My first two exams of the MBA were yesterday (Finance and Accounting), and my last two exams for this term are tomorrow (Marketing and Organisational Behaviour). I’m a bit fried from yesterday, and still have to study for exams tomorrow morning.
In honour of this, a bit of an amusing video…
I’ve been following SpaceX for years, since they were building their first hardware and trying to launch it from a small island in the Pacific. I posted this fall when SpaceX became the first privately-funded company to successfully launch a liquid-fueled rocket into space. That was their Falcon 1 launch vehicle, with 1 engine. They’ve had their Falcon 9 vehicle (9 engines) in development for nearly as long, and just before New Years Eve it was fully integrated on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral! SpaceX took four tries to get Falcon 1 into orbit, and I hope that the first Falcon 9 launch works straight off.
The recent HUGE news for SpaceX is that they were awarded a $1.6 billion (yes, with a B) contract to launch 12 rockets and send 20,000kg (~22 tons) of cargo to the International Space Station. NASA may also elect for additional missions for a total of $3.1 billion total value! They will be competing for longer-term contracts with Orbital Sciences. One difference is that SpaceX will be launching Falcon 9 in the next couple of months, where Orbital doesn’t expect to launch their newly designed vehicle until at least 2010, putting SpaceX a year ahead. An interesting paragraph in this Wall Street Journal article regarding the contract says quite a bit:
SpaceX, which easily came out at the top of all the cost, management and technical rankings, is slated to start flights in late 2010, and the contracts stretch for seven more years.
Anyway, I thought people might enjoy photos of what will likely be the future of commercial spaceflight in the US for many years to come. (All taken from SpaceX’s Updates page.)
Beautiful shot of Falcon 9 at the Cape:
Fully integrated at the Cape:
Fitting the HUGE fairing to the rest of the rocket:
Another shot just before the fairing was attached:
Nine, yes NINE first-stage engines shipping from testing in Texas:
The second stage engine:
It’s only after experiencing the Cambridge MBA, talking to my professors and doing a little research recently that I really learned exactly how unique the Cambridge MBA curriculum actually is compared to other top schools. It comes down to two simple differentiators: our small-group “soft skills” classes and the projects incorporated into the curriculum. As I’ve read a little more about it, it appears that Harvard Business School is trying to move more towards the Cambridge MBA way of doing things… fancy that!
If you look at Cambridge’s required first-term curriculum you see a rather bland title: Management Practice. But this course is a very in-depth soft skills class, and not very bland at all!
Management Practice is a course that runs from 9am-12:30pm and 2–3:30pm one day each week in the Michaelmas (first) Term. The morning involves a highly interactive lecture/discussion and a group activity/game; a game that’s always highly competitive! The afternoon session reviews what happened in the activity/game, and follows that up with how those principles can be applied to the real-life situations we’ve already experienced and those we will experience in the future. The games, by the way, are always fun and make for interesting learning.
The Cambridge Venture Project (CVP) is also a unique part of the Cambridge MBA. For about four weeks, teams of five students work part-time with small, local entrepreneurial companies on consulting projects. This is far more challenging than it sounds; our class of 150 people come from ~50 different countries and a wide variety of backgrounds. Everyone is very accomplished, and most are highly competitive Type A personalities, but everyone approaches problems from their own perspectives. I mention this now because in the latter weeks of Management Practice, the afternoon session is a small group “therapy” session, where our teams discuss with our instructors on how we’re working in our groups.
Management Practice been described by many Cambridge MBA graduates as one of the main courses they’ve been able to use long after they graduate, no matter what field of work they go into. After last term, I have to say that I completely believe it.
What’s interesting is that Harvard is looking at doing more of this, but they’re having issues because their school is so damn big! (900 new students/year vs. 150–180/year at Cambridge) From the Harvard Business School article:
and this:
Deans and recruiters told Datar and Garvin that MBAs in general need more soft skills, such as self-awareness and the capacity for introspection and empathy. They also found MBAs lacking in critical and creative thinking, as well as communication skills. “These skills lie much more on the ‘doing’ side of the scale than the ‘knowing’ side,” says Datar.
Such soft-skills development by its very nature involves labor-intensive small groups and requires “high-touch” faculty involvement with students.
[…]
For example, adding small-group, soft-skill development may sound simple, but doing so for some 900 students would have a significant impact on faculty teaching assignments, recruitment, and research, as well as on the School’s facilities.
I’m very happy and encouraged that instead of trying to bolt on key soft-skills classes onto a mature program, the Cambridge MBA has begun their development with them as a core part of the curriculum.
There are three main projects as part of the Cambridge MBA. They are here (with descriptions from the Cambridge MBA Handbook):
Cambridge Venture Project — For the CVP, you will work in designated teams of 5–6 with a local entrepreneurial company on a real management issue related to marketing.
Global Consulting Project — The Global Consulting Project is the culmination of the core courses and it will allow you to apply the knowledge and skills gained throughout the programme in a real world context. It is undertaken in teams of your choice with 5–6 students and lasts one month.
Individual Project — The Cambridge MBA concludes with an individually supervised project for which a 12,000-word report is submitted. This project allows you to make an in-depth exploration of subjects of specific interest to you, which will typically be of direct relevance to your career objectives.
I would contrast this to Harvard’s programme, where there are no mandatory projects as part of the curriculum, though they note about half the class completes optional projects as electives. Does this really matter? Perhaps not. But I’m trying to take advantage of these projects to get some experience and contacts in fields/industries/companies that I may never work in again, and also those that I might want to try applying to in just a few short months. I’m always a fan of doing new things over learning new things. (Create >> Consume)
If you’re reading this post in the hope of getting a little more perspective on the Cambridge MBA program, I hope you’ve gotten a little better sense for it. While a one-year versus two-year MBA program is a big decision, top-tier programs like the Cambridge MBA do have some advantages over better known schools like HBS.
I haven’t written much here about the current economic crisis, but it’s been affecting everyone for quite a while, now. Part of the problem I’ve seen is that there’s so much day-to-day news and analysis that it’s hard to get the kind of articles that really step back and evaluate the whole situation in context.
Perhaps it’s because 2009 just kicked off, but there have been a few recent articles that I wanted to highlight that could (should?) help everyone understand the broader problems that the economy has been facing.
“The End” — by Michael Lewis. It’s a long but very interesting article that deals with the housing bubble, how it blew up, and the people who warned of the specific dangers long before. Excellent, excellent read.
“Risk Management” — by Joe Nocera. This is an article from Sunday’s New York Times Magazine that goes deeper into the concepts of measuring risk. Specifically it gets into the “Value At Risk”, or VaR, method of measuring risk. While the model is generally good for day-to-day risk measurement, it is far from complete. Using VaR simply can’t tell you how bad it can get… and we’re seeing that how bad it can get now.
The End of the Financial World as We Know It
How to Repair a Broken Financial World — both articles by Michael Lewis and David Einhorn. This is a two-part OpEd (no idea why they split it that way) from the New York Times. While not as good as the first two, it does take some of the lessons learned and ties them to what we can (should?) do going forward.
Letter about Madoff to the SEC — This letter was written and sent over three years ago, detailing how and why Madoff’s fund was a Ponzi scheme. No one listened or investigated deeply!
Jed Christiansen 