company is being turned inside out just to ensure that customer focus is given primary importance was very enlightening... the stories of failures were especially very interesting... along with a candid description from Mathur the implementer himself... some gems were, "How a company with one successful product can lose focus of opportunity in selling other products... Even if there are opportunities in getting X $s from another product, it is always equated to a small % increase in market share or margin of the successful product"... "Employees feel secure and are receptive when you tell them what wont change, than what will change, when advocating change!"... "Implementing change in any country, will have to be a mix of standardized processes and appropriate amount of localization. What works for you in your country wont work for me, even if its Bill Gates who is advocating it!"... I could go on...

His candid and frank presentation with the correct dash of humor made him seem a soft person... one must remember that he is in his early 30s... He has 4 years in wipro, one year in oracle and then 7 years in M$... to become the india marketing head in such a short career is phenomenal growth... that too if you are just a BA History graduate... and one could see why... If I have to say just one sentence for it, I will repeat what Huggy said... "Someone who is as candid as this guy, will never deceive himself!"... So true!

Now, coming to the interesting part... after the presentation, I was among a group selected for dinner with him... and i was itching to ask him about the Indian government's policy about linux, how it has released linux in 5 local languages and the move by china, korea and japan to build their own OS using linux as a base... After a first few minutes of introduction and ice breaking, I jumped in...

Mathur is known for his sharp and dismissive view on Linux... A recent ET report in which he had spoken about linux is a case in point... the first link that a google search of his name brings up is line by line rebuttal of his statement in that report by a linux fan in IIT bombay... and that made it so much more spicy... and as expected, the moment I mentioned linux, I had all his attention... or so I felt... he was staring at me, as if boring thru me... I mentioned abt all the government moves and asked him his views... as expected, he simply lined up all his points against linux... like the absence of a single business promoter... lack of a clear agenda... lack of even a few profitable companies based on linux (except red hat)... now I could have argued against his points... but what would bother me, if i were in M$ shoes, is the move by governments and their IT policy... and I asked him exactly that... I dont know if I used the wrong words or the wrong tone but he seemed put off... he simply dismissed me saying, "What govt policy? there is no govt policy!"... I thought I had been a bit too aggresive and had rubbed him the wrong way... anyways, there were others who had so much to talk abt that I could wthdraw then and there... but when it come to policy, Mr Mathur, I am sorry, I dont agree with you... check this out...

Kerala: http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/05/19/stories/2002051903550400.htm
Govt and open source: http://www.linuxforu.com/editorial/apr2003/MAIT.pdf
Asian policy: http://www.asiaosc.org/topic_9.html
Indian Policy: http://www.asiaosc.org/article_91.html

There need not be a written out policy, but then, there is indeed a clear move by even the MP govt to move to linux... As a M$ guy, I better be worried about the way govts are looking at linux...

anyways, it was indeed a evening to remember for me, Sanjiv and others in the dinner... at the end of the day, he seemed impressed, happy and that is very important for ISB, especially in these formative years...

Another hectic week

This term is becoming more hectic than expected... The courses have that seemed easy in the beginning, just faff (non quantitative) are looming large... While both huggy and Rajiv Banker (IT) have been excellent in the classes, there is so much tacit knowledge passed on in class... Investment Analysis and its complexities is beginning to give all those considered Finance in the past a serious scare... Many are reconsidering their elective choices... The registration for term 5's electives is also out and its a very crucial decision... Many basic fundamental electives like market research and futures and options are in term 5... And on top of all this is ELP, which for me atleast is getting more and more interesting but time consuming at the same time...

Today, my ELP team spent time with Ajit for an hour and that changed a lot of what we were planning to do as part of the ELP... He provided us with some much needed focus... I had the feeling that something was amiss, ever since the first day and it turned out to be a pull approach to the project from the perspective of what the client wanted at the end of the project... Talking with Ajit cleared a lot of uncertainity in the planning...

I also have taken it up on myself to write an essay for the IIMB manifestations event... I worked on the table of contents today and did a brain storming session with Mehul, who is also authoring the essay with me... We started pretty late but hope to cover good ground as I have been reading about the topic and observing the IT industry for quite some time to come...

Also, we had a new finance elective, "indian financial systems" added to term 5 today... It is being offered by Gangadhar, who is a post doctoral research fellow here... The post doctoral fellows (we call them PDFs) are part of a research faculty development program... and it was heartening to see a course from one of the PDFs... Gangadhar is a mine of knowledge when it comes to the Indian economy and its financial systems... The number of papers he has written and the books he has edited are his testimony... I sincerely wish he joins ISB as faculty after completing his research...

We have Sanjiv Mathur from Microsoft visiting us tomorrow, courtesy Huggy... I am among the few selected for a dinner session with him... Have to do my homework before I get to talk to him... Just a few minutes ago I read in the ET about the Indian government releasing GNU linux in regional languages... Enough cud to chew on for tomorrow I guess ;)

ISB LS hots up...

The leadership summit organizing team got its office and things are alive and kicking now... We have nearly 50 volunteers working on sending out mails, contacting sponsors, sending out mails to various b-schools in Asia, Europe and the US... Event organizers are working overtime to get the rules and regulations, topics, judges and related software finalized... There is this massive effort to raise all the money we need through sponsorship... Karthik Jayaraman, who is heading the whole project, is an amazingly organized guy... he somehow seems to have the time to do this, his ELP and still top the class... He has simply dedicated himself to making LS a grand success...

My spanish improved that much more today... We learned verbo ser and ester... when to use the two... i am beginning to construct sentences... there was a ballroom dancing class in the evening but I cudnt get a female partner to dance with :(... But Divya, alum from the founding batch, who is here with her husband doing the PGP, told me to drop in next time around and promised me a partner! lets see ;)

Tomorrow we discuss CISCO in the IT class... I just went through the case and being from the industry, having followed Cisco for a long time, it seemed a cake walk... Really want to value add in tomorrow's class and gain some CP points in the process... ;)

We have to do the ELP weekly report today.. its due tomorrow and so we have a late night meeting to discuss it out... have to do some work for that... thats pretty much whats pending... otherwise, a nice day... managed to finish many things I aimed for!

a new season for applications and placements

Somehow, I wasn't able to access blogger.com for the past two days and hence the 2 day blackout... So here I am with a bigger write up...

Friday had Alex kuruvilla from MTV talking to us about how they initially positioned the brand in the wrong segment and how they have now changed the positioning to a desi youthish brand and even drawing benefits with fringe products like clothing... a talk that I truly enjoyed! We also had Prof. Taneja from the new Shinawatra University in Thailand talking to us about China... The whole evening went in talks and a placom meeting where we were deciding about the student policy issues... CAS is debating the number of max offers we can hold and wants to peg it at 2. Many students want 3. Given that the companies will land up in the order of preference and the one week cap on deciding on a offer, I dont see this being a big issue, but still I preferred 2 to give everyone a fair chance at a decent job... lets see how this turns out...

Gurcharan Das's friday class was a gem... Bhagvad Gita was the point of discussion and I never thought so much deep about Arjuna and Krishna... I tested my beliefs about them and it was indeed pretty insightful... Nishkama Karma and Nishphala Karma were debated at length as this is one story everyone knows! While I enjoyed his "india unbound", I am not a particular fan of philosophy... Rawls, Nozic and Marx arent my cup of tea but this one class was thoroughly enjoyable... it made me think that much more...

the class afterwards was the most interesting of the term... Huggy Rao is on a roll... From being sceptical, he is one prof that has made Management of Organizations a very popular subject among people here... What a prof! his energy and enthusiasm are infective... I would travel miles to listen to him... He played out a small game in class to demonstrate how a small group can develop strong boundaries when given numbers and competition to deal with... we all fell for it when the game was played out and when he actually let the idea out, we all felt the group dynamics... this was any day better than a monologue lecture... Kellogg and ISB are very fortunate to have him...

Today has been the laziest day of the term... I simply could not put mind to studies... did data collection and some surfing for the ELP and my paper for the mercer competition... went to the city in the evening to the Raymonds showroom... have been thinking about a new set of business formals for the placement season... but raymonds turned out to be very disappointing... Atul suggested readymades... He is the textile guy from Bangkok and so postponed this to another day... So, having to turn the outing to be a meaningful one, we landed at Fusion 9... I liked the food and had my favourite vanilla desert to top the night... watched Hulk on my laptop and now, my brain is fresh for sunday... I have a spanish class, a meeting for the leadership summit, a meeting for ELP, a meeting for the research paper, a one page memo assignment about moral dilemma of Arjuna due on monday and quite a few calls to make... all this besides studies and readings for monday's classes!

Its time to give myself rest for a busy tomorrow! :)

The best class discussion of the year so far...

Today was good in many ways... Gurcharan Das was sick and his class was postponed and so, just one class today... :) What a class it turned out to be... We had had many good class discussion until now but these had been sporadic... The general quality had been fluctuating in my view... Today, in the infotech course, we were discussing Xuma, a ebusiness company that almost went bust in the days of the dotcom meltdown

The first 15 minutes was a presentation and recommendation by one of the groups about the case... Venkat, who had worked with e-funds in similar roles in the US did a stupendous job of explaining the technology and what Xuma tried and failed... That was followed by a one hour class discussion that I thought was the best I had experienced here... The class shredded the case until every possible opportunity for Xuma was analyzed and discussed... Prof. Banker, let the discussion which was scheduled for 20 minutes, extend to almost an hour... In the end he described it as a dream class for him! cudnt agree more...

Toughest of the lot

As the core terms near the end, I have already entered the electives and placements mindset... but I as well as many others have been brought back to reality by the investment analysis course... a gentle reminder that its not over until it is actually over... the amount of intuition and quant in this course have made it the most challenging of all courses until now... at the same time, the feeling of triumph when you manage to get the intuition going is something that cant be replaced as well :)

We had this term's dean's forum yesterday... the elective bidding has been scraped! the interests have been so diverse that except for 4-5 courses, there hasnt been a problem with the number of people opting for the electives... some interesting stats: most favoured majors... marketing - 147! fin - 109, LCM - 79, tech - 46 and ent - 10. the ent numbers are pretty low as many have opted to do specific courses in ent but not the whole specialization... that includes me too... some courses like prof. Kavil Ramachandran's "managing startups and growth" has been extremely popular...

Ok, that too much of acads and courses... we had the united airlines apac head in the campus yesterday... i could not attend the talk as I spent my evening talking to deputy dean Ajit Rangnekar... He had spoken a lot about placements in the dean's forum and his ideas on career selection were a revelation to me... He has had me thinking about the way I am going to apply for jobs on campus... more during the placements season as I aim to implement his suggestions... this year the placements may be narrowed down to a one month period to accomodate requests from the recruiters... ISB will also for the first time, invite companies on specific days, in the order of student preferences so that the most popular companies come first... the placom has been doing some good work and i will write more about it more as things unfold... as of now, its ELP all the way.... have a conf call tonight and have to prepare for that... so much to do before I sleep...

ISB Leadership Summit...

In the past weeks, I have been alluding to an event thats going to happen at ISB... After all the background developments, some hard work from a core team of students, the dream of a global summit hosted by ISB is finally coming through... ISB will conduct the ISB leadership summit in december... 10 to 14th... 4 days of key note speakers, debates, colloqiums, inter b-school events culminating in an alumni reunion...

For the past 2 years, ISB's student clubs have been holding their own events, inviting speakers, conducting competitions etc. This year, an idea was mooted... why not put together all the funds different clubs get to conduct one single 4 day summit, inviting the best brains from both the academia and industry... lot of credit should go to a core team of students who have been working very hard, drawing up budgets, catching up with sponsors and convincing the management about the idea. The dean and deputy dean have been more than just responsive, encouraging us in every step... and all has culminated in the "ISB leadership summit". Still a long way to go, if we pull it off, it will be a grand event and a great advertisement for ISB... A separate web site for the summit is coming up and will be online soon... The logo that I designed for this event is here... The list of speakers is impressive, though I am not sure how many will manage to attend given we started a bit late... This idea and contacts with the outside world started only last month... Maybe we could have planned it out to start in May, as soon as we entered, but it took time for the idea to crystallize... One thing that I am sure is that, whatever we do, we will leave an event, which if planned early enough, will be a highlight in the indian business calender every year...

thats it for now... for more info, just wait until the website comes up :) Back to my assignments!

term 4, elp, full swing...

Term 4 is in full swing... its a very different term... except for investment analysis which has more that the expected quant, the rest are all faff in ISB jargon...

ELP is the buzzword... the results were announced... I got my no. 1 bid... its for a US based startup called nSpace... my team is trying to design an entry strategy for nSpace into India... Looks exciting... we are interacting with the co-founder and the R&D director directly... lotsa conf calls and some hard work will be required... otherwise, everyone's going around asking which project each other is doing in ELP... there were some popular projects and everyone is curious to know who got these ones... new teams, new dynamics and many sessions of bonding and team building...

The whole week has been eventful... a new grade re eval procedure, ELP announcements, Gurcharan Das's classes... ISB never ceases to surprise you...

Gurcharan Das's classes have been totally different... he not being a professor shows... the campus never ceases arguments now about capitalism, socialism, ethics and communism... we had rawls, marx and nozic as readings for the first two classes! philosophy in b-school! these are topics that many of us would have discussed in leisure with friends without realizing that we are reflecting thoughts that are distinctly socialistic or capitalistic or communist... now its happening formally in a class and everyone jumps into the discussion as everyone has a strong opinion on issues of what is fair and what is not... Gurcharan Das has indeed managed to kindle this interest in us... one interesting statement I heard over lunch from a nearby table was this: "The whole debate about which is better, capitalism or communism is nonsense in any b-school... because anyone who is here is a capitalist and thats the reason he or she is here!" Now that set me really thinking... thats probably true... for even Gurcharan Das says that the only school in the world that does not subscribe to communism is the bschool! I have been reading "India Unbound" for the past one week, whenever I have found time and its a book I will surely recommend...

that was the week... as stressfull as it has ever been... so when i saw today was friday, i cudnt resist a trip to the city for a break... so off went atul, shilpi and I... today I had the costliest haircut I have ever had... shelled out 300 bucks for a new looking hairstyle that I am not sure is going impress the chics... somehow, i felt ripped off as all the guy did was make my hair look unkempt or so it seemed... anyways, verdict will come in tomorrow's first ELP project management session... lets see how many heads turn ;)

Too tired today...


wanted to blog but too tired... spent the whole evening travelling back to my Nokia office... crashing now..

Elective bidding...

For the first time in the 3 years, ISB is introducing elective bidding... While the first two batches had a rolickig time choosing which electives they wanted to take, this time, we have to bid as the student population has increased... before the announcement came, I was thinking about how students at kellogg bid for that solitary course from Philip Kotler and only a select few get selected... well, thats the reality now here as well...

some electives are in great demand... the market research course is fundamental for anyone planning marketing... there are many in this batch... the most popular course probably is the negotiation analysis course by madan Pilutla from LBS... its been so highly recommended by the alums that everyone wants to do this course... I met madan when he was here for the exec ed program to help him with some research... His research on bargaining and negotiations will stand with you fora long time... I only hope I get that elective... The other course thats popular is "Cases in finance" by Bhagwan Chaudry and the new IMF man, Raghuram Rajan... Everyone was anyways making a beeline for that one and more so now, after Raghuram Rajan was appointed by the IMF...

While we bid for the electives only at the beginning of the terms, we were asked for a tentative wish list so that the schedules could be drawn up... this is the first time that ISB is getting used to elective bidding and mathematical bidding model was done by 3 of our students with the help of Prof. Anjani Jain from wharton... He had taught us decision models and optimization and this has been a very interesting application of what we have been taught...

Term 4 classes have been very different... Gurcharan Das has been in a league of his own... he has never taught before and so is refreshingly different from the professors... that said, huggy rao has been simply amazing in class... he has been the best of all profs from Kellogg... For someone to make a course as dry as management of Organizations as interesting as he does is simply amazing... the information tech course has been easy going until now thanks to my background... investment analysis is quant, quant and more quant... suits me anyday! :)

lets see how this one goes...