Day 2 @ Harvard business school
Ok, the day was much brighter today, and the sun came back... that was good, since it almost mirrored the inner emotions that we, the GMP participants were going through. We seemed to make sense of what was happening around us, more settled - even though, we were still behind the curve.
Unlike the first day classes, today seemed more rewarding - intellectually - as we progressively learnt newer aspects and angles of accounting, Innovation and strategy.
The idea of living group is starting to appear more and more valuable to me. A living group is a group of 8-9 people, who are accommodated close to each other and are allocated a living group conference room and a meeting room. The idea is to deliberately reach out to one another. We are told, and it appears plausible, that these relationships last a lifetime. I am surely hoping it would. We have members from Israel, USA, Canada, India (me !!), Thailand, New zealand.... and the profession vary from Trucking, IT, Double Dr Physicist, Farmer, Steel, Banking. The functions - HR, General Management, Sales, Finance, Operations - wow !!
It also seems, that there is significant amount of investment by HBS on increasing the efficacy of the Living group notion - they are devoting one full day - Feb 14th - to accelerate the Living group experience. We will spend more than 10 hrs in trying to fine tune our Living group working and learning.
Things I learnt today:
1. Complexity is easy, simplicity is difficult - (reference Apple product packaging vs MS product packaging)
2. When you look at competition, it is important to look at rivals. But it is far more important to look at "substitutes" (substitutes, are products whose availability reduces the demand for your products - for coke, it could be tap water). More often than not, they could be more dangerous, than direct competition.
3. It's not enough to remain within legal rules, to run the company - you need to be sure, that you are not doing anything that will negatively impact the future investor confidence.
4. Sales managers of Black & decker need to worry about "Neck ties" to protect and increase their sales. - Yes, shocking but true - and I would leave you one day to figure out, why ? Answer in tomorrow's update.
Feb 11th, 2013
Ok, the day was much brighter today, and the sun came back... that was good, since it almost mirrored the inner emotions that we, the GMP participants were going through. We seemed to make sense of what was happening around us, more settled - even though, we were still behind the curve.
Unlike the first day classes, today seemed more rewarding - intellectually - as we progressively learnt newer aspects and angles of accounting, Innovation and strategy.
The idea of living group is starting to appear more and more valuable to me. A living group is a group of 8-9 people, who are accommodated close to each other and are allocated a living group conference room and a meeting room. The idea is to deliberately reach out to one another. We are told, and it appears plausible, that these relationships last a lifetime. I am surely hoping it would. We have members from Israel, USA, Canada, India (me !!), Thailand, New zealand.... and the profession vary from Trucking, IT, Double Dr Physicist, Farmer, Steel, Banking. The functions - HR, General Management, Sales, Finance, Operations - wow !!
It also seems, that there is significant amount of investment by HBS on increasing the efficacy of the Living group notion - they are devoting one full day - Feb 14th - to accelerate the Living group experience. We will spend more than 10 hrs in trying to fine tune our Living group working and learning.
Things I learnt today:
1. Complexity is easy, simplicity is difficult - (reference Apple product packaging vs MS product packaging)
2. When you look at competition, it is important to look at rivals. But it is far more important to look at "substitutes" (substitutes, are products whose availability reduces the demand for your products - for coke, it could be tap water). More often than not, they could be more dangerous, than direct competition.
3. It's not enough to remain within legal rules, to run the company - you need to be sure, that you are not doing anything that will negatively impact the future investor confidence.
4. Sales managers of Black & decker need to worry about "Neck ties" to protect and increase their sales. - Yes, shocking but true - and I would leave you one day to figure out, why ? Answer in tomorrow's update.
Feb 11th, 2013
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