10 most innovative business school courses

Forbes.com published a list of the 10 most innovative business school courses. Any list like this is going to be a little arbitrary, but I was happy to see NCSU's Product Innovation Lab class listed as one of the ten. I finished that class in December, and it was the most effortful and unique class I've ever taken. (That's saying a lot, because I've been through three grad school programs.)

The article also mentioned the project my team completed, a video conferencing system for PT patients. It was based on Microsoft's Natal technology. It was a killer project, if I do say so myself.

ACC tournament roundup

The ACC tournament is over and done, and it was the first time I got to see the rivalry up close. Almost everyone wore their school shirt to work on Friday. Depending on the shirt you wore people said, "Nice shirt," or "Ugly shirt" when they walked by. As an alum, I proudly wore my NCSU Wolfpack t-shirt, and some of those in red had a good deal of fun at the expense of the people who wore UNC powder blue. It was all in good humor.

Graduation Day

Today is graduation day at NCSU. I've completed the MBA program, so I'm done with scholastics, at least for a while. It was difficult at times, but rewarding. I'm glad I went through it, and I'm glad it's done. I'll probably drink some strong tea or coffee to celebrate.

Reformatting RTP

I've complained before about the layout of Research Triangle Park between Durham and Raleigh. It's too big and traffic intensive to encourage tech workers to meet each other and exchange ideas. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so, as there are plans to repurpose some of the land to encourage collaboration between companies and their knowledge workers.

This is a nice development. I've taken advantage of some of the activities mentioned in this article, including Techie Tuesday and the RTP-based NCSU MBA program. I'd love to see park do more to encourage techs to get together. Kudos to Rick Weddle and his staff for taking steps in that direction.

GMAT as selection criterion

I took the GMAT four years ago, when I decided to return to school for an MBA. At the time I didn't think it was very important. I already had a lot of job experience and a lot of education, so I knew GMAT wasn't going to be a big factor in my application. I looked at a test prep book for a couple of days and took the test and scored mid 600s. That's not great, but it was good enough for what I needed.

Then I read this article that says the GMAT is being used as a selection criterion by employers who are trying to weed through all of their applications. No matter that the test wasn't designed for that purpose.

This trend is even worse than using personality tests for selection, and that's pretty bad. I wonder if some employers have simply given up on trying to interview people for their qualifications and fit and are looking only at the numbers.

Research parks: best configuration?

Here are a couple of recent BusinessWeek articles on business parks and their role as drivers of economic growth. The first article touts Research Triangle Park as an attractive model for research parks. I live a few minutes away from RTP and attend MBA classes in the park.

The second article is skeptical of the idea of siting a research park in the woods, and argues that research parks need to be part of larger, urban communities. Ideas for new products and companies are hatched when tech workers can easily bump into each other.

Being in and around RTP, I can vouch for the fact that it's hard to find people who are interested in new products and are willing to talk business. The layout of the park, with company campuses hidden behind security gates and trees, doesn't lend itself to meeting and talking with people.

The idea of cities as optimal places for innovation and technology development is laid out in detail in a great book I read recently, Who's Your City, by Richard Florida. Florida shows how important geography is for economic development, and shows that cities are increasingly becoming centers of economic development. Nice read, and a good perspective when talking about siting new research parks.

Project management - the class

I'm in a project management class for my MBA program. I like the discussions and case studies, and to hear people's perspectives on project work. I've being been doing projects for a while, so it's nice to have a framework on which to hang my observations of project life.

One of the things I've found is that I can now pretty easily sort people who have project management training from those who don't, and people with project experience from those who don't. It's not just the jargon, it's the knowledge of things like tradeoffs and how to work with customers. It's good to have knowledge of project methodology when you go into a project, and to know who shares the same background.

Class trip to Switzerland

I'm leaving for Switzerland today on a trip sponsored by my MBA program at NC State University. Our little group will visit companies in Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne to talk to company representatives about business process. I'll be back in 10 days with lots of updates.

End of semester time adjustment

The end of a semester always requires a little adjustment, because I have free time in the evening. It takes about three days to adjust, and find new ways to fill that time. I'll only have a few days to enjoy the downtime, and then summer session starts.

Real money in Second Life

As things go bad in our first lives, apparently some performers are making money in Second Life. I've spent a lot of time listening to live music. I've spent only a little time in SL, just doing projects for my MBA program, and I must say I don't see the attraction of listening to music in SL. Maybe I'm just Old School, but performances need to be seen live to get the real experience. But, if people can make some extra cash by working as virtual performers, I say good for them.

Telling stories in Second Life

Organizational cultures and sub-cultures was a big topic in my Org Behavior class this semester. Although people within companies often speak of "the company culture" which is determined by its executives, researchers typically find a variety of cultures within a single organization. Each culture has its own assumptions, values, and language, and the differences are sometimes sources of conflict.

Our project this semester was to shoot a video in Second Life that told an organizational story. My team's machinima video attempted to illustrate the differences between engineering and marketing cultures. This "culture clash" has been a rich source of material for Scott Adams, so we freely borrowed from the Dilbert strips, while providing narration based on academic research and our own experiences.

The video lacks in its execution, but was a nice learning experience. Videos like these would be a fast, cheap way to develop prototypes for new services. The prototypes could be viewed by potential customers and their feedback collected prior to giving the demos to managers. That's something I'd like to try to do some day.

Snow day

We had about 2 or 3 inches of snow last night and today. In central N.C., that means everything shuts down, including the universities. That's a lot different from, say, central Illinois, where it takes a blizzard to close schools and people are expected to make it to work on snowshoes. I missed my marketing class, which was a shame. I'm taking marketing and services management this semester in my MBA program at NC State. If every things goes according to plan I'll graduate in December.

Of course, not everyone thinks an MBA is the best way to improve one's life.

Sitting out the recession in MBA school

US business schools have reported a big increase in the number of applicants to MBA programs. Apparently a lot of workers have decided to deal with the recession by returning to school and preparing for the day the economy turns around.

Of course, if you're a recent MBA graduate then this fallback plan isn't available anymore, as homeboy James Williamson of Durham, NC discovered. Driving a taxi in NYC is a tough way to earn a living until companies start hiring again.

As I've mentioned before, I'm in the part-time MBA program at NC State, with one year to go before graduation. Things will turn around before then, right?

Flying through Denver

I'm flying in and out of Denver this week because I have business in Boulder. The Democratic National Convention starts on August 25, so I'll catch some of the travellers to the convention. Maybe I'll try to score a convention button or a silly hat from someone.

When I get back I start my 2nd year in the part time MBA program at NC State. So I'm going to be busy, and that translates into shorter blog posts, at least this month.

Remarks on Ahead of the Curve

I'm reading a book that is so good I couldn't wait to finish before blogging it. Ahead of the Curve is by Philip Delves Broughton, an English journalist who quit his job to enroll and pursue an MBA at Harvard Business School. HBS is, by reputation, one of the top MBA programs in the country. Delves Broughton was alternately impressed and appalled by the things he saw there, and tells all in a very funny, ironic way.

When he's writing about the content of the coursework the book sometimes reads like his transcribed class notes. It's when he talks about the attitudes of the students and faculty that make the book worth the read. The present and future Masters of the Universe don't always look very attractive in the author's narrative.

As I read I can't help but think about Philip Zimbardo's classic mock prison experiment at Stanford, in which students were assigned the roles of prisoners and guards in a "prison" set up in the basement of a Stanford classroom building. The experiment demonstrated that participants' behavior was heavily influenced by their environment and preconceptions about how guards and prisoners behave in prison. In Delves Broughton's account, HBR students quickly adapt to the priviledges and perks of being part of the "HBR brand," and display a sense of entitlement.

Excellent read, especially if you're in or considering an MBA program of your own.

"Specialized" MBA programs

Here's a brief article in BusinessWeek on the rise of specialized MBA programs. Two students from program at NC State are quoted in the article. I'm in the NC State part-time program, and I was glad to see the program get some attention, but I think the article missed the mark. NC State, like other MBA programs, offers various concentrations in areas like biopharma, services, finance, and innovation, but it doesn't grant a specialty degree like Master of Health Administration, for example. A better example of a speciality degree is the Master of Global Innovation Management where students take classes in Raleigh and in France. At any rate, BusinessWeek tends to report on the top-tier schools, so the article was a bit of a departure from the norm.

An MBA version of "Scared Straight"

In March, I blogged about having heard Walt Pavlo talk about embezzling $6 million from his employer MCI. I compared his presentation to an MBA version of the "Scared Straight" program for youthful offenders.

Last week BusinessWeek carried an article about Pavlo's talks in MBA classes. The story was entitled "Using ex-cons to scare MBAs straight." Coincidence? Maybe.

NCSU Design School presentation

Here's a great event that I'd love to go to, but it runs at the same time as my Thursday night Leadership and Ethics class. Bummer. I'll pass it along so that someone can attend for me.

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Dear HFES Carolina Members and Friends –

Faculty from the College of Design at NCSU have graciously offered to give a collection of presentations next week at NCSU. They are interested in sharing their research and design ideas with the HFES community.

Time: Thursday, March 27, 5:30-8:00pm
Location: Kamphoefner Hall, College of Design complex, Burns Auditorium, NCSU

There will be a reception (with refreshments) in the lobby area of the Burns Auditorium from 5:30-6pm. Professor Haig Khachatoorian will moderate this event.

Presentations will begin at 6pm and will include the following:

• Bryan Laffitte / Associate Professor & ID (Industrial Design) Dept. Head - "Visualization as a Tool for Collaborative Innovation"
• Percy Hooper / Associate Professor & Director of I D Graduate Programs - "Invention, Innovation & Design : Transforming Propositions to Products"
• Bong-IL Jin / Associate Professor - "The World Traffic Safety Design Competitions"
• Dr. Sharon Joines / Assistant Professor - "Ergonomic Interventions for Ultrasound Technicians"
• Tim Buie / Assistant Professor - "Game Design : Designing the Interaction Experience"
  

Each presentation will last approximately 20 min. and there will be a question and answer session to follow. If you plan to attend the reception, please let Miranda Capra know so that adequate refreshments are available.

Dave Kaber, HFES Carolina Chapter President

Stolen without a gun

My MBA program's Leadership and Ethics class had a guest lecturer last week. Walter Pavlo was a middle manager at MCI Communications in the mid-1990s. He was involved in helping MCI conceal millions of dollars in bad debt. His ability to hide bad debt led to a scheme to embezzle $6 million. He was caught and convicted, and served 2 years in prison. His book, Stolen Without a Gun, tells the story of his and MCI's downfall.

Pavlo is a very likable, outgoing guy. He was very open about what he did, and freely admitted he was wrong. The most interesting parts of his talk were about the corporate culture at MCI that put all value on making the numbers every quarter. Without using it as an excuse for his behavior, he described a situation where there was a lot of pressure to perform, no oversight, no positive corporate culture for accountability, and lots of money changing hands.

He had an interesting observation about the mortgage meltdown crisis going on now. "The mortgage industry is just the telecom industry in the 1990s." The subprime lenders and borrowers are telecom's wholesalers and high risk, high profit long distance resellers in the 90s. Pavlo says that the mortgage accounting tricks to hide bad debt occurred 3 years ago, and will soon come to light.

The talk was, in a way, a showing of the "Scared Straight" documentary for MBAs. Message: play clean, keep your moorings, resist the urge to bend the rules when it looks like everyone else is doing it.

One semester down, seven to go

It's the last night of my first term in my MBA program. No final test tonight, just a presentation and report to turn in. It's a relief to be done with it. I knew the program was going to be a lot of work, and I don't mind work, but I'll need to think about whether to continue. The next semester starts in a month.