It’s incredible to see what the 2008 class is doing with the MBA blog. Last year it took us almost six months to get this thing running, but the newcomers have shown great commitment to the project. Cool, looks like the blog is attracting the blogger kind of people to ESMT…

If you are a student and are willing to help a group of MBAs to know more about “how students choose careers and the way companies influence those decisions”, please take this survey:

http://esmt-research.career-choice.sgizmo.com

It won’t take more than 10 minutes to complete, plus it can be very revealing about your own preferences…

It is 7 AM in the morning. A seasoned business traveler rushes out of her place, pulling a heavy suitcase with her right arm. As she walks towards the metro station, three or four streets away from her house, she wishes she had just taken her car and avoided carrying such a bulky case. However, parking fees at the airport are rather expensive, and therefore, it makes sense to leave her vehicle at home, at the expense of the physical efforts.

Now, put yourself in this executive’s position. Wouldn’t it be great if your suitcase would be easier to carry? Or even better: what if your suitcase was your vehicle?

That’s precisely the idea behind Scootcase, our latest invention. If you want to know more about our product, visit www.scootcase.de.

It’s been a while since our last post. But then, you cannot blame us for being in vacation, can you? The last weeks have been definitely a blessing, since most of us were finally able to relax after the stressing days following our arrival from China/India, including the Intopia simulation (see post below). Some went home, others visited nearby cities, and the bravest stayed in Berlin to explore the city. In the meantime we forgot how it feels to read a case -for good-, but here we are, back to school, recharged and ready to face the challenges of the second part of the MBA.

So how does it look like? Last week we had our first lessons, and let me tell you, it looks good. Sustainability, Corporate Governance and Markets & Regulations are some of the courses we had the chance to take a peek at. As we move to the second phase, subjects become more complex/interdisciplinary, and therefore more interesting. I am particularly surprised by sustainability, since it was always a subject that sounded kind of boring in the back of my mind. However, now that I am better aware of the fact that sustainability is about making money out of a good cause -either social or environmental- and that companies following this path have a good chance of success -see for instance the Toyota Prius, the hybrid that rocketed Toyota to number one car maker in the US-, I often find myself thinking about ideas to start my own sustainable business. So far nothing viable has come out of all the thinking, but hey, I have still four months down the line… :)

Well, its kind of late and tomorrow I need to be at school at 9 AM -I miss vacations- so I should better finish this post here. Gute Nacht und bis morgen..

After 6 days of intense competition, Intopia has come to an end. The international operations simulation, which made 9 MBA teams compete for the highest return in the fast-paced PC and semiconductor industries, proved to be a greater challenge than expected. Formed by chip manufacturers, PC integrators and wholesalers, the industry was characterized by constant innovation - and huge losses. Unlike real life, chip manufacturers, who profited from the excess demand and constant introduction of new models, were the big winners in terms of margins and profits. Among these suppliers, Chips R Us was definitely the most notorious of all chip manufacturers, not only because of its impressive profits but also because of the envy it raised among rival companies. In fact, the company was attacked so often by mischievous players, that if they had received royalties each time competitors talked about them behind their backs, they could have easily doubled up their profits :)

Disregarding the chip manufacturer advantage -lets face it, chip manufacturers were lucky to operate in an oligopoly-, there were also other companies who ended up performing remarkably well, despite of their location in the value chain and initial mistakes. For instance, PC integrator SLTD realized that the constant introduction of new chip grades at higher prices did not benefit their business model, and therefore, decided in the last quarters to partner with technology laggards to buy old chips at very low prices and increase their margins.

LEAD EasyMarket also escaped the dark fate of other wholesalers by minimizing the amount of sales offices, optimizing their advertising expenses and understanding that the best way to engage suppliers was to offer them a profit split -”this is what the chip costs you and this is how much I can sell it for in the market, let’s go 50-50″.

Of course, each company has a story to tell, and for me to judge who was the best is not easy, so lets finish this post by saying that the lessons learnt from this simulation are definitely invaluable and that ESMT has made a good decision by exposing us to this kind of experiences. Thumbs up for the organizers!

If one year ago you had asked me what is the most improbable place for me to visit in the near future, China would have definitely ranked top of my list. But yet, I never thought of living in Germany, so I am getting used to end up in improbable situations.

China is a remarkable country. Although I only had the opportunity of visiting a couple of cities -Shanghai and Beijing-, what I saw was enough to keep me thinking for a week. First of all, China is not afraid of heights. A typical taxi ride in Shanghai will lead you through a vast forest of skyscrapers, no matter whether you are in the financial district or in a residential area. How can so many people live in such a small area is for me still an enigma, but what strikes me even more is how traffic seems to accomodate so many cars without reaching the saturation level of Bogota, even though Shanghai’s 14 million inhabitants makes it twice as large..!

The next thing that struck me was Shanghai’s exquisite flair. Before embarking on this trip, China was a place where small people wearing hats spent their precious time collecting rice from the fields. Today’s China is in fact so different, that rice has virtually disappeared from most meals, allowing more high-end dishes to invade their daily nutrition (don’t get me wrong, I love rice, but Chinese think its only value is to fill you up quickly). Having said this, Shanghai’s night scene offers visitors and locals almost everything, from embracing patios like that of Zapata bar (Valentin didn’t believe me, but sitting there felt like looking out of a balcony in Barranquilla), to sophisticated lounges like Bar Rouge, with an spectacular view over the financial district’s skyline. In fact, you can see so many expats and tourists enjoying Shanghai’s nightlife on a Monday night, that you wonder whether it can actually get boring in this city. Believe it or not, if I got a good job there, I would seriously consider staying there for a while.

Beijing is a bit more conservative than Shanghai -maybe because it’s the capital, maybe because it lies further away from the coast-, so spotting the fun places from the street is a bit more difficult, but with the right guide, you can see also many interesting places. Allowing my creativity to speak up, Shanghai would be to Barcelona what Beijing is to Madrid - but much bigger. As a tourist, the best way to move around the city is by using a taxi. It’s fast (thanks to the five highway rings inscribed within the city) and cheap (prices are just like in Colombia). The only drawback is that you need to have the address written in Chinese, otherwise these people won’t take you anywhere..!

Reading these paragraphs you might think I was on vacation, but the truth is that I was actually on a field trip. ESMT decided it was a good idea for its MBA students to visit an emerging market and learn about the ways European companies do business there, so with that objective in mind -and 19 other students besides me- I spent 10 days visiting companies such as Siemens, ThyssenKrupp, Bosch and others, asking them about the particularities of doing business in China, their challenges and advantages, and so on. If you ask me, this trip has been definitely the highlight of the MBA so far, and neither reading dozens of market research reports nor spending hours in internet could have given me such a good idea of how it is to be there.

I wish I could write more, but the experience has been so intense that it’s impossible to summarize it in a few lines. Besides, I need to write a report on the trip, so I do not have the time either. But I hope that a couple of pictures help you understand what I went through…

Imagine for a second you are a trader and the only thing you enjoy in life is precisely that: exchanging items to meet your own agenda. But then, you are sent into a foreign culture, where hugs and questions about your family seem to be the only things other people care about. How would you feel in such a situation? Wouldn’t you just like to ask these people: what’s the purpose of your life? How come you are “wasting your time” caring about other people, when you could become millionaire?

Today we had a very interesting excercise in class, where alphas and betas, two completely different cultures, met each other and tried to decode what the other culture was about. The excercise was not only exciting, but it also taught us something we tend to underestimate about the global world we live in: there are unspoken rules in any culture, and unless we as foreigners manage to decode them, it will be difficult for us to be properly understood as well. 

It finally happened. The long awaited soccer tournament organized by Hertie School of Governance took place last Friday in ESMT’s playing ground. Eight teams joined the venue, including two teams from staff and administration, four Hertie student teams, and two ESMT student teams.

I was playing for ESMT Latinamerica, and having a Brazilian in my team sounded like the right edge to have. However, we were not able to give Porthos all the game he needed to score, and therefore, we couldn’t make it to the semifinals. But the ESMT Europe team showed great spirit on the field, and literally beated every team until the finals, where they played against a mixed Hertie team. The last match was tough and ended up being inconclusive (1-1). For the sake of friendship (and some health concerns arising from playing too long under the sun!), the game was ended after a while and both teams were awarded the first place.

If you ask me, the event was a great success, as both schools (Hertie and ESMT) had the opportunity to meet each other in a very informal atmosphere. The catering was also excellent (thumbs up for Mark and Andreas!)  and therefore we can only hope to see more of this stuff happening in our school..!

It has been known for some time that tall people earn more than their shorter counterparts (if you don’t believe it, just read this article). As sad as it sounds, there is not much that can be done about it, right? Well, that’s exactly what I thought when I first heard about the bad news (I am not very tall), but Harvard professors Mankiw and Weinzierl’s newest work puts a (theoretic) end to the social injustice by concluding that tall people should pay higher taxes than short ones. Isn’t that just genius?