Live Cases Consulting: Best Start Ever!

The feedback on our Otago MBA# students' live cases is in: "they're off to the best start ever!" a high compliment. Our teams have structured their projects (e.g., define the project, scope of work, purpose, objectives and methodologies) and have begun gathering data

 to support their analyses.  

Keep up the good work!

From Xero to Startup Hero

Rod Drury, CEO Xero Corporation

One of New Zealand's leading technology entrepreneurs, Rod is a member of the New Zealand Hi-Tech Hall of Fame, NZ Hi-Tech Entrepreneur of the Year in 2006 and 2007, World Class New Zealander for ICT in 2008 and an Honorary Fellow of the NZ Computer Society.

Rod Drury, CEO Xero - From Xero to Srartup Hero: Q&A with Rod Drury 

Tuesday 29 July, 12noon. Commerce Room 2.03

Never Stop Learning: conceptual reasoning

Never Stop Learning

The most important skill we teach in our MBA programme is "thinking," a skill refined with practice, just like riding a bike or learning to play a musical instrument. We emphasize conceptual reasoning as a central theme across all of our courses (along with character) and as the foundation for independent, lifelong learning: it works like this.

We ask students to interact with a relevant professional or academic literature (e.g., marketing, finance, sustainability), so they ground their thinking in a respected body of knowledge accumulated over time. This is in contrast to relying on the experiences of one lifetime, a very small N of observations leading to faulting reasoning. We teach our students to analyze (not read descriptively) each article or assigned chapter to grasp how the author defines core concepts and the logic he or she constructs. Note, this expedites their reading. They learn to interact with a literature (any literature) and critique the coherence of logic / arguments presented, a valuable skill. This grounding in a professional literature offers a firm foundation; our student's ability to critique logic enables them to additively advance knowledge; and their ability to reason through concepts enhances the integrity of their own arguments, either in writing or in-class discussions.

Then, our students distinguish between (1) grounding their thinking in an established body of knowledge, and (2) using of this knowledge in analyzing data, with data defined as written case studies, live cases (real corporate clients) and personal experiences. The body of knowledge they bring to data analyses allows our students to impose a structure on noisy data, with noise defined as opinion, irrelevant observations, faulty reasoning, and so forth. And the structure they impose drives the analyses they conduct to address critical questions informing solutions to the complex problems businesses face. In the most elaborate extension of this reasoning ability (e.g., our capstone 540 consulting engagement), our students gather hard (e.g., financial or operating numbers) and qualitative (e.g., industry expert interviews) data to support the construction of a well-crafted, coherent argument backed by data supporting their reasoning.

It is my opinion (N of some number of observations) that many academics and practitioners lack the discipline to think powerfully, as I have just described. And, I would argue that the value of an advance degree like the MBA comes from improving the students' reasoning abilities, a skill that generalizes well to any applied context...and lasts a lifetime. Go ahead, critique my argument.

Term Two: week eight update

From Olga Meglinskaya, Curriculum Delivery Manager

We're wrapping up Term Two with a very busy week ahead. An exceptional guest speaker (Rod Drury, CEO of Xero) with join us on Tuesday; classes will end; and we have a full schedule of final exams at week's end. Our MBA management team will gather feedback through course evaluations and personal interviews as part of our quality management protocols for continuous improvement.

End of Term 2 Course Evaluations (paper-based) will be collected at the end of each class this week.

Otago Business School Visiting Executive Programme
Rod Drury, CEO Xero - From Xero to Srartup Hero: Q&A with Rod Drury

Tuesday 29 July, 12noon. Commerce Room 2.03

Exam Information
Exam: BMBA508 Investment & Global Financial Markets
Date: Friday, 1 August 2014
Time: 9:30-12:30 (Exam time 3 hours)
Location: CO318 - Commerce 3.18 Lab.

Exam: BMBA502 Marketing
Date: Saturday, 2 August 2014
Time: 9:30-12:30 (Exam time 3 hours)
Location: CO318 - Commerce 3.18 Lab.

Exam: BMBA507 Accounting
Date: Sunday, 3 August 2014
Time: 9:30-12:30 (Exam time 3 hours)
Location: CO318 - Commerce 3.18 Lab.

Otago Connect Lecture on Organisational Leadership
We would like to share the video recording of this lecture across our social media and communication. If you are one of the participants and have concerns (with good reasons) about this, please let Hester know.

Lauren Rosborough’s Presentation
Lauren’s presentation has been emailed to all those who attended her talk on Thursday. Please remember that this presentation was off the record.

Business Cards
If you would like an MBA business card please let Susan know before the end of Term 2.

View the MBA Google Calendar on your mobile phone
We will send an email to your student email account, sharing the MBA google calendar with you. You should then be able to view this on your mobile phones even if you don’t have a gmail account. Please let Susan know if you encounter any problems.

End of Term Feedback Interviews – Week 8
Olga and Susan will again be asking you to spend some time with them to get some feedback on your experiences in term 2. Please email Susan with your preferred 30 minute slot on either Tuesday 29 July or Thursday 31 July.

Phenomenal Opportunity: Lauren Rosborough

Lauren Rosborough

We received the phenomenal opportunity today to listen to Lauren Rosborough, Senior Adviser at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ), discuss the NZ economy and the challenges the RBNZ faces in monitoring inflation. We cannot discuss the content of her off-the-record presentation, but the discussion included highly detailed analyses of the NZ dollar exchange rate, interests rates, migration (growth), Christchurch rebuild, and NZ trade partners. Lauren's visit came on the day that the RBNZ, through Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler, issued a statement announcing an increase in the Official Cash Rate (OCR) by 25 basis points to 3.5 percent. This statement included the following text:

RBNZ raises OCR to 3.5 percent

"New Zealand’s economy is expected to grow at an annual pace of 3.7 percent over 2014. Global financial conditions remain very accommodative and are reflected in low interest rates, narrow risk spreads, and low financial market volatility. Economic growth among New Zealand’s trading partners has eased slightly in the first half of 2014, but this appears to be due to temporary factors.

Construction, particularly in Canterbury, is growing strongly. At the same time, strong net immigration is adding to housing and household demand, although house price inflation has moderated further since the June Statement.

Over recent months, export prices for dairy and timber have fallen, and these will reduce primary sector incomes over the coming year. With the exchange rate yet to adjust to weakening commodity prices, the level of the New Zealand dollar is unjustified and unsustainable and there is potential for a significant fall.

Inflation remains moderate, but strong growth in output has been absorbing spare capacity. This is expected to add to non-tradables inflation. Wage inflation is subdued, reflecting recent low inflation outcomes, increased labour force participation, and strong net immigration.

Today’s move will help keep future average inflation near the 2 percent target mid-point and ensure that the economic expansion can be sustained. Encouragingly, the economy appears to be adjusting to the monetary policy tightening that has taken place since the start of the year. It is prudent that there now be a period of assessment before interest rates adjust further towards a more-neutral level.

The speed and extent to which the OCR will need to rise will depend on the assessment of the impact of the tightening in monetary policy to date, and the implications of future economic and financial data for inflationary pressures."

Prior to her current role, Lauren spent six years in London working as a FX Strategist. She was an offshore expert on the European Crisis for TVNZ Business, was a regular guest host on CNBC, ABC News, and Bloomberg Television, and was frequently quoted in the print media including the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. Prior to her offshore experience, Lauren worked as an Economist for National Bank. She completed her studies at the University of Otago in Economics with Honours (first class).

Thank you Lauren, we'll look forward to catching up again next year!

Candidate Info: Quality Management

Our Top Priority

As the academic adviser for Executive Programmes, I'm responsible for collaborating closely with Olga Meglinskaya (Curriculum Delivery Manager) to continuously improve the quality of our MBA, as well as mentoring students through their Live Case and BUSI 540 professional consulting engagements. This is a responsibility that our team takes seriously, maybe best indicated by my dedicated position for quality. We incorporate processes of planning, doing, monitoring and acting on lessons gain from one term to the next and one year to the next. All of the following initiatives fall under the umbrella concept of Quality of Learning as specified by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and Equis accrediting institutions.

• working from a Graduate Student Profile linked to our coursework and mentored experiences

• emphasizing consistent themes across courses: e.g., educating the whole person with specific focus on character and the quality of students' conceptual reasoning abilities

• maintaining small and active classrooms, as well as encouraging the involvement of all students in discussions

• balancing student workloads across courses to assure the doability of assignments / assessments

• selecting students with sufficient experience to contribute to the classroom experience; emphasizing diversity among students; and not reducing students to a summary statistic (GMAT score of questionable validity.

• selecting lecturers (from around the world) with both scholarly grounding and practical experience in their area of expertise: see Denis Kobzev, Paul Hansen, Julia Richardson and Beth Rose

• monitoring students' performance in our classes on a near weekly basis: to assure their success (e.g., providing mentoring help if needed) in each course

• adhering to the scholarly literature on assessment and student feedback

• conducting beginning and end-of-term reviews of each course: and using these reviews to improve the quality of our programme from term to term and year to year

• offering professional development workshops tangential to core courses; for instance to building networking and presentation skills

• and, benchmarking our courses (e.g., our strategy course against the London School of Business), and evaluate how well we stack up.  Very well, thank you!  Recent reports from our students' participation in the "Doing Business in India" and International Exchange at Duke MBA affirm the quality / rigor of our Otago MBA core courses.

Candidate Information: everything you need to know

This blog is intended to allow you to get to know us, to peek inside our programme, meet our people and gain an understanding of the experience (value) we offer.  I encourage you to click on the links below to gain insights into the Otago MBA and New Zealand, to make an informed decision about whether a good fit exists between your needs and our programme.

Programme Design: Focus on the individual and Academic Integrity. 

Candidate Selection / One & Two: experienced, mature, self-motivated, etc.

Why Candidates Choose Us: NZ experience or residence, study overseas, Job Opportunities

Reliance on GMAT Scores: a suspect summary statistic.*

International Exchange: academic adventure, your advantage 

Two Options: Diploma vs. Full-time MBA

Conceptual Reasoning: Business Model, Concept, Reading & Writing, In the Classroom.

Placement: You're kidding!, A better way.

The Classroom: Emphasis on thinking, Active Learning, Power of Introverts.

Students: Cultural diversity.

Our Faculty Team: Denis Kobzev, Paul Hansen, Julia Richardson, Beth Rose, Anindya Sen, Sergio Biggemann, Daniel Hellyer.

Our Students: Ryf Quail, Krister Häll, Silvia Scherer, Melissa Barry, Selfies Video

 Mentored Consulting Experience: One, Two, Three, Congrats James! Live Cases,

Graduate Profile: what should our graduates look like?

Otago MBA Ranking: QS Global 200.

Life in New Zealand: Dunedin, Adventure, Coffee, Top Tourist Destination, Top Ten List, Fifth in the world, Beaches

Miscellaneous:  Public Speaking, Doing Business in India. 

Apply today to join our 2015 Otago MBA programme!

Click here

*We do request a GMAT score, but we're far more interested in the complete candidate profile, ...and we provide you with our most recent QS Global 200 ranking (above).

Candidate Info: Live Case Analyses

We are rapidly approaching Term Three and the beginning of our "Live Case" analyses of real clients conducted by student syndicates (teams) between August and December. 

Our live cases constitute professional and mentored consulting engagements and require a high level of performance: our students' ability to manage the project process (e.g., flow of work, syndicate dynamics and client relationship) and deliver a cogent intellectual product reflects directly on our programme. We also view this experience as preparation for our BUSI 540 individual-level capstone consulting engagement and encourage students to adopt similar structures. A standard 540 report structure exists and all projects should align with an accepted academic frame (e.g., supply-demand, financial performance, or business model analysis), as evidence of your ability to apply relevant course material and analyses.

The live cases (and 540 project) are intended to align with the students' career ambitions, to help them gain access to the right industry, company or professional network. This is our better alternative to placement (see scary & you're kidding): you demonstrate your ability and earn a position.

We expect students to follow a well-honed process that enables them complete the client engagement with minimal wasted effort; interact with the client as an equal; and express an independent voice in interactions. 

Students should not grope their way through this complex business challenge. 

Our first discussion of live cases is scheduled for 22 July, 12:00 to 1:00, with the focus

on possible clients and our live case processes.

Almost all problems students experience in the consulting projects can be traced back

to the mismanagement of the project process (work and relationships); inadequate

articulation of an academic frame (minimal intellectual contribution); or

deficiencies  in report (logic) structure (unclear project scope, purpose,

objectives, data collection and analyses).

Meet our Students: selfies

This blog serves the purpose of allowing candidates to learn about us; meet our lecturers and students; and follow what's going on term by term. Here's an opportunity to listen to our students talk about their Otago MBA experience and international exchange.

Enjoy,

David 

FYI: ...rise of the modular economy

Our Otago MBA management team continuously strives to stay on top of emerging trends in business that may influence the material taught in our core courses. The following article came to our attention from one of our valued lecturers, Phil Broughton, Strategy Implementation, Term four. Here's an excerpt:

The inexorable rise of the modular economy

The structure of the economy will be quite different in the future from what we see today.
Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand - Acuity - July 2014

As business leaders consider the future, and what they need to do to prosper in the years ahead, they can readily identify a range of important trends. Developments such as globalisation, increasing connectivity, pervasive use of mobile devices, price transparency, China’s economic growth, ageing populations and many other trends are evident and well discussed.

However, often a critical assumption is made in the planning process: that the structure of the economy will be the same in the future as it is today.

The reality is that the entire nature of value creation is shifting. Traditional economic perspectives built on assumptions of rigidly delineated industry sectors often mislead more than they elucidate.
The modular economy

Perhaps the most useful way to think about the changing economic structure is the idea of the “modular economy”, in which value is created in increasingly small units that are combined in a wide variety of ways across organisational boundaries and between individuals.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase proposed that organisations exist because of transaction costs: it is more efficient to coalesce economic activities inside a company due to the cost of finding and working with external resources. Yet in a connected, globalised world, transaction costs are now a tiny fraction of what they were in the 1930s when Coase formulated his ideas.

Today, organisations are no longer the locus of value creation. Value is created by orchestrating many smaller elements, sometimes within firms, often beyond organisational boundaries and increasingly between many individuals or micro-businesses.

One example of the modular economy can be found in Chongqing in Western China, where novel approaches have helped the city become the world’s largest centre for motorcycle manufacturing. The manufacturers in Chongqing dramatically overtook the previous industry leaders in Japan by taking a very different approach.

Rather than specifying requirements to their suppliers in minute detail, as the Japanese manufacturers do, they assemble their suppliers to discuss collectively the parameters of the motorcycle they wish to build, and let them work together to identify how the modules they create can fit together to achieve the group’s vision.

Implications and strategic questions

The forces underlying the rise of the modular economy have been in place for well over a decade. However, the real impact of this shift in the structure of value creation has become evident only over the past few years. This trend has far further to run, and organisations need to address the challenges and seize the emerging opportunities.

The implications will play out very differently depending on issues such as a company’s industry, size and geographical scope. To understand the actions they should be taking, leadership teams should be asking themselves three strategic questions:

1. How can we compete with modularised offerings?
2. How can we drive efficiencies through modularisation?
3. What governance structures are required?