aaron's blog

This weekend, Fisher hosted its annual first-year internal case competition. A case competition is essentially a mini-consulting project. An actual business situation, as summarized and published by prominent business school publications (e.g. The Harvard Business Review), is presented to a group of students who have a relatively short amount of time to analyze the case, synthesize a recommendation and present and defend it to a panel of judges (representing executives of the company from the case).

Many case competitions are held as intercollegiate competitions (e.g., the Big 10 Case Competitions) or are sponsored by outside interests and organizations (e.g., the Proctor & Gamble Case Competition and The National Black MBA Association's Case Competition). However, Fisher is relatively unique in that it holds its own internal case competition for MBA’s only. By holding our own competition, we can cost effectively (without travel costs and registration fees) allow everyone that wants to to participate. Additionally, our internal case competition is used as a sort of audition for the aforementioned intercollegiate competitions.

The case revolved around Microsoft’s place in the internet search industry (from the perspective of September 2008). We were fortunate that this was a company, industry and product that we were relatively familiar with. We were given the case on Friday morning at 8:00 AM and were required to submit a finished PowerPoint deck by 8:00 AM on Saturday. The first teams began their presentations at 8:45.

My first experience with a case competition was a bit unusual. Due to illness and other unforeseen circumstances our four-person team was reduced to only two. Despite our best efforts to manage our time, sleep was definitely sacrificed in order to put forth the best product possible. We did not win, however our efforts were rewarded with a “Best Q&A” award.

I want to thank my teammate, Angela, here for convincing me to compete despite our disadvantage and pushing to put together the best solution possible.

Reposted from Fisher Grad Life Blog.

A

This week marked the kickoff of the 2010 Fisher Corporate Mentorship Program.  The program, organized by the Leadership and Professional Development office, goes to great lengths to match over a hundred fist-year MBA with professional mentors working in fields that the students are interested in.  Like all mentorship programs, the participants (both mentor and mentee) get out of this experience as much as they put in.  The program lasts ten months (through October 2010) and as a guideline it is recommended that both parties set aside time to meet every month.

My mentor is David Brownstein a partner in UVG Ltd (a Columbus venture consulting firm), involved with the Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (TEC) Institute and veteran of the Fisher Corporate Mentorship program. I got the chance to briefly meet him at the reception hosted at the Blackwell this week. I’m looking forward to building a relationship with him and learning more about his professional experiences over the coming year.

Reposted from Fisher Grad Life Blog.

A

Innovation Fisher, the brand-new Innovation-oriented student organization, kicked off this quarter with its first ever workshop this past Monday. The workshop is part of a series hosted by MakeTools.com founder Liz Saunders focusing on getting consumers to express their unmet needs.

Although, we did not have time to sufficiently prep and debrief, the IF students were given the opportunity to work through an exercise describing The Past, Present and Future of Business.

Working in groups of 3 or 4, we very quickly sifted through a collection of stimuli—images, title cut-outs from magazines, and stickers—to create a collage describing what we felt The Past, Present and Future of Business looks like. Towards the end of the session we came back together as an entire group and explained our collages to Liz and the other groups.

During future sessions, we will discuss how to interpret the collages and creation process to get at our unmet needs.

This workshop and others planned for this quarter are part of the Innovation Fisher Certification program. For more pictures check out the IF flickr stream.

Reposted from Fisher Grad Life Blog.

(Pictures by Dave Shaw and Amar Zumkhawala)

A