DVD Format Wars…Get Over it Already
Filed Under media
CNET’s Don Reisinger makes a very good point. He says "Am I the only person who couldn’t care any less about the HD DVD/Blu-ray war?" And the answer is no, Don, you’re not. In fact, my attitude at this point is: buy a player that plays both formats and, well, get over it already. Says Reisinger:
I’ve succumbed to High-Def Format War Fatigue, and to be quite honest, I think most of the world has too. Eventually, one format will win and the other will lose. In the meantime, ignore the predictions and hyperbole, and get down to enjoying some movies.
Amen.
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Netflix’s Future Plans
Filed Under courses, social media
Following on from my E-Commerce syndicate assignment on Netflix — part of which attempted to answered the question: what should the company do next? — the CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, recently talked about his plans for Netflix’s future.
While it was obvious that the company was moving towards expanding its online video offerings, what’s fun (and not so obvious at first glance) is that Netflix’s strategists are thinking of creative ways to do that. For example, they’re thinking of expanding Netflix’s online video service on to next generation game consoles (XBox 360, PS3, etc.), networked DVD players, and set-top boxes.
As explained in the Last 100 article that I got this news from, this strategy makes a lot of sense. Getting into content delivery for gaming consoles will immediately give Netflix access millions of new potential customers. The challenge, of course, will be to convince game console creators — i.e. potential "partners" like Microsoft and Sony — to sign up. Especially since both Microsoft and Sony have announced their intentions to create their own online video networks (dubbed "entertainment hubs"). At least Hastings is clear on the fact that all of this will take time.
Regardless, it should be fun to see how things pan out over the next few years.
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E-Commerce Assignment: Netflix
Filed Under courses
My syndicate mate and I are almost done with our E-Commerce course assignment that is due on Tuesday. The assignment is on a January 2007 Stanford GSB case on Netflix.
Netflix, for those of you who don’t know, is the leading brand in online, mail-order DVD rentals [see Wikipedia entry]. The case is set in early 2005: Netflix has been in operation for seven years, last year Blockbuster entered the online DVD rentals market with a bang, and now Amazon is threatening to enter it as well (having already launched its online rental services in the UK).
The assignment is pretty straightforward and is what you would expect for a strategy case such as this one: discuss what Netflix has to offer (business case, strengths, weaknesses, etc.); discuss what happened when Blockbuster entered (what each side did, did well, and did poorly); and discuss what Netflix should do now. The challenge, of course, is to write all this down clearly and concisely (we have a strict 2,500 word limit that includes headers, footers, headings, attachments, references, etc.). I’m confident we’ve done a good job of it. I guess we’ll find out just how good once we get our grade.
I really enjoyed doing this assignment, by the way. This kind of strategic analysis in the tech industry is precisely the kind of thing that interests me. In fact, one of my objectives for doing an MBA was specifically to learn how to do this. And thanks to professors like Doug Dow [faculty profile], who taught us the Business Strategy course, and John Asker [faculty profile], who taught us the Managerial Economics course — and all the other professors who taught us all the other core courses, of course — I think I’ve learnt that pretty well.
Meanwhile, the E-Commerce course itself is fantastic. It covers all things e-commerce from the management, strategic, operational, leadership, human resources, and organizational behavioural points of view and is taught by Pat Auger [faculty profile], an industry expert and one of the best teachers I’ve had so far.
Aside: A bit about my elective course choices and why I’m so happy this term.
When I first joined MBS and went through the entire list of electives offered here, I divided the courses I wanted to take into three sub-lists: courses I had to take, courses I really wanted to take, and courses that would be good to take. If I remember correctly, E-Commerce, Information Strategy, Negotiations, and Leadership were the only four in the first list. I’m taking all four of those this term so you can probably imagine how much I’m enjoying myself these days.
For completeness’ sake, a whole bunch of strategy, entrepreneurship/new venture, and marketing courses made it to the second list. And about half the remaining courses made it to the third.
You’ll hear more about the course as this term progresses.
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Negotiations - Class #1
Filed Under courses
Friday morning we had our first Negotiations class. The course, taught by John Onto, is supposed to be one of the best in the school. Everyone who’s taken is tells everyone who hasn’t taken it to, well, take it. And judging simply from the very first class, I can see why.
For starters, the course is incredibly relevant. Negotiating is something that all of us, no matter what we do after the MBA, will be doing on a daily basis. Starting, of course, with our first post-MBA negotiation of our next job’s salary. The course is also incredibly practical. Negotiating, according to John, is a skill. That is, you can learn it. And learn it we do: primarily through lots of experiential learning exercises, but also through theory, discussion, sharing of previous negotiation experiences, and video clips.
This is an exciting course so expect to hear more about it as it progresses.
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200+ Company/Industry Research Tools
Filed Under careers
Jim Stroud recently published a comprehensive list of over 200 company/industry research resources on his blog. Sometimes a list like that is much more useful than simply searching through Google.
Speaking of good resources, your first port of call for company/industry research should always be your university library. The excellent, extensive, expensive, and chosen-by-research-professionals set of resources that is maintained there is truly invaluable. And as a university student, you usually have access to all of those resources for free.
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Online Geospatial Technologies and Photo Editing
Filed Under technology
Let’s start with the first of my tech industry-related postings. This one’s about the latest, most innovative applications available on the Internet: geospatial technologies and the newest photo editing tools. Both are based on articles from MIT’s Technology Review (TR) magazine.
Computer mapping tools have been around for quite a while (even online ones) but it was Google that really revolutionized the way they were used, presented, and accessed on the Internet (through Google Earth) and on the web (through Google Maps). The TR article, Google Earth: How Google Maps the World, talks about how this system works on Google’s side:
Technology Review interviewed engineers at Google and at DigitalGlobe, the company that supplies Google’s satellite photos, and did a little bit of reverse-engineering to figure out how it works.
The other how-it-works type article from TR is called New Tricks for Online Photo Editing. This one is about a really cool photo editing trick, known as seam carving, that went from being an algorithm created by a couple of researchers (from Adobe and Mistubishi) to a Flash-based implmentation of it on sites such as Rsizr and FotoFlexer as well a Photoshop plugin.
Both are interesting reads that tell you a bit about what goes on behind the new, funky stuff that you use on the Internet.
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My MBA Journey So Far
Filed Under courses, mba, melbourne business school
I started writing about my "MBA journey" in a section called Ameel’s MBA Journal on my website. Relevant from that are the following:
- My reason for doing an MBA as explained through my application essays
- A quick overview of how the MBS MBA works
- What I did (and learnt) in my first term
To quickly recap, though, these are the courses that I have taken so far:
- World of Management (core) with Paul Dainty
- Accounting for Managers (core) with Jim Frederickson
- Data and Decisions (core) with Chris Lloyd
- Financial Management (core) with Sam Wylie
- Managerial Economics (core) with John Asker
- Managing People for High Performance (core) with Carol Gill
- Business Strategy (core) with Doug Dow
- Economics and Public Policy (core) with Ian Harper & Mark Crosby
- Managing Processes (core) with Kannan Sethuraman
- Marketing (core) with Jody Evans
- Corporate Finance (elective) with Ning Gong
And these are the ones that I am taking now:
- E-Commerce (elective) with Pat Auger
- Information Strategy (elective) with Pat Auger
- Leadership and Change (elective) with Amanda Sinclair
- Negotiations (elective) with John Onto
- Implementation of Strategy (elective) with Jack Goodwin
I am 5 weeks into this study term (all study terms are 12 weeks long) and my first three courses have already started. The last two are second-half intensives — i.e. taught in half the time with double the number of classes per week — and will start on Friday.
Now that I’ve set the scene, I can start talking about what we’re doing in each of the courses I’m taking right now. I will do this in future posts, of course, and not all in this one!
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Recapping Older MBA Posts
Filed Under blogging, mba, melbourne business school
This is my new, "professional" blog. Before this, I used to blog exclusively on my "personal" blog. On that blog, I wrote three MBA-related posts that are, naturally, relevant to this one as well. Instead of re-posting them here, I figured I’d simply link to them instead.
The first post (’Talking About My Internship‘) is about a panel discussion that I was a part of during the latest MBA intake’s Orientation Week. In it, I list the points that I tried, and hopefully managed, to get across in that discussion.
The second post (’AFR Ranks Australian B-Schools…Hmmm‘) is about the latest business school (b-school) rankings published by the Australian Financial Review’s (AFR) BOSS Magazine. Their method of ranking determination was a bit contentions and this post talks about that.
The third post (’MBA Blog Spin-Off?‘) was the proposal that led to this blog. It contains links to other b-school blogs that you might find interesting.
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A One-Stop MBA Shop
Filed Under mba
As in any other industry or business sector, management has its own jargon, assumptions, and set of models and theories. Having already gone through two terms of an MBA programme, I am now quite comfortable with a lot of the this stuff. So much so that I find myself using it more and more frequently outside the business sphere. What I realize, however, is that this terminology, which is ultimately a shorthand way or expressing complex ideas, is not readily understood by people who aren’t in this field. For example, what do you make of this statement: "the value-add of this process is easier to understand if you look at things from a triple bottom-line perspective"?
I will, therefore, try to explain the terminology I use as I go along. Mostly, I’ll do that by linking to Wikipedia entries that, for the most part, explain those things better than I can. For more complicated models and theories, though, there is always Value Based Management.net (VBN.net).
According to the the site’s About Us page:
Value Based Management.net is a management portal specifically aimed at the information needs of senior executives with an interest in value creation, managing for value and valuation. We provide learning materials explaining management methods, models and theories on strategy, performance, finance, valuation, change, corporate governance, communication, marketing, leadership and responsibility with links to additional resources in the field. [Source]
Basically, if you want a one-stop, quick overview of a popular management theory, model, or method, VBN.net is the place to go.
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The Business Plan
Filed Under blogging
Like any MBA will tell you, almost everything in business starts with (or boils down to) a business plan. This blog isn’t exactly a business, but here’s its business plan anyway.
The Offering
A web log (more commonly known as a “blog”) about:
- My MBA journey through the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Business School (MBS) — which will end in May, 2008
- My career search, exploration, and progress — which will continue (hopefully uninterrupted) till I stop working (retire, die, win the lottery, etc.)
- And anything else related to these two things
This will feature a few posts a week that are well written, concise, insightful, and useful to the target audience.
Target audience:
- MBA students (potential, hopeful, current)
- MBA alumni
- Business school (b-school) faculty, staff, and administration
- Potential recruiters
Topics:
- Life as an MBS MBA student
- MBA courses: ones offered at MBS and, maybe, those offered at other business schools as well; focusing, of course, on the ones that I’m taking
- The MBA program: MBS’ program and, maybe, that of other schools
- Stuff about business schools and about businesses in general
- Career opportunities in Australia and elsewhere; with a technology and new media focus
- Industry analyses of industries that I am interested in (specifically technology, media, and new media) or that I have studied in class
- Living, studying, applying for jobs, and working in Australia; specifically in Melbourne
The Value Proposition
- This blog will be from my unique perspective; though YMMV so the importance of this as a value-add to readers’ lives is relative
- It will be as deep and insightful as possible (discussing in depth, analyzing, making connections, etc.)
- Though at times it will not be deep or insightful at all (life isn’t always like that)
- It will always be written well (barring occasional slip-up)
- It will help people get an idea of life as a foreign, full-time MBA student at MBS in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- It will try to pull together resources, ideas, discussions, analyses, etc. from various other resources that include news articles, opinion pieces (op-eds), other blogs, reports, white papers, and so on
The Resource System
- My time, writing ability, and analytical ability
- The blogs the I subscribe to, Google Reader, and my computing resources
- My social and professional networks (online and offline)
- Others who read this blog
The Financial Model
Costs:
- My time, money, and effort
- Readers’ time and effort (both of which, really, boil down to money anyway)
Revenues:
- Intangibles like a “good, lively, in-depth analysis and/or discussion”
- One potential tangible: a good job and career path for me (through self-analysis, trend and industry analysis, social networking benefits, etc.)
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