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Last night was the last Varisty “£1-a-pint” night for a majority of the class.  The strong social side of the course is not something often written about on these pages.

Perhaps in the past I have been conditioned to seperate “work and play” and continued to do so.  The tools, models and theory are great but the network of new friends, from so many backgrounds, cultures and countries, is, in the words of a friend from India “the hidden pot of gold, at the end of the rainbow.”  The shared experience of this journey will, I hope, remain a strong bond between us all forever and wherever we all end up.  Awesome!

All most as soon as it has begun, the MBA is coming to a close.  This week I start my last taught module.

The subject is International Business and in many ways I couldn’t think of a more fitting way to finish – with such diversity in the group, this course has been truly international. 

The course readings are significant.  In fact there are so many that the binder is already full – and that is before any handouts for the week.

The highlight I hope will be the FINS exercise at the end of the week, where each team represents different groups in a simulated negotiation.  There are a mix of western multinationals, governments of emerging countries and local companies in the emerging countries.  Negotiations are expected to centre around trade incentives, tax breaks, joint ventures, knowledge transfer, government stability (or likely instability!), cost optimisation and managing the media and press to each groups advantage!  Should be a good way to finish.

The exam and module results have been released today.  It is always a nervy time when you open the letter to read the results; it was great to be with some fellow students as we all opened them together.

This term I did better than last term!

I am really pleased. Firstly I passed everything, which is not to be underestimated as it was a very busy period at the end of last term.  Made slightly more busy for me as I was also involved in organising the Ball.

I managed to get distinctions in 3 (nearly 5!) out of 5 subjects; Corporate Finance, Modelling & Analysis for Management and Practise of Management – that was for the charity work we did with Age Concern.  The other two subjects were Marketing Strategy and Strategic Advantage.   My course work for these two was enough but, even with my best ever exam essay performances (!!), the exams were still what let me down from completing the full sweap.

Life on the MBA contines at a different pace these days.  I have just completed the module on Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation and it was excellent – watch out you Entreprenueurs out their as I need a victim sorry, candidate, to interview for the assignment.  The course had a good number of guest speakers who all brought their unique view of Entrepreneurship; academic, business owner and venture capitalist investor.  

Next week is the last taught week on the MBA for me and for many.  The course is International Business and I have heard it is excellent.  It is going to be another sad time I fear for life in lecture room A0.01 will come to an end.  It is the last module for a few people too, so we are organising a BBQ for the class for when it finishs, as a final farewell, until Graduation.  What a fantastic roller coaster it has been.

-The big news this week is that the sun is shining and my lovely wife is expecting a baby!

For those that are interested to know how the Business Decision analysis course went, well it was a game of two halves; the first half excellent, the second half not very well recieved by the majority.  Some useful software presented which should be very useful for my dissertation and beyond I hope.

This week however belongs to the expectation of the new arrival; I have been overwhelmed by peoples kind words.

UPDATE:

I have incorporated many of the concepts, tools and techniques into my consultancy work.

This is having a massively positive difference to my customers as we are able to make more objective decisions, faster and incorporating more subjective criteria (such as customer convenience factors or variability of demand).

Interested? Then please visit my consulting website, contact me and we can go from there.

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This week sees the beginning of the Business Decision making and Efficiency analysis module.

I am really not sure what to expect for the up coming week although the module looks thoroughly prepared with interesting guest speakers in the evenings and lots of reading in the packs.  It is interesting to know how people make decisions and again surprising to find a whole specialism dedicated to the research of it.

Decisions and their justification, happen all the time so it will be interesting to see the approaches and theories presented as well as some, hopefully practical, tools.