Invest in education

According to the Macro-economic figures we've just been shown there's a 16% return on investment in education. Better than pretty much anything else over the long term. Makes me feel better about my big pile of debt.

Woodgate

It looks like Newcastle have signed Jonathan Woodgate, a young, english, talented central defender and one of Leeds United's crown jewels. Regardless of what happens this season it should ensure we're challengers next year. I should be delighted.

However Woodgate was convicted last year of taking part in a brutal attack on an asian guy that put the poor kid in a coma and left him with bite marks scarring his face. Regardless of whether this was a racist attack it was brutal and violent and while Woodgates conviction was for affray not assault - apparently he wasn't the one who did all the damage - he was there. He and his mates pretty much lynched some guy.

So what am I supposed to do? The guys done his time (well, his fine and community service - surely not nearly enough) and so maybe deserves a second chance? But its bloody hard to imagine supporting someone with that kind of record. Apparently some particularly senseless Rangers fans refuse to include goals scored by Catholic players when looking at match results - even to the extent of claiming that they didn't really win certain titles. This is clearly ludicrous, I can't edit Woodgate out of the team, I can't support ten out of the eleven men on the field.

Bloody hell this is difficult, god only knows what our black and asian fans make of it.

Don't try this at home

Macroeconomics should not be attempted with a hang over. In particular it should not be attempted if you are at the one MBA school that teaches economics differently. No money supply diagrams here, no sir. No, what we have is the Solow model of growth as a starting point, which requires you to get your head round some damn complicated graphs and some really interesting ideas about technology.

The perfect case study

Marketing rolled on today with another 3 case studies, all of which were written by the professor, a guy who clearly doesn't understand what makes a good case study. Having now observed hundreds of the things a good case study should be

1. Based on real companies but with the names cleverly changed. Thus a case about Microsoft should not start "Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft sat back in his executive chair" but should instead read "Joe Fence, CEO of MegaSoftware sat back in his executive chair"

2. Add a little local color. One case study included the line "you can't make an omlette sans oeufs, without eggs!" to show that the person saying it was French. This had nothing to do with anything, but it shows how global and open minded the business school community is.

3. Include at least one instance of an unco-operative member of staff or a personnel issue. This is to prove that the case is in the real world. Thus we get 'Marco Baggio the production manager who passionately believed that increaing sales was the way forward'. In line with point 2 Marco should be Italian and the product should be pasta.

4. Leave room for the student - usually at the top. A good ending would be 'Following Joe Fences' resignation the board appointed Pete Jones, a recent graduate of Harvard Business School'

5. Open with something that makes the point of the case obvious. If it's about selling companies Joe Fence will lean back and 'ponder whether or not he should sell his company to Peach Computers for fifty pence and a packet of crisps' you now know what the case is about

The point is that case studies have evolved from being descriptions of the real world to being a type of creative writing practiced solely by business school professors. It's about as stylised as Haiku and its relationship to the real world is tangential to say the least.

Those exam results in full

The transcripts of our exams came through today, which means we now know exactly what we got on each exam and for the assessed coursework. So, how did I do?

Decision Science : 74.5
Financial Reporting : 60.0
Finance 1 : 80.1
Industrial Organisations : 63.6
People and Organisations : 65.7
Strategic Management : 69.8

Grade A is 70, B is 60 and C is 50. Anything below that and you have to retake.

Have to say these marks are almost exactly the opposite of what I was expecting, I am decidedly not what business school slang terms a 'quant jock' or someone who's good with numbers. However the results seem to suggest exactly that. The true story is of course that I spent most of my revision time fretting about the quant subjects because I knew I wasn't good at them and paid for it with weak performances in subjects where I thought I'd be good - Strategic Management and People and Organisations. Or perhaps my rather freewheeling essay style just isn't that suited to business school. Who knows?

Oh, and I can only assume I had some kind of complete failure of the brain in the Financial Reporting exam, I really did think I'd turned in three solid essay questions and a decent job of work on the company assessment. The technical 'how would you account for this questions' I thought were a mixed bag, but they're worth next to no marks. Really thought I'd done better than that. Still, I can now read the annual reports of premiership football clubs and use them to work out the likely state of the transfer market - short form, Leeds will really wish they'd sold a few players come June / July.

One of the single most annoying things about Oxford is that this is the first time we've been given feedback on assessed work. According to university regulations that can't happen until the complete course has been finished - so we were all forced to go into the exams with no indication of what was expected. It's a level playing field - but it's also extremely frustrating to say the least.

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

Football : Mission Accomplished

We ran our socks off, we talked and chattered, and despite being a man short in the second half and having to field a player who could barely walk in the second we turned in a much better performance than on Tuesday. It may have been 13 - 0 but I don't care, and neither did anyone else. We played better, we could all see the progress and morale is good. Our attitude and effort even impressed our opponents - so hats off to Linacre college, they played well, they kept it fair and they did their job. Good stuff all round.

Said slips in the rankings, I couldn't care less

The FT rankings came out today and we've slipped to fourth in the UK, 35th in the world. Am I bothered? Not really, most of the UK schools slipped down the rankings, of the top school all were audited this year and lets be clear, these tables are not much more than vague indicators. Sure the schools at the top are good, but what for? The survey ranks employment prospects and average salary which skews everything toward financial based schools who churn out city traders. Then there's the question of entrepreneurs, as more and more of SBS alumni decide to start companies its hardly surprising that our average earnings figures take a knock.

The real influence is the involvement of recruiters and students in these surveys. SBS is a new school and teething problems are inevitable, likewise as the economy suffers on campus recruiters have been focusing on the big schools - that's my best guess. The real point, as I've said many times before is that my future job depends not on the school, but on me. So all in all the fact that I missed todays interview training to play football will probably have a bigger impact on my future career than anything the FT comes up with.

Marketing Preparation

Marketing Management is being taught by case study. Not in the kind of here's a lecture, now discuss the case study kind of way, but in the 100% of your mark depends on your performance in 21 submitted case studies. No case study submission may be more than a single typed side of A4 and lectures will consist of discussions of the work you've just handed in kind of way.

Three thoughts on this. First, its going to be tough for a lot of people. Secondly, a lot of people are going to learn a lot more about marketing than they would have any other way. Finally, you really really really don't want to find yourself resitting this one. I've read, done and thought about marketing a lot in the last few years. I've just done the first case study, wrote down a bunch of ideas, threw out the ones I thought looked mediocre and still ran out of space. I think I'm going to like this.

Still dreaming

There's a lot of thinking going on in the dreaming spires. This morning we had a talk on technology transfer at Oxford, the folks looking after this are Isis Innovation, and in the past six years they've spun out 34 companies - none of which have failed. More impressive was the £208 million Oxford gets through supporting its 4500 researchers every year.

I didn't know you could get that angry

That's what the captain of the football team said after our 15 - 0 (sadly we weren't playing rugby) thrashing at the hands of St Anthony's college. Odd thing is I didn't think I got nearly angry enough. If I hadn't been playing with the kind of hangover that made running difficult I might have been more use, screamed at the back four earlier and just maybe we'd have learned to push out in a straight line before the eighty minute mark...

Oh, and it would have been nice if eleven players had turned out for us, saving us from asking the lads on the pitch before us if anyone fancied a game...

Still, much credit for one of the best half time team talks I've heard "It doesn't matter if they score twenty, we've only got one thing to do and that's score a goal this half" which brought about ten minutes of confident, aggressive attacking football, hassle and running. If we'd scored then we might have kept it going, but we didn't and well that was that.

The problem is still communication. Football pitches should be noisy places filled with shouts of "man on", "push up", "I'll have", "so and so wants" and the rest. Perhaps its because so many of us are playing in foreign languages, perhaps its because so many of us haven't played for so long. In some cases players feel they can't tell better players what to do (not a problem I've ever had, being the gobbiest awful player I know). I don't know, but there are a few things we can work on and get right. We can work harder than our opponents, and we can talk more. If we get stuffed twenty nil on Satuday I won't care - so long as we work our socks off and keep talking.

Of course, as every schoolboy of my generation knows what we really need is a charismatic geordie manager, a former england international who was forced out of the game prematurely by injury. Do you know who it is yet? (256kb download)