1. it talked about topics like the geographic orientation of the management style of organizations, for instance, whether they were ethnocentric (controlled by the parent office in home country), regio-centric, polycentric … etc somethings we usually know but at times fail to notice
   
2. Cross Cultural sensitivity: specific interest to me was the hofstede's cultural dimension index (http://www.geert-hofstede.com/geert_hofstede_resources.shtml) that measures various (often perceived) intangible measures of cultural distinctions between people belonging to different countries and regions, and its corresponding influence on the workplace.
   
3. Organizations structures: most interesting for me here was the matrix structure and its effects in the workplace with regards to power influence and politics within the organization
   
4. Cross cultural game/exercise where we were split into three distinct teams with weird names and were given specific characteristics that we had to exhibit in our behavior, for example one group was instructed to maintain safe distance from others, while another was asked to hug! We were not supposed to tell the other groups what our characteristics were.. On the face of it , this exercise appeared futile, but when enacted, it gave a very clear picture about how cultural differences lead us to form dislikes and distrust towards other cultures and how best should we approach people of other cultural backgrounds.
   
5. ABN AMRO takeover case study , which was current and undecided at the time we took it.
   
6. This was also the course with 3 industry experts to speak on IM topics (see my previous post)
   
7. We had to take a test, write a research paper, analyze a company and give a presentations + paper on it!!! Phew loads and loads of work.
   

Prof Ruigrok is a charming person with an ever-smiling face and tries to incorporate our needs into his teaching (the ABN AMRO case for e.g.). some students however felt that IM as a subject did not add too much value for them, but others like me felt we had benefitted.. now how big the delta benefit was .. well it depends!

Finance I: Here we learnt about the basics of finance, things like book keeping (accounting), inventories, profitability, cash flows etc etc.. most importantly concepts of management accounting and financial accounting were explained, with a greater emphasis on managerial accounting (that's what future CEOs like us would have to do right!!).

What I liked was that the prof (Fleming Ruud) approached the subject from a CEO's point of view.. so we didn't kill time trying to balance the balance sheets and stuff..and neither did we try doing each and every numerical problem, but focused on concepts and how they can be applied to financial reporting and the implications of various alternative approaches on the balance sheet… don't get me wrong .. solving numerical is important but perhaps from a CPA's point of view..and on a time efficient MBA.. it made more sense to set priorities right!

From a CEO's perspective one needs to know about the accounting heads, accounting systems (IFRS/ US GAAP) , inventory, financial reporting, etc . We worked extensively with the Novartis Annual report and analysed various concepts we studied wrt the Novartis balance sheet, although financial statements of other companies were also analysed. We also did a group presentation assignment of analyzing the fine print of Novartis annual report and all of us came up with very interesting findings.

The exam too was equally good (not because it was open book) because it asked questions that made us apply the concepts we learnt to analyze the scenarios presented and prescribe how we would go about with our evaluation of the state of financial health of a corporation

This was perhaps the best course of the block 1 !!

Marketing:

Taught to us by two different professors (professors Marcus Schoegel and Andreas Herrman) we learnt the STP (segmenting targeting and positioning) concepts besides a host of other key issues in marketing.

Prof Schoegel is a high energy guy with an animated course delivery i.e. variations in voice , tone and expression and cool quips.. makes u laugh a lot…a really good thing, because marketing tends to get abstract. However, I really appreciated the two lectures of Prof Herrman who evaluated the quantitave sides of marketing of how customer behavior could be analyzed and tweaked to favor certain products, and how this knowledge can be used in pricing strategies to derive maximum profit for corporations.

We also did a group case study evaluating various strategies for BMW group going forward and gave a presentation (that was hotly contested and questioned). Some of the topics covered were : Web 2.0, expanding target base, targeting silver generation, innovative pricing options etc.

While the course was good.. being abstract it really didn't empower me as a CEO to evaluate how I could exercise control over the marketing aspects, i.e. how do I know how much to invest in mktg, how to evaluate how effective the marketing campaigns are and how to correlate mktg expenses with sales growth especially in the age of multi content marketing (online, print, TV, etc) . But as they say mktg and consumer behavior is too abstract to have straight answers.

In case you want me to write about anything in particular pls leave me your comment, and i'll write a post about it!

There's more coming soon.. stay tuned!!!

They were here to sell their Finance development program (FDP) for executives and were keen for talent from St Gallen.

The FDP is basically a starting point for high profile financial executives into Novartis and intends to groom them to step into CFO roles within a period 5-6 years..

The presentation was interesting and the program seems to be well thought out.. basically the FDP participant starts in Basel (which is the group HQ) and works there for about 15 months in different divisions and then be posted to another country as head of FRA (Financial Reporting and Advisory)..

From there to another international division (like BPA) and finally as a CFO for a company, which is when he/she will have graduated out of the FDP program.

Interesting huh? Yeah.. esp if u are a typical bean counter and like book keeping .. the responsibility , career growth and responsibility. Some guys were interested in M&A and strat planning which had other entry points…

Takeaways: just three weeks and we have the first company trying to sell itself to us.. great way to start ur MBA! And it helps to have a small batch.. u get to interact with these people one on one… so if u r keen to get in at least u could face an interview.. where u can sell urself .. and possibly land a job.