Time to worry about a job

Barely got here and its time to think about jobs. I had a chat with Wally Olins today who is co-founder of Wolff Olins and will be teaching branding in the final term. Since one of my goals is to work in advertising I asked what the situation was like. I knew things were bad, that it's one of the few sectors hurting more than the new media business, but I wasn't expecting to be told that "Stay here till September, nobodies hiring now, maybe things will be better then"

Brutal stuff.

So if advertising really is a dead dog - and I'm by no means convinced it is yet. (Talent will get you everywhere I believe, of course its for other people to decide if I've got any but...) Anyway. If advertising is a no go then I''ll have to look at technology businesses and / or marketing jobs. Ogilvy recommended a few years in brand management with an FMCG firm as a route into advertising, but I think I'm in too much of a hurry for that.

Rumour busting

In the run up to last terms exams all kinds of rumours circulated about failure rates. 20% fail P&O, 40% fail at least one subject, the stress of resits ruins hilary term. Well that's bollocks. Those students who asked to have their results published took between them some 600 papers and represented around 70% of the class. There were only 18 failing papers in that group.

Note that people request to have exams results publicly or privately before taking the exams...

Results coming in

The first set of results information has been sighted on the exam noticeboards. So far they're only telling us whether we passed or failed. It could be a while before we know exactly what marks we got and how well we did. The good news is I passed everything.

Innovation and entrepreneurship

Paul Bradstock is director of the Oxford Trust, a charity that aims to spin technology out of the university. One of the things they do is support innovation centres around Oxfordshire through their subsidiary Oxford Innovation where small companies can get support and form part of local business networks.

He started by talking about the difference between innovation and entrepreneurship. Innovators have ideas - entrepreneurs take risk. Oddly enough if you find someone who can do both of these things you're onto a winner. Innovation centres provide...

Space : pay the rent, get a room
Visibility : people are interested in what goes on in these things
Community : 30 firms like you all in one place
Credibility : Some assurance that someone reckons you can make a go of it

I've often thought incubators would be a good thing, its nice to find out more about them. Right, you get help and support for 18 - 36 months, if your company hasn't made it by then you're out on your ear. In the mean time you'll have recieved help getting capital - in particular from government agencies, networking contacts.

Ah ha, just realised that OxmediaNet, whose steering committee I sit on is somehow connected to this (aside from using their premises from time to time) Its very easy to get the feeling that Oxford has most of the networks, organisations and opportunities it needs. What it really needs is some human dynamos to push the whole thing into overdrive and really start making things happen. If I wasn't dead set on moving away I think I'd cheerfully try and be one of them. Certainly its interesting for anyone considering an MBA in Oxford to know that this place has no shortage of start ups and opportunities for them.

Marketing gets brutal

I'm being taught marketing by a man who is qualified as an accountant in four countries, co founded Arthur D Little, edited various advertising journals, was/is? a director of EMAP and well... he's bloody good. We're skipping all the basic stuff and plunging straight into CEO level marketing discussion. It's hardcore stuff and todays' kick off session was great. My case study submissions for the week didn't cover most of what we talked about (neither did anyone elses) but I reckon I had some strong thinking in there none the less.

Interesting was the split in the class, I think about 80% of us were blown away by this. The remaining 20% are holding their heads and wondering how they're supposed to cope without someone teaching them the basic stuff. I'm with the lecturer on this - you're in an elite institution, you claim to be exceptional and you should be able to handle this stuff. Otherwise we'll have spent eight weeks learning what? Bog standard stuff we could have got from a textbook, the kind of stuff junior marketing staff come up with in meetings, that's never going to justify the cost of the course never mind the kind of salary MBA's claim they're entitled to.

I wish I knew more

Something bad is happening in Venezuela. I don't know the background and I don't know the details. All of which makes it hard for me to work out whether or not I should participate in this.

Research required.

Deans Q&A

The Dean is giving the termly Q&A session, he's opened with a big chunk on the FT rankings. Apparently all our objective indicators have held level or improved, but student satisfaction has dropped. His theory is that this is due to the appearance in the survey of those students who were here when John Kaye resigned and the school was still sharing rooms in the Radcliffe Infirmary (yes, it was a hospital)

As I said earlier, I really couldn't care less about this, but some folk seem to think that these numbers in the FT have some bearing on their future careers. It's the same rubber stamp mindset that I've moaned about before. If you came here because you wanted an MBA rather than to learn useful skills please leave. That's all I've got to say about it.

OK, now we're being told about the Dean's seminars. These are chances to hear from and then schmooze with heavyweights invited by the Dean. Sadly the pitch as to why we should attend is coming over as more stick than carrot. Internal marketing is not the deans speciality I fear. Still, a chance to have lunch with the bloke behind the Silicon Fen phenomenon is a good thing...

Incidently following a chat with the marketing department here I'll be writing these seminars up for broader consumption, both through the schools website / magazine and this website.

The money rolls inThe Dean is however really rather good at fundraising. We've just had announcements of some massive donations (in the order of the founding donation) which will be used by the school to develop leading programs in a number of areas - all of which I view as good things. I'll let the school make its own announcements about these though.

How to get a better burger

How do you get a better burger from McDonalds? Ask them to take the gherkins out, or make any kind of change. You see most burgers are made for stock, McDonalds staff manufacture burgers and keep them until someone buys them, or throw them away after seven minutes. So the burger you get has probably been hanging around for 5 minutes or so.

Ask them to take out the gherkin and you get a burger made just for you, hot and fresh. Of course you've still got a McDonalds burger, so it's hard to see just what you've gained but there you go. Anyway, that was the interesting fact of the day from Operations Management, which on first viewing looks like it could be quite a nice subject.

Elective decision time

Well, not quite decision time yet but we're currently sitting through an afternoon of pitches from the tutors, all explaining why we should take their courses. Some interesting stuff to date, including a truly heavyweight workload for one of the finance classes - masses of preparation, classwork and so on adding up to 10-12 hours a week. Doesn't sound too bad till you realise we're trying to do six of these at once.

Other things include the interesting looking technology related stuff, we've poached a new lecturer from Stanford to teach managing technology ventures, and a colleague of his who's teaching on strategy in technology firms. We've also had a mention of supply chain management including ethical issues - a positive sign that those outside the business world are starting to make themselves heard. I bet that wouldn't have been on the curriculum five years ago.

I wasn't planning on taking the history of business course, but the pitch for it was sufficiently entertaining that I'm having second thoughts. On the other hand, due to time constraints there's not going to be much primary material to play with, and I reckon it would take four out of eight weeks to teach people to evaluate secondary material properly. I think I'm going to need to talk to the lecturer further about this before I decide whether I want to do it or not.

I'm getting slightly annoyed about the number of 'how much', 'what percent', 'is there a textbook' kind of questions. Do subjects because you love them (or could have a passing affair with them.) not cause you think it might be cheap or easy or something else...

Leadership elective pitch now - apparantly the word management has its roots in the control of horses and other wild beasts. 'Why do we allow leaders to do stupid things?' is an interesting question for a course to address. I'm sure there are others - oh and we get to read Machiavelli and Plato which might be nice. Get the feeling that there might be more use for some of my historical background than in the history course. Hmm, we've just sent a Mexican wave round the class to make a point - seems reminiscent of power and authority stuff from way back. Oh, and there's a class on leadership, terrorism and leadership groups - which may have little to do with business - until there's a real upsurge in Guerilla Marketing (hmm, could you organise a marketing agency around a cell structure?). Assessment is a 5000 word dissertation, had a 5% fail rate last year. Hmmmmm

Now we're talking about IP law and innovation. I know this is important, you just have to look at the stuff about the Eldred case to see that but it just doesn't get me out of bed. Maybe one day I'll be a rich CEO and I'll lose it all after I forget to sign some important piece of paper - but I doubt it. (the CEO bit, not that I'd forget to sign an important bit of paper). More interesting is the question of why have IP at all and what should it look like, which is also on the course. Oh, and more ethics, IP rights and AIDS drugs, good stuff.

Aside A majority of SBS faculty need to sit through the training we just did on how to produce decent ppt slides. Some of this stuff is horrible.... (most of them are good to great lecturers though)

Brand Strategy now, start point, branding is a route out of price competition leading to wheelbarrows full of cash, and representing a form of market power. Oh, he's mentioned NoLogo"you have to take it seriously in business these days" did you hear that Tony?. Now we're covering Heinz's refusal to participate in the baked beans war - which I vaguely remember. (It ended just before I joined the working world)

The class have just been introduce to the effects of branding on the human psyche. For those who haven't heard this before its nice to watch the slow dawning of the realisation that marketing delivers value. Sudden explosion of marketing management diagrams I always thought the tricky bit was turning these diagrams and words into the perfect picture of the smiling baby or the cartoon tiger or the whatever.

Examination will be by doing some brand research. I like that.

Open Spectrum

I like this. While I have much to talk about at the moment and some interesting stories to tell, it's late and I have things to do before I can sleep. So for now read this about why there is no real need for spectrum licensing and how a little vision among the politicians could help change the way we communicate (again)

The Open Specturm FAQ