MIT Sloan students speak: MBA class of 2012

Brazilian Culture @ MIT Sloan

In Brazil, the month of March is strongly related to carnival – from north to south people celebrate it in different ways but with the same objective, enjoy life fostering the country’s culture. This is what the class of 2013 decided to show at the 2012 Brazilian C-Function – and they did so brilliantly!

From typical national dishes – feijoada, a stew of beans with beef and pork – to typical martial arts – capoeira, combining elements of dance and fight. From bossa nova songs played by first years to axé songs played by the great Davi’s band.

The night was spectacular; the band played the whole night; people had a lot of fun and of course we all ended up at the hong kong nightclub. It was a great way to end the H1 and start enjoying the spring break after the SIP week.

Highlight of the evening? 40 students dancing the most recent Brazilian song hit Ai Se Eu Te Pego – or Oh If I Catch You for the English version – by the way, this song was translated to several languages around the world…

Cheers,

Tiago

 

Useful Links: Brazilian Club @ Sloan; 2012 Brazilian C-Function Video; Ai Se Eu Te Pego Student Dance

The Wizard of Oz and Outer Space: MIT SIP

Today was the first day of Spring 2012 SIP week, and I was fortunate to take part in two fascinating classes.

The first class I participated in today was given by Ken Pucker, former COO of Timberland. Though the class’ formal title was Sustainable Leadership in the Consumer Space, Mr. Pucker half jokingly said that he would have liked to name it “Oh, we’re no longer in Kansas”  to reflect the dramatic changes in the last two decades that contributed to higher expectations and shorter CEO tenure in consumer facing companies.

The key takeaways from the class were:

1)      The Industrial Revolution is dead, and the 21^st century is connected and constrained. In other words, as System Dynamics illustrate - we are all living in a world of inescapable mutualities.

2)      Different skills are required to lead, particularly collaboration. This refers not just to partnering with competitors, but also NGO’s and governments

3)      Don’t believe all you read – implementing sustainability is HARD. Certainly much harder than any business case discussion can demonstrate in a classroom.

4)      Sustainable thinking is about earth AND income.   

 

The second class was given by Mark Bonchek, SVP of Communities and Networks at Sears Holdings Corporation, titled Social Leadership:  The Architecture of Business in the 21st Century .We started off by identifying the fact that as marketers, we are too often “stuck” using old mental maps: segmenting, targeting and blasting at our consumers – rather than viewing our businesses as social enterprises, and our organizations as social systems that engage customers, employees, and partners. 

A recent article published by Mr. Bonchek captures some of the class discussion, around the idea that for brands to be true social leaders – they need to act like gravity centers that pull customers in by creating a magnetic (and orbit sustaining) source of value.

As expected at MIT (show us the numbers, please!), we now have 3 concrete metrics to measure whether our ROE (return on engagement) is turning into ROI.

Fun semester

This first half of my last semester here at Sloan has definitely been the most relaxed one so far. With the job hunt over and no TA (Teaching Assistant) duties I have been able to focus on enjoying the great courses I’m in under no significant time pressure. I want to tell you about three of them in this blog.

“Global Economic Challenges” is a very interesting course taught by Professor Kristine Forbes. The material is very timely looking at historical crisis all the way up to the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 and the currently on going Euro crisis. Iceland has gotten its fair share of (negative) attention, as well. We have had great visitors from the ECB and an economist from Ireland to give us a better insight and different perspective into the Euro crisis.

“Global Markets, National Policies and the Competitive Advantages of Firms” is both the course that has the longest name at Sloan and the course that has most positively surprised me this semester. It focuses on the challenges multinational companies face when participating in the economies of foreign countries and the intriguing social responsibility questions that arise around such operations. The cases in this course were fantastic, including DeBeers in Botswana, IKEA and child labor in India, NIKE and the accusations they faced and Starbucks and their interaction with CI and Fair Trade. I am already regretting that this was just a half semester course.

“The Analytics Edge” looks at different case studies on how DMD (Data, Models and Decisions – the most quantitative of our core courses) approaches have been used in industry to create an edge. We have covered Google’s search engine and AdWords, Revenue management, Moneyball (after you've gotten over how stunning Brad Pitt is in that movie, please realize the amount of analytics involved in Baseball!) and many more applications in this interesting course. The main downside to the course is that it is taught in a double session from 4pm to 7pm on Wednesday nights which has at times made it difficult to keep full focus.

I am looking forward to the latter half of the semester and I hope that the courses I’ll be adding will be equally as informative and fun as the ones I just described.

An exciting week of SIP ahead

I can't believe that we are already in March.  I am in my last week of H1 (what we refer to as the first half of semester) and with that comes the close of one class.  I pick up two more though in H2 which starts the first week in April. 

So what happens in between this week and the first week of April?  Well, there's a week of spring break which starts on 3/26 this year.  Next week is something unique to Sloan - the Sloan Innovation Period or "SIP."  SIP has a tall order to fill -it is intended to be a week where students can "take a break from classes" in lieu of a different type of experiential or classroom learning. My first year SIP courses were more classroom based (by choice technically, but they weren't that memorable).  This year I opted for more experiential courses to take. I took a yoga/meditation based course in the Fall which was very cool.  This time though, for the first time ever, a 3-4 day hike in North Carolina was offered, meeting the 2 credits of SIP required.  I honestly can't imagine a better way to spend SIP.

A group of 12 of us (many of whom are very good friends) set out for our "SIP Hike" this Sunday, March 18th. We are staying at the trail head that night and will then start our hike the next day.  The hike itself isn't that long - we'll only be doing 6-7 miles each day.  But there are some interesting elements built in that are focused  on leadership and teambuilding.  I'll be doing all this in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina.  I'm particularly excited about the day we cover Cold Mountain (yes the same from the novel/movie!).  I plan on taking lots of photos and am sure I'll come back with some incredible memories and stories. :) 

In other news, I accepted a job offer!  I am officially staying in the beautiful city of Boston and will be starting at Liberty Mutual as a member of their Career Development Program this July.  It's a very reputable program and offers a lot of opportunity for challenge and growth.  The people are also really great. All in all, it's the full package I wanted and I'm thrilled (and relieved) to have a glimpse into what the next chapter will be.