Tuesday 1 April 2008
Academics and other stuff in P4
This period the pressure is all on “job preparation & job hunting.” Every night 2 recruiting companies on campus, invitations for interviews, dinners, coffee chats, informal calls... but also an endless stream of application lettres writing, interview preparation, networking and DINGs (rejections)...
This is P4!
Apart from the job search, this period I am looking at the possibility of buying a company with a few classmates. We are currently exploring an opportunity in Europe for a management buyout of a metal production company with a revenue base of € 1-2M. It’s still exploration, so we have to figure out whether we can fix some of the issues in the company and whether we think that we are the people who can add most value to the firm. REP is a very nice elective! The whole idea of seriously thinking about going out there to buy a € 3M company without having any money, is new to me. Who knows where this will lead us to...
At the same time I’m still busy with my international development project. After the nightmare of the elections in Kenya, we bundled our energy to help a paralegal institute in Malawi. This is proving to be a very interesting case with a real brainteaser: “how can you make money, when all your clients are poor, when you cannot go after wealthier clients, and when your aid is stopped?”
My favourite class this period is Economics and Management in Developing Countries by Daniel Traca. This is the world of IMF and Worldbank, Multinationals and politics, Oil in Chad and Sudan, Aid, the failure of Aid, and ‘what if you’re in the shoes of a president from a developing nation’
So that’s for the academics.
Luckily, we still have time to unwind. After all, the motto at INSEAD still is “work hard, play hard” so we make sure to escape the bubble every now and then.
Highlights that I’ll describe in separate posts:
- Scuba Diving in Palau (Micronesia)
- Trip to China in the break
- Formula 1 in Sepang
This is P4!
Apart from the job search, this period I am looking at the possibility of buying a company with a few classmates. We are currently exploring an opportunity in Europe for a management buyout of a metal production company with a revenue base of € 1-2M. It’s still exploration, so we have to figure out whether we can fix some of the issues in the company and whether we think that we are the people who can add most value to the firm. REP is a very nice elective! The whole idea of seriously thinking about going out there to buy a € 3M company without having any money, is new to me. Who knows where this will lead us to...
At the same time I’m still busy with my international development project. After the nightmare of the elections in Kenya, we bundled our energy to help a paralegal institute in Malawi. This is proving to be a very interesting case with a real brainteaser: “how can you make money, when all your clients are poor, when you cannot go after wealthier clients, and when your aid is stopped?”
My favourite class this period is Economics and Management in Developing Countries by Daniel Traca. This is the world of IMF and Worldbank, Multinationals and politics, Oil in Chad and Sudan, Aid, the failure of Aid, and ‘what if you’re in the shoes of a president from a developing nation’
So that’s for the academics.
Luckily, we still have time to unwind. After all, the motto at INSEAD still is “work hard, play hard” so we make sure to escape the bubble every now and then.
Highlights that I’ll describe in separate posts:
- Scuba Diving in Palau (Micronesia)
- Trip to China in the break
- Formula 1 in Sepang
After the silence
... so what have we been up to in the last few months?
I’ve not been the most faithful blogger, that’s for sure! For this I apologize,deeply. I guess that since the trip to HK at the end of January, I got caught up in all the projects and group work as well as all my classes, and electives...
Period 3:
We all thought that after P2, P3 in Singapore was going to be a breeze... nothing could have been further away from the truth, though! The workload again was huge and what really made life hard was the constant effort to align our schedules around groupwork. Everybody had different classes, so it was virtually impossible to meet as a group before 2100h... and I was in at least 5 different groups.
Some of my projects:
- A Market entry of a luxury champagne brand in Singapore
- Paralegals in Malawi
- A Management analysis of a maturing startup from Spain
- Analysis of an online travel agency’s options & recommendation
- A Zillion case writeups and studies
What really was wonderful in P3, was the temperature. Walking to school in the evening, jumping into the pool, having a bite at one of the hawker stalls...
Life in Singapore is good!
I’ve not been the most faithful blogger, that’s for sure! For this I apologize,deeply. I guess that since the trip to HK at the end of January, I got caught up in all the projects and group work as well as all my classes, and electives...
Period 3:
We all thought that after P2, P3 in Singapore was going to be a breeze... nothing could have been further away from the truth, though! The workload again was huge and what really made life hard was the constant effort to align our schedules around groupwork. Everybody had different classes, so it was virtually impossible to meet as a group before 2100h... and I was in at least 5 different groups.
Some of my projects:
- A Market entry of a luxury champagne brand in Singapore
- Paralegals in Malawi
- A Management analysis of a maturing startup from Spain
- Analysis of an online travel agency’s options & recommendation
- A Zillion case writeups and studies
What really was wonderful in P3, was the temperature. Walking to school in the evening, jumping into the pool, having a bite at one of the hawker stalls...
Life in Singapore is good!
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