True Colors

The more you need her help, the more she let's you down,
The more you like the way she walks the more she shakes her hips,
The more you fall in love with life the more she runs around,
The more you fear the kiss of death the more she licks her lips
-Flatlanders in Julia

Well the 'she' is none other than ISB itself. The first 2 weeks of the 2nd term I have been struggling to make sense of night and day. Running around like a zombie for lectures (after prereads), markstrat decision making sessions, DMOP assignments and pre readings of 30 to 35 pg case studies in Competitive Strategy. When I look back on the last 2 weeks I couldnt help imagine the amount of knowledge I have gained and the number of tools I have used. But its worth mentioning that at the end of the day its very fulfilling. A few words about the different subjects in Term 2:

Global Economics: Very interesting subject about macroeconomics and about the world in general. Also the prof KK makes it very interesting and makes sure there are not much arbit CPs and the knowledge transfer happens at high efficiency. You get to know why China and India are on their way to become successful global economies and what can hamper their growth and why globalisation is the logical way forward.

Decision Models and Analysis: This is all about spreadsheeting and modeling and simulations. Becomes very interesting once you know how to model and if you are familiar with spreadsheets. So all ye ISB aspirants, hone up those excel and solver and crystal ball skills. It will do u good in this subject, because the learning curve is very steep with hardly any time. You are thrown in deep waters with sharks all around. (Of course I dont mean fellow students :-))

Competitive Strategy: This is all about huge cases and what orgs did in particular strategic situations and what we should do to see that history doesnt repeat itself in the corporate world and what are the principles and thought processes behind the strategies. Since this is a very subjective subject, it becomes difficult to arrive at concrete conclusions because 10 people think in 100 different ways and so it might seem that this is B*****t at times. But one has to keep in mind that thats how the real world is. Sometimes you dont know that you have taken a strategic decision until after you have taken it. At hindsight you realise that everything was moving in that direction and the decision was taken non strategically rather than deliberately. But still it was a turning point in the life of the organisation. Isnt this similar to everyday life?

Marketing Decision making: Well this one is a time sucking machine. We need to play a simulation game thruout the term as a firm selling fancy electronic goods in a godforsaken world called Markstrat and make profits and thus compete with other firms (who are ofcourse other student groups). The learnings are tremendous and you get to use a lot of data to base your decisions. But at the end of the day what counts is what profits you made in your industry, since a sizeable porion of your marks are dependent on it.