My EMBA Journey

Our cohort has reached its first major milestone. We successfully completed our first semester. I am attaching my cohort picture with our Marketing professor Mike Greenwood.



Honestly, In my experience Prof Greenwood has been the most inspiring professor. His teachings of Marketing combined with Sun Tzu's Art of war strategies has helped me to view business from a strategic point of view instead of a tactical approach.

I had an opportunity to attend a panel discussion on the subject of "Doing Business in Poland". This discussion was conducted by Suffolk University and co-sponsored by Polish American Networking Organization(PANO) and Polish American biweekly publication White Eagle News.



This event gave me an excellent opportunity to interact with Polish community. Panel members included Consul Dariusz Wojtaszek from consulate general of the Republic of Poland in New York, Tad Witkowicz a Polish born serial entrepreneur and Patryk Drescher a Senior associate with Ropes & Gray.

I got a great insight in to the polish political, economic, social and technological factors. Following are some of the interesting notes I took from the panel discussion.

Poland has the largest fortified castle in Europe
In 2006 Poland noticed a 5 - 6% GDP growth
President and Prime Minister of Poland are identical twins
Poland is a member of OECD, NATO, EU
Poland has a population of around 30 Million
1.5 Million people migrated outside Poland in 2006. Major reason is attributed to 14%unemployment issues.
Poland saw a 30% productivity growth in 2006
Poland has a relatively low labor cost
Poland has a low Taxation(19% Tax) next only to Slovakia(16%)
EU gave 9 Billion Euro for infrastructure projects
FDI investment is around $109 Billion. In 2006 it was around $14.7 Billion

Investment Opportunities
Government is creating new programs to encourage foreign investment
Grants for organizations who provide training to Polish people
Grants for organizations who create new jobs in Poland
There are even exemptions for real estate taxes

Why should you invest in Poland?
Politically Stable
Member of European Union
Low labor cost - $50,000 USD engineer in Poland is equivalent to $180,000 USD in Boston, MA
Highly educated workforce
Strong GDP Growth

Largest American Companies in Poland
Apollo Rida
Citigroup
DELL
Google
GM
Intel
Gillette

Positives in Polish Investment
Quality Workforce
Flexible & Hardworking Workforce
Strong technological skills
Generally everyone speaks English

Some Negatives need to be cautious on
Polish people are shy, If you didn't ask they won't speak
Polish trademarks takes up to 3 years
Polish company registration takes up to 6 years, but the process is getting revamped by the government.
Communication is a critical aspect between Polish and American counterpart

More Information on Poland
Poland Government Link
Polish Food in Boston

Critical Characteristics of a good Leader: Mike White, PepsiCo International’s chairman and chief executive officer, told a Stanford Graduate School of Business audience March 6 what he considers the six critical characteristics of good leaders:

• All good leaders have perspective. They simplify problems, ask the right questions, and balance long- and short-term interests. They listen more than they talk. Good leaders “need to be able to cut through the clutter and come up with a solution.”



• Successful leaders turn strategy into results. They face reality and adjust plans to achieve their goals. They motivate people and are decisive, adhering to the 70-30 rule: If you have 70 percent of the information it’s time to make a decision because “if you hold out for the last 30 percent you’re probably toast.”



• Great leaders have the courage to make changes, even when things are good. In 1996, when PepsiCo announced it was spinning off its restaurant business, Forbes magazine called the move a huge and irretrievable strategic blunder. It turned out to be a good move, but at the time it took a lot of courage, White said.



• Effective leaders are self aware and savvy. They know how to read people and organizations, and they flex their style to achieve results.



• True leaders have unshakeable integrity. They set the moral tone and ethical standard of an organization. They ask for help and seek the council of others.



• Proven leaders know how to build strong teams. A leader’s ability to recognize potential in others and foster it builds successful organizations.

On April 21 2007 We were privileged to have Regina Lewis PhD, VP of Dunkin Brands,Inc. present her experience with Dunkin Brands. She focused on the impacts of Consumer Insights to a brand. Our team asked many questions relating to Dunkin Donuts brand, its evolution, cross marketing opportunities between Dunkin and Baskin Robbins,etc.,

She presented on "How can consumer insights creatively drive brands to new level". She gave some excellent information on how to focus on various needs and states. Also how to capture those details in a structured format and equate it to areas of opportunities. Thus offering numerous opportunity for a marketing manager to use its resources efficiently. For e.g. Dunkin Donuts found that people like to drink coffee at around 3:00 PM because they want to celebrate the end of office hour.

She explained 2 innovative theories on marketing research - Depriveness Study and Realness Report. Depriveness works on the psychological senses that people realize the importance of something when they didn't have it. Realness research works on the principle of reciprocation where by requesting the customer of opposite competitor brands to switch brands. This gives great insights in to competitor gaps and innovative results.

Overall, this was great presentation by Dr. Regina Lewis. I loved every moment of it.

BTW, I will be going to a presentation on "Doing Business in Poland" next week.

HR Management Article: What is the Return On Investment of the Executive MBA?

This is an interesting article relating financial support from corporates to Executive MBAs. Is there a lack of return on ivestment? Article by Suffolk University Executive MBA director Kristin Polito

My day started with an exciting creation. Yesterday I got to play with a recent introduction named Yahoo Pipes. In simple terms, Yahoo pipe is an information aggregator which can be used to aggregate information from various sources. In addition to this, data collected from different sources can be conditioned, processed and formatted to desired output. Surprisingly creating a Yahoo pipe was very easy and instantaneous.

Today I extended my yahoo pipe learning to create a pipe for doing a SWOT analysis. I thought it would be a cool to share my learning's.

Click Here to see My Pipe URL

Following are the steps to create a Yahoo pipe

1. Go to pipes.yahoo.com/pipes
2. Click on Mypipe and create a new pipe
3. Name your pipe
4. Select the input data from the toolset. I selected a Text input and name it Company Name.
5. Select the String from the toolset for concatenating the words such as "Strength's", "Weaknesses", "Opportunity", and "Threats". You should have 4 String box for each attribute.
6. Select 4 Source objects from the toolset. I selected Yahoo search. At this stage connect each string attribute to the source attribute. This would result in fetching data for individual keyword. For e.g. If you have Company name as Amazon, you should get output for Amazon Strengths
7. Select a Union operator and link every source object to it
8. Finally connect the Union operator to the pipe output. Now hit preview pipe, if you see the results - Hurray - You have created your first pipe.

You can view my SWOT Analysis pipe here ...



Following is a list of my other pipes.