Sights of Cambridge

Hyannis Port...The Kennedy compound

On Sunday, we were lucky enough to be driven down through Plymouth to Hyannis Port and Cape Cod.
We found the famous Kennedy compound and swam on the beach close by!
What a beautiful place, absolutely serene!
Later, we managed to talk our way into the Hyannis Yacht Club, very friendly and we all had a superb meal of swordfish and a bottle of Vernaccio!

Today we had our pitches for our groups where we pitch one of our businesses to the entire group, we chose one of our team members, who runs the Instituto of Tennis in Brazil, which helps street kids, find a future and gives them the tools to escape the poverty cycle. Below is the one minute "elevator" pitch.

The purpose of the excercise, is to be able to distill a business into its key elements including "A difference that matters"

Workgroup 12- Instituto Tenis
Pitch Delivered by Andre Buzzoni
For companies who want to improve the lives of children in Brazil, while enhancing corporate brand recognition, Instituto Tenis provides the opportunity to invest in a non-profit organization that focuses on tennis coaching and giving underprivileged children, skills to succeed in life.
Unlike other initiatives, we offer superior outcomes through a proven integrated social development model that takes kids off the street and gives them a future.
The Instituto Tenis was founded in 2002 when 150 children from the poorest areas of Brazil were nominated to participate. Now, we coach 3000 motivated kids. Our goal is to engage 100,000 children across 100 social centers throughout Brazil by 2016 (the year of our Olympics). We currently need $30 million dollars to make this a reality.
We are projecting that the return on this investment will be that by 2016, we will have changed the lives of 100,000 children, created five professional tennis players and sent at least 50 children to study in a university program.

JFK Birthday

Philip and i were lucky enough to visit the John F. Kennedy, Presidential Library and Museum on what would have been his 93rd birthday!
Consequently, it was free birthday cake! A wonderful imposing building, with some wonderful records of Kennedy's life.
There were many fascinating items, probably the one which moved me the most, was the poem by Jackie to John on their first wedding anniversary, which still resonates.

60 percent of Amazon sales are now electronic books!

And these are only the change Rooms!

Some amazing quotes from our Professors

" If everyone is accountable, no one is accountable"
Lynda M Applegate

WIFM
whats in it for me

Cambridge Street Life

With the Graduations going on , people are celebrating in many ways! Although, this guy with the top hat, definitely does not seem happy about me taking the picture!

Walking Dollar Bills

These graduating mba students, have paid tens of thousands to go to Harvard and will mostly earn millions.
No wonder their robes look as if they were made by Dior.
Its an amazing seeen around Harvard and Cambridge, with all the families and all the students, its quite inspiring to think of all those young people going out to change the world!

Last night our study group worked on cases and then worked on "an elevator pitch" for one of our enterprises, it was a big night, not finishing to one thirty am!
However, we all experienced an amazing sense of achiemevent, distilling the essence of the enterprise down to a 45 second pitch.

By the way, an elevator pitch is meant to be when you jump in the lift of say the empire state building, as you get in you see, say the head of Goldman Sachs, you realise that this is the chance to interest her in equity or investing in your enterprise and you have literally the time it takes for the elevator to distill your ideas down to a very compelling and short message.

I will post our pitch on Monday after our group participates in OPM Idol, to select the best pitch from our class.

In the meantime, all sorts of sights around the streets of Boston!

Baker Library

Boy they really make you work with case study after case study!

Here i am soaking up the Baker library for some more quite study.
i have not done this for 25 odd years , so you can imagine how much i am loving that part!

Below, i have shown the schedule for today, to give you an idea of the daily grind and the topics covered!




TUESDAY MAY 25
7:00 - 8:30 am
Breakfast
Kresge Boardroom
All
7:30 - 8:45 am
Discussion Groups

Assigned Living Groups
All
9:00 - 10:30 am
Leadership: Rob Parson at Morgan Stanley Robert Steven Kaplan

McCollum 102
B, D
10:30 - 11:00 am
Break

Baker Hall Lounge
All
11:00 - 12:30 pm
Control: Activity-Based Management V.G. Narayanan

McCollum 102
B, D
12:30 - 1:30 pm
Lunch

Kresge Boardroom
All
1:30 - 3:00 pm
Strategy: Henry Ford, Alfred Sloan, and the Three Phases of Marketing Cynthia Montgomery

McCollum 102
B, D
3:00 - 3:30 pm
Break
Baker Hall Lounge
All
3:30 - 5:00 pm
Life Planning: Life Cycle of the Family Business System John Davis

McCollum 101
All
6:30 - 7:30 pm
Dinner
Kresge Boardroom
All
6:30 - 7:30 pm

Kresge Boardroom
All

Probably the piece which resonated most was the strategy session comparing the strategies of Ford and General Motors.

Does anyone know who Alfred Sloan was?

The big lesson was a business needs a difference that matters we also learnt how costing systems can drive profitability.

Last night's team dinner gave us a chance to get to know closely a group of seven very different people from Thailand, India, Usa, Brazil and Venezuela, very rewarding and informative.

Tomorrow, we move onto negotiations.

"Its more important to know who you are than where you are going" Jim Collins

Not a bad place to read case studies!

Today we are deeply in strategy, leadership and the mexican crisis. (some might say which one of the many crisis )

one of the great learning quotes:-

"The customer oriented company begins with the market and lets it guide every decision, every investment and every change. stirring stuff."

We also spent time working through the case of mesco, which burnt $2 billion entering the usa furniture market and in the process damaging its reputation for years, as a result of an incorrect strategy. I think i have seen a few of those over the years!

Mexico was fascinating, like ground hog day, but things in Mexico are on the up as a result of an independent reserve bank and better democracy!

Talk of Obama amongst people I met has been interesting with a few Democrats questioning his effectiveness:- is that...... "all talk"
i guess the jury is still out.

Tomorrow, its Henry Ford versus Alfred Sloan.
Tonight is out to Boston North for a team dinner

Washington ......Apollo 11

How can one miss the chance to catch up with an old friend in Washington , when you are only an hour a way!

Had a great dinner with the Darbys and then a visit to the Smithsonian!

A viewing of the IMAX Hubble repair was simply incredible.

Even The Stadium is Big

The Harvard Gridiron pitch and atheletics track was an impressive venue formy stair climbing!

Case studies included the Usa Furniture Industry

Some great insights on the Dell Business model and its cash flow cycle from Josh Lerner.

Insightful use of the Porter 5 competitive Forces

Quote of the Day

"Are you doing something that matters that your competitors are not doing?"

day 5 You don't know what you don't know

You cant visit the states without a visit to the ball park.

My friend was sitting behind me and he had one of those deep italian american accents, straight out of the godfather! What a melting pot!

For the record, the Red Socks beat the Minesota Twins 3 2!


Its 10 pm and i am just finishing my reading for tomorrow, we will do Reagan Economics as a case study and reflect on its outcomes, in the context of judging current policies.


A couple of quotes from Harvard Business School (HBS) Lecturers


what do you get if you take the h out of hbs....just bs, ......not bad!


The Willy Sutton rule in relation to analysing companies.


Willy was ofcourse a legendary American bank robber who robbed hundreds of banks in the 1920s, when finally caught, the police asked Willy why he robbed banks, his answer,

"That is where the money is."


We brushed up on costing systems and were reminded why a volume based cost system is called

"peanut butter costing".................. because you spread it over all products!


we looked a calculating sustainable growth rates in companies and measuring unused capacity as a costing measure to focus on such production opportunities.

Country of the day

Turkey, where real estate is apparently is very hot at present!

(cannot be as hot as Melbourne residential!

In marketing we heard about the brilliant marketing department that had carefully designed the answer to the wrong question!

day 4

This is our day time world

very interactive and free fllowing with debates drawing out the key messages.

Themes for today,

you will not learn everything, but what you will learn are the questions to ask!

Marketing

Are there unmet customer needs?

What are my competitor key vulnerabilities?

Di i have core competancies?

Control

The case of Target and Walmart and the proxy fight at Target

Brilliant analysis of the Target financials

Target business model , perfect as an alternative to Walmart

Walmart model better in the recession

Hoever, today Targets results released with a 29 % increase in earnings,

walmart on the other hand is down 11%? and analysts believe in the recovery Target is stealing customers that went to Woolworths during the recession.

Finance

The problems of small business are the same around the world!

No scaleability!

Country of the day

Indonesia

apparently there was very little recession, corruption is being curbed and small business prospects improving!

Embarrasing Moment

When i found myself on a table of women doing the womens leadership course!

Its fair to say that at least one of them appeared to be anti male!

After a few hours of reading, we will be off to the baseball to see the Red Socks play the Minesota Twins.

day 3

Marketing was the highlight today
Rohit Deshpande , the lectrure is current, switched on and witty.

some great quotes/themes

how to make your business customer centric

your culture must be around customers

marketing is about how the customer gets to influence the company
innovate around your customers , not your products or services.

stay loyal to your loyals


the accounting was not quite as much fun, althought the exercise to work out which industry was which from 10 sets of ratios and key numbers was very thought provoking!

this afternoon was into Harvard square for shopping and now back to case studies for tomorrow!
country of the day :- Nigeria, at least 4 people from Nigeria, some thriving businesses,

quote of the day:- (not from a lecturer) bribes are are a part of doing business, it just depends on how transparent they are....guess which country?

Day 2

Today it was
Controls, Business Strategy and Marketing!
A pretty light start, but some quite robust discussions at the work group!
A number of dominant individuals, so it was hard to make myself heard!
Wonderful lecturers and their experience and knowledge was omnipotent
(mind you the fact that they have presented the case studies hundreds of times before probably helps!
The day started with a beautiful walk along the Charles river, past the very ornate and large rowing shed, and back to Baker Hall.

a bit of a take on the usa economy, The multiple Chevrolet dealer, tells me sales are up 100% on last year!

in Nigeria its still tough and Germany its mixed!


I learnt about:-
mind maps
core brand competencies
consumer expressed needs
expoiting competitor vulnerabilities!
how corona could go from nothing a few years ago to being the biggest imported brand into the USA!

listening skills was very useful for me!

The Visit to the wine shop was very useful

evan thought the 98 Grange at $400 was not a bad buy!

First Day!

a big first day,
met people from all over the world
7 aussies!
australia is a very small place, i think i know of most of them!
people from argentina, 28 from Brazil, romania
a model!
owners, daughters of founders etc
many people who have had to overcome a lot to be here

good intro by Linda
tiny rooms
thousands of case studies!
many plans:-
study, case studies,rowing,walking,
for my sins, i am the sommelier of our group!