Ever wondered what does it take or what is it like to do business in India? Interested in listening to industry captains who experienced India or who brought a bit of India in Belgium? Wait no more, here is an opportunity to meet them! Them?
Baron Philippe Vlerick, CEO of Uco Textiles and chairman of our beloved school,
Hemakiran Gupta, country manager of Tata Consultancy Services,
Prof. Venkat Subramanian, professor at Vlerick school.
And on top of that, a light vegetarian dinner will be served :-)
So come and join us on June 5th, in Vlerick Ghent.
Following the opening of this blog to guest contributions from distinguished members of the Apollo Team (see International Study Trip), please welcome Bart van der Heijden as guest reported from The Fresh Connection game …
During the MBA, students have the time to fill their already tight schedule with all sorts of extra curriculum activities. One of these activities started in January with an email from Nina explaining a business simulation game called the fresh connection. Based on the information in the email we could read that we needed to form teams of about 4 students, who each fill in a different role: the role of the VP Sales, VP SCM, VP Operations and the VP Purchasing. Each team is responsible for the supply chain management of the fictitious fruit juices producer The Fresh Connection. The challenge is to optimize the supply chain of The Fresh Connection. In 6 weekly rounds, each team takes decisions.
During a first Friday drink, four students decided to team up and subscribe … The roles were divided as follows, with the help of a few straws:
VP SCM – Peter
VP Operations – Sam
VP Purchasing – Tom
VP Sales – Bart
Full of enthusiasm and good ideas, we started the first round. Our strategy was to change only a few parameters to see the effect, but, given the number of buttons we could use, off course in the end we changed everything. The result of the first round clearly hit us hard, an ROI of -30.92 %. We were convinced that we had to improve this result and started developing some models and calculations to optimize the supply chain. Luckily, this worked out well, the result of the second round was -2.14 %. For some reason, we became greedy and convinced that we could do much better. Again a lot of parameters were changed with the side note that 75% of the team was in China and 25% in Africa (so you can imagine the level of coordination between the different functions). The result, an ROI of -58,64 %. Finally, in round four, we were back with our feet on the ground and decided that from now on, our ROI should be positive. Even the payment of the subscription fee to Bart was depending on the result: the team would only repay their share once a positive ROI was reached. As have been taught in HR courses, great incentives will lead to great results. We removed a few products from our assortment, focused on fressiepressie, squeezed some suppliers and customers into better contracts and based our whole supply chain on the forecasted demand: the result was an astonishing ROI of 8.73 %. For round five we decided not to change too much, but continue on the basis we have set this far. This turned out to be a great success, round 5 ROI 16.18 %!
With this magnificent score, Team Apollo is today ranked first out of 15 amongst all international business schools with only one round left. The expectations are sky-high, our VP operations is convinced we can reach an ROI of 28% as a result of the sixth round. This Friday we will make the final decisions for our fruit company and on Monday (28/5/2012) around noon, we update you with the result.
On this very sad evening for Apollo (maybe more on this later) we received the grades for Corporate Financial Management. As usual, here is the graphical representation of the results distribution:
It seems we get used to that type of curve! Congratulations to everyone!
So Blue Ocean strategy was introduced by Prof. Dr. Kurt Verweire in Strategic Management. Initially it’s a book written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of INSEAD. But of course, there are a lot of videos out there about it …
Do you want a short introduction or summary?
Or maybe you prefer the longer version?
Or you just want to see again glimpses of cases, with some patriotic music in the background?
In this series on the International Study Trip please welcome Mark Willems as the second guest reporter from China. Mark made us the honour to write an extensive report of the whole (tourist) trip, including pictures … [for the sake of clarity and although I don't like it, I will split this very long post, you'll need to read it on the web]
Day 1 – Shanghai
I arrived early on Monday morning in Shanghai airport.
The Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) train brought me to the city center in 8 minutes at a maximum speed of 301 km/h. During the day the train reaches a maximum speed of 431 km/h.
Maglev picture by Frederik Mennes
Speed indicator picture by Mark Willems
After another short and “slow” metro ride I arrived at the Blue Mountain Youth Hostel where Frederik checked in the night before. He was barely awake when I knocked at the door but it was nice to see a familiar and non-Asian face. Apparently I already felt alienated in China and that after only a short train and metro ride ;-) In the subway I was at least a head taller than the others and I was the only one wearing a non-black and even a colorful sweatshirt. Can you imagine ;-)
Stijn, a friend of mine studying an MBA in Gent, was also staying in the same Hostel. We all gathered and took off to People’s Square in the city to meet up with our Leuven classmate Gilles. From there on, we first visited the Jade Buddha Temple.
Jade Buddha Temple picture by Mark Willems
Afterwards we travelled to the famous Bund where we got a first glimpse of the Pudong new area across the Huangpu River. The Bund is a waterfront area between the river and Zhongshan road.
Bund waterfront picture by Mark Willems
Eager to see the Pudong new area from close by, we crossed the river by taking the sightseeing tunnel.
Bund Sightseeing Tunnel picture by Mark Willems
As you will see in the following link to a You Tube video, this tunnel is less spectacular as seen in many pictures (mine is pimped by playing with the shutter speed), but it was nice to have seen it though.
Once we arrived at the other side we grouped with two other classmates, Vanessa and our one and only Chief Party Animal, Fabian.
We climbed the large bottle opener shaped building, the Shanghai World Financial Center, housing the second highest observation deck worldwide at 474 meters.
Next to this tower an even higher beauty of 632 meters is being built, the Shanghai Tower, which will open for public in 2014.
Spyshot picture by Mark Willems
Pudong new area skyline picture by Mark Willems
For dinner, Frederik arranged us a nice table at Shook! where Kevin Cape, a British highly respected chef, presents an Asian and Western blended menu.
We tried some different nice dishes but it was mainly one of the desserts that caught our attention. Even for a culinary adventurist like me, the “Malaysian Ice Kacang” was very innovative. Or did you ever try a dessert that combines shaved ice, corn, sweet brown beans, peanuts and grass jelly?
Yesterday we had our first class since the business trip (for 1st year students ; more on this later), right during the period of thesis defense (for 2nd year students). It was M&A (mergers and acquisitions).
As Marc Hofman (Managing Director of Terbeke) later explained, I believe M&A cannot be taught for the simple reason that most of yesterday talks weren’t quite structured imho (except Hofman’s) (or I was too tired to discover their hidden structures – that’s also a possibility). But that’s fine for me: it deals with ego, feelings, etc. in a word, it’s not an exact science.
However I strongly believe that it’s no point giving students handouts with only part of the presentation you deliver (as the third presenter did). First, for us (students but also actual / potential future customers in our professional life), it’s very annoying not to have the whole story to review (especially with discountinuing numbers at the bottom right). Then anyway your audience will figure out one way or another to get the full slideset. So here I would like to thank Pierre Francotte, professor at Solvay Business School (The Belgian rival school, booooo!), to have made public the complete third presentation on M&A.
Don’t get me wrong: I usually appreciate companies that make most of their research public. And here it’s also the case: McKinsey published a lot about M&A (free registration required). For instance “Taking a longer-term look at M&A value creation” will re-explain you a big part of yesterday third presentation. Just be consistent till the end :-)
Finally, here are the direct links to some material refered to in the last presentation:
In this series on the International Study Trip I’m reporting from New York …
Fill in the blanks in the lyrics:
On the fifth day of New York, Vlerick gave to me
Five …
Four …
Three …
Two …
And a bunch of cool new friends.
Well, it’s been five days we’ve been in New York and, as for fellows in China, there was so much to do and see that there was hardly time to write on this blog after the firsttwo days.
In the last three days, we finally had some flavor of what it takes to do business in the USA! Bill Catucci, John Tognino and Ed Stroz, all three are or were CEO and play(ed) a role in the US economy. They gave very interesting talks about their careers, what and how they did, always putting emphasis on leadership, acknowledgment of mistakes and ethics. It was also very nice to see that all three were also alumni from Fordham University and were returning there to give classes (I’m sure it would be possible to give the same type of program in Vlerick, given the Alumni network the School has, ymmv). We also had classes on finances and marketing (but I merely saw these more as complement of classes already given in Vlerick). Finally we also visited the New York Times building for a Vlerick Alumni event at the Flanders Investment and Trade office and we were received by John Melloy at CNBC just before its TV show Fast Money.
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But only half of a study trip is about classes and company visits (imho). It’s also about meeting new friends from other MBA programs (PTMBAs in Ghent, modular MBAs, PTMBAs in St Petersburg) as well as MBA students from Fordham University. It’s also about visiting New York, its surroundings and the startup scene. It’s about meeting New Yorkers and Vlerick Alumni.
So overall, I’m quite happy with this study trip. There is always room for improvements; we communicated them so you’ll definitely will need to go to New York in 2013 in order to have a great trip! ;-)
All photos are mine and were taken during this trip; you can freely use them.
In this series on the International Study Trip I’m reporting from New York …
For the second day of the business trip to New York, we followed a class at Bloomberg by Prof. Dr. Werner (Fordham University) and enjoyed a jazz/leadership workshop in the afternoon. Eli Yamin Blues Band is perhaps not yet very well known in Belgium (but I have the impression that this will change with the help of some students). Lots of other things can be said and listened to but I’ll just put some pictures: next time, come to New York, it’s worth it! :-)
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All photos are mine and were taken during this trip; you can freely use them.
In this series on the International Study Trip I will report from New York …
On the first day in New York, we started slowly (most of us just arrived the day before). We just followed The Force and did a tour of the city. St. Patrick’s Cathedral, St. Paul’ Chapel, Ground Zero, Wall Street, 5th Avenue, Broadway, Central Park, … There was a lot to see and to hear about in just a few hours. Let’s say now we know some (additional) places to visit for the next days. The morning ended with a lunch at the Trump Grill.
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During the afternoon we took part in the US economy and did some (window) shopping. Tomorrow the real thing starts at 7.30AM :-)
For the crispy news … what happened in New York stays in New York ;-)
All photos are mine and were taken during this trip; you can freely use them.
