aaron's blog

After a long blogging hiatus: Welcome to Winter Quarter! It’s a new decade and a new class schedule—this time with electives. The first quarter was entirely “core” classes (predetermined foundational courses set for the entire MBA program). This time around I was able to choose two courses outside of the required core courses.

As part of the Global Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership Program this summer, I took a week long “certificate-course” in innovation from Michael Bills. The course focused on consumer centric innovation practices. I enjoyed the course so much I decided to come back for the full course—BUS M&L 855 Innovation Practice—this winter. According to the syllabus

The purpose of this course is to provide students with the opportunity to develop skills, and understanding of, the theory and application of innovation processes and a framework for its commercial application across various types and formats of businesses.

Bills has built a very popular courses since coming to Fisher a year ago. In fact, the interest has spilled over into a student organization—Innovation Fisher—which is planning an innovation summit—called What IF—this spring. This past Friday, I visited the Ohio Health Center for Medical Education & Innovation as the first Innovation Fisher site visit.

In addition to Innovation Practice, I’m also taking BUS MHR 825 Entrepreneurship & Business Plan Development—but that’s a story for another post.

Reposted from Fisher Grad Life Blog.

A

Finally wrapping up my first quarter at Fisher (or at least the first one I spent entirely in Columbus). This week is finals week. However, the way things worked out, last week ended up being much more stressful than this. I had three presentations last week (Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday), as well as a group paper due Wednesday and an individual final paper due Saturday at midnight. (Kudos to one especially dauntless MBA [you know who you are] for starting at 10:30 Saturday morning!)

Compared to that this week was easy—just exams. No class, no team meetings, no assignments—just exams. At this point, I have two exams down (Econ and Stats) with only one (Accounting) standing between me and winter break.

Looking forward to break, I’ll be:

• Going to the Blue Jackets / Panthers Game on Wednesday night
• Working on an executive summary for the Fisher Business Plan Competition
• Reading The Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life in preparation for the February trip to Omaha to hear him speak
• Xmas Shopping (haven’t started!)

Others have much more glamorous plans (e.g. tanning in Florida, skiing in Vail), but I’m just looking forward to relaxing and spending some time at home—and maybe I’ll catch a movie or two.

Reposted from Fisher Grad Life Blog.

A

Last week I took a day off of classes and headed down to Cincinnati for Ohio’s Only Statewide College Entrepreneurship & Ethics Conference and Competition (I think the name needs to be changed to…something you can remember). The conference was attended by graduate and undergraduate business and entrepreneurship students from several Ohio/Kentucky Colleges including: Ohio State – Fisher COB, Xavier – Williams COB, Bowling Green and Northern Kentucky – Haile COB. There were three components to the conference: a keynote addresses, breakout sessions (which took the form of lectures and/or forums) and a small business simulation.

Here were some of the highlights:

• Computer business simulation that required our team (four other Fisher Students and me) to run a coffee: setting pricing, ordering inventory, advertising, and hiring and firing.
• Breakout session reviewing the concepts behind Kim and Mauborgne’s book Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant.
• Breakout session presented by Dr. Chris Manolis on Entrepreneurial Marketing.
• Breakout session presented by Dr. Ravi Chinta titled Model Business: A Tool for Business Plan Evaluation. Here, he described a 23-dimension rubric he used as a venture capitalist to evaluate a business plans—however it can also be reverse-engineered a give an entrepreneur a few things to think about when writing a business plan.
• Keynote Address by Pete Hensler, President of RC2 a toy and infant/toddler products company that licenses and sells John Deere, Disney, and Tommy the Tank Engine toys. The primary takeaways were to keep a global context (RC2 does much of its manufacturing in China, but has recently turned to the country as a new market for its products) as well as list of ten question that he asks himself everyday to keep him focused. Also, he ended his speech with this video…definitely worth a watch.

Reposted from Fisher Grad Life Blog.

A