Warm greetings from sunny Vallendar !!!

Blogs Harsh Modi - 08-05-10

Yes we had our first exams before the start of the Advanced Core Module. All finance topics such as Corporate Finance, Financial Accounting and Managerial Accounting. Most challenging, for me was Corporate Finance with all the Annuity, Bond Value Calculations, portfolio theory. I did not do well in this. After this I decided, that I will, surely and certainly, get comfortable with this subject and its concepts during my concentrations in Corporate Finance.

A lot has happened; everything strategic, from Strategic Sourcing, Economics of Strategy, Fundamentals of Strategy, World Economy, Organizational Behavior and then the most important Marketing. Having gone through all these, now all I think of is how to have a sustainable competitive advantage, what strategy to follow, which stratagem to use in the game, how can I implement the strategy and make it a continuous exercise.  These have been the key learning for me, during these couple of months, in all the courses, and these simple questions which our Professors always referred to during our interactions has opened a whole new world of awareness for me, as I look in retrospect at my past decisions in my own business back in India, what did we do right, what we could have done. This constant reflection is on. It is as if, I see the pieces of puzzle are falling into place and at the same time a new puzzle needs to be solved. All these subjects are so interesting and the Profs make it all the more interesting and simple to leave a profound impact on you. After this all I need is, “more focus focus, focus, execute, execute and execute”.

This we learnt when we had a company visit to Henkel in Dusseldorf, as a part of our Strategic Sourcing course . We attended a live meeting of the Chief Purchasing Officer with his global team on phone, and his main message to all the Team members was “we can all make targets……now we need to focus, focus, focus and execute, execute and execute”. This was one the most important take away from the course and the company visit at Henkel and a lot more.
We did live projects and presentations for different companies visiting our class for various courses , and this gave us the chance to present our solutions to them, compare them with the actual implementation plan (in cases where implementation has taken place) and learn from their experience on site, which is indeed truly valuable.

The action did not stop here, we had the Brand Manager of one of the most important Shampoo Brand of Henkel, giving us a live case to give a presentation to the Board of Henkel. This we had to do a part of the Marketing Course, which was the last but most important. It was very challenging as we had two exams coming up back to back and in between we had to work on the case, come up with a creative and workable solution, prepare presentation. The whole class worked nights out and came up with wonderful creative solutions and amazing presentations. This was a very challenging work.

In all the courses we have had Guest speakers from the industry, and they shared the real life situations, and during the q & a sessions, they tell how they use the concept, tools we are now learning.

I feel I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from our Professors and each one is exceptional in one’s own way and they have made learning fun, challenging yet simple.

Very soon I shall write more…in a day or two on the student life at WHU MBA….

See you soon.
Harsh Modi

About the author: Harsh Modi

Harsh is an MBA Candidate for 2011 at the WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany. He received his first degree in Commerce from the University of Calcutta and since then worked in trades and manufacturing.