Team: J. Robella, S. Kaiser, and T. Shirachi
Problem: Lack of knowledge-sharing amongst MBAs at Owen to relate "real world" issues to "academic" issues and vice versa in terms of what we're learning in the classroom and amidst things we read and learn from the WSJ, magazines, panels, conferences, etc. This is an important problem because as MBAs graduate, we won't be able to properly synthesize the knowledge we've obtained and apply it successfully to our jobs. The affected stakeholders are companies, students, the school, community, and staff/professors and affects students directly.
Concept#1: Breakfast Club: Incorporate prospective students, current students, alums to network and talk about current events in specific industries or in general. Share what individuals are learning in class and in readings, etc.
Concept #2: Quiz Show: Host meals at sponsoring restaurants and invite prospective students, current students, alums, and Sig-Os to event to "compete" against each other on a specific set of industry questions for class points. The quiz will be used as an ice-breaker that can lead to other topic discussions
Concept #3: Club seminars for current and prospective students providing students with industry background and education on what is in the news and relevant to specific jobs/markets.
Special Requests: Other forums for effective knowledge-sharing that will help MBAs apply more of their education to real world topics/events?
I like #3 the most. I feel it is currently employed by some clubs, but could be used more often at Owen. I think that, within clubs, you will have people that tend to have a stronger interest in the topic at hand, which should hopefully lead to a better turnout for seminars and other events.
ReplyDeleteConcept 2: This would be great if done in the right way. It could be really fun to see some people square off and probably really educational from the audience as well. The TV show "Fast Money" did an MBA competition last year that was similar so you could model it after that.
ReplyDelete1 and 2) My concern for both of these would be lack of participation except among a small cohort of students. Students may express interest in these events, but when faced with a trade-off, students may focus on other priorities.
ReplyDelete3) I love this idea. I think that one of the benefits is that it spreads the responsibility across the different student clubs and gets more students involved. One potential constraint is that this would probably need to be implemented earlier in the school year so that students are still interested in attending.
Great problem to tackle and very relevant!
ReplyDelete#1: I like this idea and think it will be most effective if implemented in smaller chunks. The SGA could implement a policy that would allow each club to host these breakfasts. These events could take place once a month in the Owen lobby and cost $x for club members and $2x for all non-club members.
#2: This is an interesting idea but I do not think it is as implementable as #1 simply because it requires more time and coordination.
#3: Great idea and a nice complement to #1.
-Kira B. Bielfield
I like ideas 1 and 3, but they need to be careful not to be overused. I think it's better to have one great event rather than four or five mediocre ones, especially when we are asking alums and other professionals to be involved. I think the third idea would be the easiest to implement and very useful to all participants. The first idea could work, but I would be concerned about attendance and staying on topic.
ReplyDeleteI like your second idea but think there may be too many barriers to make this successful, including attendance, proper venue, relevant questions, etc.
I personally like idea 2 first since it would have a lot of fun. However, I do worry about the sttendance to it. I think the idea 2 is more practical. It could gets more students involved and it would be the easiest to implement and very useful to all participants. I also believe that it is much better to have one great event rather than four or five worse ones since there would be alums and other professionals involved.
ReplyDeleteHosting events, clubs for this matter might not be very effective as people repetitively would not be able to come in.
ReplyDeleteI feel having an online community where we talk about issues or matter would be nice. People can log in whenever they want share and get information. Something like Exovate would be great.
The problem identification is very interesting since in Europe the concept of American business schools and their way of case-method teaching has become an important factor in European management careers. Our schools are my far more theory based; there are almost no group works or any case studies to be done. This shows how different perception can be. Have you actually done a survey whether most of the Owen students identify the same problem? I think all of the ideas are good, but it is all related to how many people would really want to attend for instance the breakfast club etc.. There is also the money issue for organizing “catering events”: who is going to sponsor that? The last idea sounds the easiest to be implemented, but I don’t know who is in charge of this kind of decision, you need to get in touch maybe with the administration and if you manage to convince them there is a problem and for example 85% of the students insist on solving it, this will help to implement the innovation.
ReplyDeleteI really like idea #1. I think it would be relatively cheap and would bring in a wide range of people. Idea #2 may be a little too expensive and hard to coordinate and idea #3 is already being done to some extent.
ReplyDeleteI feel that #3 is the most likely way to actually incorporate getting new knowledge into Owen. I feel that #2, while it sounds great in theory, would be hard to implement. I am not sure how the participation would be. As for the idea in general, i think yall have tackled a tough subject but one that will be very beneficial if you are able to add something to the owen experience.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the previous comments mention participation concerns. I love your ideas and think they could be a lot of fun, but folks do have a ton on their plates. Could you find some ways of getting info to/from students without them having to make another commitment to show up somewhere? As one example, you could set up listservs for specific topics that anyone with an interest can sign up for so that students & professors with an interest in these areas can email the group useful links/articles, have discussions on current events, and alert the group to news, job leads, etc.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea - I would love to see more of this - good luck!
I like your problem. I also wonder if you are going at it a little too brute force "head-on" and trying to attack it at the wrong level. If there is a problem of synthesis of the material - maybe the faculty should be on the hook for at least helping with the synthesis. I would be interested in seeing your idea #3 pushed to where you propose that the clubs put together seminar topics and outlines, and then you invite your favorite faculty in to teach / facilitate the seminar. That way you might be able to get credit/units and you'd get a happy faculty who gets to be relevant and who gets teaching credit.
ReplyDelete#1 is a nice idea! Maybe some kind of study-group coordination infrastructure might be the way to attack this. As it stands, I worry that instead of being focused on learning, that this quickly becomes a social event, or worse - that people use it as a way to avoid studying on their own (e.g., they just show up to breakfast to listen to others who actually did the readings rather than doing the readings themselves).
I'm not the competitive type so #2 wouldn't appeal to me, but maybe you MBA-types are sufficiently competitive that this makes sense. Might be hard to get "hosts" in this economy.
I think solitions 1 and 2 are great. They both are creative ways of reaching different segments of the Owen community. I am fairly sure solition 3 is already in practice...I'm not sure how effective it is.
ReplyDelete#1 and #3 could be used in parallel with the help from professors to make this a differentiator for Owen and we could blog about it in Owen Bloggers :)
ReplyDelete#2 Practicality might be difficult. I am not too keen on this.
This will be a huge challenge, since most of our professors aren't practitioners. However, I love your choice of problem and think it would be great for Owen.
ReplyDelete1.) This is a good way to use a little "indirect ____ discrimination", because only the people who really want to learn will be willing to get up for a breakfast 'n' learn opportunity. I think there should be more structure around the topics, rather than just discussion of current events. And I agree with previous statements that there should be curricular tie-ins of the material.
2.) The only constraint I see to this is cost. Our school is pretty tight-fisted, so you'd have to be creative about driving down cost. Again, I think structure will be key. What will a quiz show do that a classroom activity can't or doesn't currently do? What is different than the breakfast option? You've definitely uncovered a need in focusing on the theoretical/practical gap...what kind of structure/product/takeaway/deliverable/whatever can you think of to make sure there's a "SO WHAT" moment for the people who participate?
3.) I love this idea. Our clubs don't do enough to attract professionals/speakers/learning opportunities tailored to their interests or skills. For example, HOPA hasn't had a single speaker in this year, I don't think. However, when has human capital management ever been more important?! For that matter, when has it ever been more important to understand what's going on in ANY industry? I think this is a fantastic concept that clubs could coordinate with key professors and use to deepen or at least reinforce key learning from ____ concentration/class/whatever.
SPECIAL REQUEST: I think a more structured project or independent study program would be HUGE in this area. Something similar to Prof. Owens' end-of-term showcases would be good for sharing knowledge. If every person with an independent study had to participate in a Presentation of Learning (or whatever) at the end of every term, it would help with our presentation skills, boost the quality of knowledge transfer, lend credibility and seriousness to independent studies, and potentially show the school that there is a need for more or different or better classes! (I'd love to discuss this, if you're interested.)
I think all three ideas have potential. I have seen very similar innovations implemented at Peabody to varying degrees of success. Has anything similar been tried here at Owen? If so, what was the key to the success of failure of these innovations? What can you learn from the previous experience of other individuals? In my experience the success and failure of innovations similar to #1 and #3 has been largely dependent upon choosing topics that appeal to either the broadest base of individuals or the individuals with the strongest commitment to a particular cause or special interest. Consistency in scheduling but variety in programming has also been key. Regarding the second solution, participant buy-in will be particularly important. This is because for a breakfast club or a club seminar, it is possible to have a meaningful experience if only a few people attend your event. However, for something like a quiz show to be successful, you need to get a whole lot of people to show up and they need to have a lot of fun when they get there so you can count on them showing up the next time.
ReplyDelete