Define a strategy for the business school

Imagine you pay 30.000 GBP to someone just to help this person with his/her homework...sounds stupid?
Well, I'm doing that right now.
My strategy professor told us today that the business school is currently redefining its strategy and that he is on the work group that does that. But what does that have to do with our strategy lecture? He sent us out of the lecture theatre and told us that he wanted us to split up in groups, work out a strategy for the business school, be back in 1 hour and present it to him and the class...WOW!!! We all came up with very good ideas, some of which the professor even wrote down, because he wanted to think about using them.

I better get back to work now...this will be a really tough week - the last week of the term with a major assignment due on Friday. I don't think I'll get much sleep for the next couple of days.

being very lucky

Melina is here again to visit me.
She got here on Friday, we met with some other MBAs at an Indian Restaurant and went to celebrate Andrew's baby daughter (see old post) at one of the pubs.
Besides walking around in Oxford and enjoying a nice dinner at a french restaurant, Melina spent a lot of time waiting for me to get done with group meetings or to finish my assignments. The good thing is, she never complained once, although she came over all the way from Germany just to wait for me outside the business school or laying in bed while I try to work on assignments on my laptop...I can consider myself extremely lucky to have such a supportive and understanding girlfriend.

Sweety, this post is just for you...THANK YOU!!!

 

I have an EP team - finally!

Finally I made up my mind and decided to join a team for the Entrepreneurial project.
A team of 3 Kenyans and one American asked me to join their team.
Our business idea is to set up an investment fund for small-/mid-sized companies in Kenya (50k -250k investment per firm). The goal is to set up a fund that is profitable and has social impact as well. One of the big challenges will be to quantify the social return - how do you calculate giving back to the community?!
The good news is: we have to ex-bankers on the team, so the number-crunching part of the project should not be a problem. My main task is to take a critical look at their numbers and come up with an idea to sell this whole thing to investors from the western world. We will also need to have a look at competitors...however, so far we've found none: Private Equity & Venture capital firms are mainly looking at investing larger amounts of money, whereas Microfinance firms usually invest very small amounts of money.

I'll keep you updated...

1st MBA baby of the year

I went to class this morning and I wondered where my friend Andrew was - he usually never misses a class!
At about 10am I received a text message saying that his daughter, Ava Sophia McInerney, was born this morning at 2 minutes after midnight.

Congratulations Andrew&Claudia and all the best for Ava!!!

And here she is:
-6 lbs full of energy
- "...she has taken to feeding like a duck to water..." (quote from the daddy)

 

Silicon Valley comes to Oxford

Once a year, the business school holds an event called "Silicon Valley comes to Oxford".
It basically means that executives and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley in the USA come to Oxford to talk to us MBA students, give lectures and ask us for advice and ideas for their businesses (they really do that).
Today was the big day...to name a few of the visitors:
-Matt Cohler, Vice President Strategy and Business Operations, Facebook (famous US website)
-Tom Esselman, President, Altran USA Holding (a 16,000 employee innovation consulting firm)
-Bob Goodson, Sales and Business Development Director, Yelp (really cool US website...check it out: yelp.com)
-Maria Sendra, Chair of Southern California region, Baker & McKenzie (famous law firm)
-Chris Sacca, Head of Special Initiatives, Google

First I went to a panel discussion about various topics. It was quite interesting to hear what these people had to say about setting up a business in Silicon Valley.
But the really cool part was the Master class. I picked one by Bob Goodson of Yelp.com and Pete Flint of Trulia.com. Both are quite young and full of energy. After telling us a little bit about their businesses and answering our questions, they told us that they wanted us to help them. They actually had prepared 3 issues that both of the companies were facing right now and for which they do not have a solution. So we started bouncing ideas off each other and had a great session. We even came up with some stuff that they hadn't yet thought about...although we were asked not to post it on the internet - guess why?! Competition in Silicon Valley is tougher than ever.

Although I wasn't able to attend all events (due to a case study that I had pushed to the last minute), it was a great day.

more of queer bop

Barry getting spanked (and enjoying it) by a dominatrix














Richard and one of the angels in underwear



















Eric enjoying a CLOSE examination by a nurse in a rubber dress 

Queer BOP

What a wild party!!!

Last night my college had its famous Queer Bop, check it out it's even on Wikipdeia: "an annual night of slightly debauched behaviour popular with students of all colleges"
As my college is extremely liberal and a strong supporter of gay rights, they have Queer Week once a year which ends with a massive party. Tickets were sold out on night one of the ticket sales. I managed to get 15 tickets (I had a lot of convincing to do - but in the end, the girl that sold the tickets gave in), so I invited a bunch of MBAs for the weekend.
Daniel, John, Matthew and I met at Shelby's house, because she had offered to dress us up as gays. This is how we ended up - nice , huh?! (Shelby even gave me a whip, handcuffs and a rubber skirt)
















Back at my college, we met with other MBAs and took a little group picture:
















It was absolutely insane...and should one of us ever become famous or go into politics - we all have pictures to blackmail each other.
The party was completely crazy. Girls running around in nothing but a thong and stickers on their nipples, Guys in Latex or as village people...INSANE!
We definitely had the best party so far and I don't think it will be possible to top that. I still can't believe that these people are supposed to be some of the smartest in the world?! 

No news on Entrepreneurship Project

Damn!
Last night I decided that I want to work on the Social Finance project, so I sent an e-mail to that team. And now I just heard that someone was faster than me and their team is full...this really sucks!
I don't really know which other project to pick, because neither of them seem appealing any more after I had picked the Social Finance.
I'm thinking about setting up my own team and coming up with an own idea.
The James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at the business school has offered to meet with us and help us to come up with a business idea...might try that.
We'll see!!!

Entrepreneurial Project

As I might have told some of you, as part of our MBA we have to form teams, come up with a business idea & business plan and present it to Investment Bankers, Venture Capitalists and Private Equity people.
Right now we are in the process of forming the teams. It works in a way that people who have an idea pitch this idea to us to try to get other students join their team.
I have set myself a deadline until Saturday to decide which team/business idea I want to join.
So far the following business ideas are on my short list:
-Dr. DarkOh; provide quality assurance to prevent distribution of fake medication in developing countries
-FighterNation.com; Live-streaming of martial arts fights in the USA
-Social Finance; providing the link between social capital and enterprises in developing countries
-Kyoto : Trading "the dirty" for the sake of "clean"; carbon-dioxide consulting & trading for small & medium sized companies
-Media Distribution house for independent movies; connecting independent movie makers with movie distributors (video rental stores, movie theaters, etc.) by circumventing the big distributors (e.g. Sony)

It's gonna be a really hard decision to make...but if I don't do it now, all the good teams are gonna be full.

Exciting, huh?! What should I pick? And, does the team that I pick really want me to be on their team?

I will keep you updated!

just tired...

...this program is killing me!

I've hardly slept during the last couple of days. Apart from my mattress being crap, I have tons of assignments, readings and recruiting events - to give you an idea of the assignments:
-case study for Developing Effective Managers class, due on Monday
-case study for Decision Science class, due on Tuesday
-group case study for Finance class, due on Friday
-group case study for Decision Science class, due 2 days ago (at least I'm done with this one)
-major industry report for Managerial Economics class, due Nov 27th
-major Financial Statement Analysis for Financial Reporting class, due on Dec 1st
-group case study for Finance class, due Friday next week

I think I'm going crazy already...enough of this moaning...gotta get back to work now



...there is light on the horizon though: QUEER Bop, the party of the term, is coming up this weekend in my college & I'm going; I was even able to get 15!!!! tickets for my MBA friends, although everybody was allowed to buy only 2 - looks like I know how to "organize" stuff

James Bond for a night

This is what it must feel like to be James Bond!

This Saturday the crew (John, Daniel and myself) decided to go to the first college ball of the academic year. So we got ourselves 3 tickets for 60 pounds each (very expensive 60GBP = 90EUR = 120USD), which included a champagne reception, canapes, a startet buffet, main buffet, all night BBQ, breakfast, cocktails, dessert (including a chocolate fountain), music (DJs, Jazz band, Oxford Belles a Capella), a prize draw, casino games (blackjack, roulette, poker, wheel of fortune) and lots of other things.
Of course the event was "black-tie", which means men are supposed to wear a black suit (preferably a tuxedo) and a black bow tie and women are invited to dress in their best dress. And that's what we did, we dressed like James Bond would dress for a night at the casino in Monte Carlo.

When we arrived at the Mansfield College, the view was amazing. The whole college was illuminated by colored flood lights and a huge red carpet welcomed us at the entrance - see for yourself:















Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan - looking good and ready for a Vordka-Martini:










The ball was AMAZING!!!
It was unbelievable...everything was perfect: the music was good, the drinks were perfect and the girls looked stunning. What more could you wish for?














At 4 o'clock in the morning and after intensive eating, gambling, dancing, drinking and socializing we were ready for breakfast. But, the three of us were not the only ones to fancy a breakfast...there was a huge queue in front of the dining hall. So I decided that it was time to leave John and Daniel and head home for some sleep, which was a good decision, because I was told the next day that the breakfast wasn't the highlight of the ball.
On the way out of the college I passed several people that looked like they weren't able to go home by themselves anymore - so maybe after all it was a good decision to not finish that last drink completely ;-)
 

Oxford's dangerous traffic!!!

Taking part in Oxford's traffic can be REALLY dangerous!

...suicidal pedestrians...
...kamikaze-like cyclists...
...blind car drivers...
...reckless bus drivers...

Today I learned this the hard way.

About an hour ago I left the business school on my bike to grad some food.
As I was driving on the "wrong" side of the road (in this country this actually means on the correct side of the road - !left! - weird Brits!) a car came out of the garage on my left side. This guy looked at me, I looked at him and so I thought he had seen me. So as it was my right of the way I kept going. WRONG DECISION! When I got up to his car he just pulled out of the garage and hit me...I flew all across the street and landed on my ass on the other side of the road. Luckily there was a traffic jam on the other side of the road so I didn't get run over.
The guy (old man) got out of his car and the first thing he said was "You don't have your lights on!" - can you believe this? He had just run me over and the only thing he cares about are my lights?!
Fortunately nothing happened to me - except for a couple of scratches...but my bike is a wreck!
A witness came right up to me and offered to give me her contact details. After a little bit of arguing the driver finally agreed to pay for my bike...

I just got back from the bike shop and it seems to be less serious than it looks. Repairs will only be about 40 pounds - and I can have my bike back by tomorrow 1PM. I need my bike! Couldn't live without one in Oxford - imagine all the walking I would have to do!

Anyways...I will probably be more careful in the future (at least for a while)!

If you ever come to Oxford, remember one thing: Oxford's traffic is deadly!