Operational excellence in frozen yoghurt

Well yesterday we got underway with Operational Excellence with a large scale presentation using operations concepts to explore the viability of a frozen yoghurt retail store in Dunedin. Through the exercise, our syndicate, examined the concept, beat it up (and each other :)) to come up with, what we thought was a very solid solution. The whole process was both pretty interesting and enlightening as you don't really think about all the facets of a retail hospitality experience until you are forced to and the process we followed actually allowed us to build and improve the concept. One of the challenges was that all five syndicate members were born in different countries! I suppose frozen yoghurt is pretty universal.

Insight, leadership and initiative

One of my inspirations this year has been the discovery of Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian economist to save the world! Thank you Richard Higham, our strategy lecturer for introducing him so passionately. As a result, I have had a change of heart about my exchange to Grenoble and decided to complete 3 papers from the Masters of Entrepreneurship of Otago Uni instead. These will be my elective next year. I had a good chat to Richard (if you are coming next year you will love him!) and he recommended three papers - Feasibility analysis, Finance for entrepreneurs and, New venture strategy. The nice thing about these papers is that you come to Dunedin for 4 days of classes and the rest are assignments and self directed learning. I have a bunch of new venture things going on and will be getting started in January so having the flexibility is great. 

PS. I forgot to add - Jo Schumpeter was all about insight, leadership and initiative!

Live Case Study

The culmination of our learning for this year's coursework is our 'Live Case Study' project. Our project first of all brings together our original syndicate C team which is always a good laugh. We work well together and enjoy ourselves in the process. The live case study is a consulting project to help a real client overcome a challenge they are facing in their business. Our client is a coffee wholesaler and retailer. They are great folks and have been very forthcoming with information about their business so we are very thankful. We have divided the project into 4 phases: Discovery; Strategic hypothesis testing; Strategy development and; Report write up and presentation. It is hotly contested between the syndicates as there are cash prizes for the best presentation. We are going pretty hard at ours and it was a very big Sunday at Uni but all for a good cause.

International Business: The Great Debate

 

Every now and again we do something quite fun for assessment. Anyone who knows me well knows I don't mind a bit of verbal sparring and yesterday I got my opportunity. International Business is quite a subjective subject and we got our chance to argue our point. We were grouped in pairs and were asked to take on another pair in a debate. Our topic was "That the giving or taking of bribes or "gifts" distorted international markets and created unfair competition." We felt that this was quite an absolute statement as this actually what bribes or gifts do and had to find a 'semantic' territory because there are numerous document instances where this has been demonstrated to be true. We were really on a 'hiding to nothing' as we say in Australia. As a result, we argued that culture defined what was an acceptable "gift" or bribe as well as many other elements of the playing field and as a result, it was culture, not just the subset of bribes that shaped international markets. I don't think we did too badly :) 

Into term 3 - the home straight!

Week 1 of term 3 down. The dance card of subjects is full again but all new and interesting to me. The picture above is taken from our collateral for 'Leading Sustainable Enterprise'. We are also doing International Business and Operational Excellence. The culmination of our learning is in our Live Case for Strategy Implementation where we put all we have learned into a consulting project for a real client. Our syndicate is working on a coffee retail and wholesale business. At the moment we are gathering information to help inform our strategy. Lots to do as usual but it all finishes this year on December 12. Light at the end of the tunnel!

Otago MBA Beer!

There is a real bond between the students of the Otago MBA. We work hard together but one of our finest class bonding projects was to brew our own beer. Our brew-master, James Nation (dual Olympian for NZ - Hockey) lead the charge. Well, he was the only one who knew what he was doing! If you look closely at the label you may notice a caricature of yours truly and the beer name - 'The Uncoachable'. This was due to a slightly heated public conversation between myself and someone who will remain nameless. At the peak of the conversation it was recognised I was uncoachable by my verbal jousting partner! My classmates thought this tremendously humorous and it became the name of the beer. Actually, if you manage to study at the Otago MBA you will find there is a lot of labels stuck around the place - I am sure you will see them if you arrive in years to come :)