Summary of the Cambridge MBA courses I studied: what I liked (and not), and how I had to be collaborative actually.

As I compared the Cambridge MBA with other schools in the previous post, I (finally) felt like objectively seeing the courses (recapping them might follow later).

In a retrospective review, I liked (and disliked) the following courses most:

• Top 2 
• Project: Global Consulting Project (MBA page / Example of Project Deliverables)
• Core Corporate Governance by Professor Rau
• Next 3
• Elective: Philosophy in Business by the Faculty of Philosophy 
• Elective: Behavioural Finance by Professor Rau 
• Elective: New Venture Finance by Professor Randy Haykin, who comes from SV
• Bottom
• Cost Management and Control

Yet, satisfaction with a course does not necessarily mean a good result ...interestingly and sadly they are barely correlated (r=0.16).

Marks seems almost irrelevant to how I am stimulated by or satisfied with courses.

*Satisfaction is defined as an average score (1-10) between intellectual stimulation and personal fit to a lecturer; a relative mark is comparatively scaled based on my personal range between highest and lowest marks.

However, marks are approximately 40% determined by (in most cases) collaborative group works.

One example of how collaboration is included in marks (NB: weighted total of course depends on elective choices)

When you compare three terms, interestingly, the first term, Michaelmas, was more individualistic, while the last term, Easter, required a lot of class participations. On a different note, the second term, Lent, was the busiest term as there were a lot of group assignments while preparing for the coming GCP. However, when busy you learn a lot.

In my opinion, Michaelmas courses also should (and could) have engaged students more, to set up a pace of studying individually (yet for me this was good as I skipped some to join courses and events in different departments of the Uni). 

Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2015

Cambridge is overall ranked 3rd among major one-year MBA programmes, after INSEAD and IE as IMD drops its position this year; what's more, it has ranked at 4th for Value for Money and 5th for Aims Achieved among all the b-schools ; not too bad apart from the fact that Recommendation from Alumni still lags behind as 39th.

In a nutshell, obtaining Cambridge MBA will help you achieve your aims for what you pay, yet your opportunity of being recruited might not be widened significantly just by the fact your CV has a Cambridge MBA stamp.


(for the graphical purpose, all ranks below are put in minus; rank figures are among all the MBA programmes)

The overall rank for Cambridge Judge Business School in 2015 is improved to 13th, compared to 16th in last two years; this is third, if you compare among major one-year MBA programmes.



Its Value for Money rank has improved from 7th in 2014 to 4th, which is next to IMD as 3rd rank.



Moreover, the Aims Achieved rank went beyond IMD again, and got ranked 5th among all the MBA programmes.



However, the Recommendation from Alumni rank shows great room for improvement, despite a jump from 47th in last two years to 39th.


Note that Aims Achieve rank in 2015 is just ranked by sorting the percentage figure of each school as no rank is disclosed yet; even if two schools have the same percentage figure, the school that is showed upper is ranked one higher here. Those ranks are disclosed in 2013 and 2014, so there might be update in the near future.

Sources: Financial Times
http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ranking-2015
http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ranking-2014
http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ranking-2013

2015 New Year resolution (belated)

After several short trips to Korea, Japan, the US, and Spain within a few weeks, I finally came back in London, (caught a cold again), and successfully extended my visa to remain in the UK as a happy dependent :-p.

Now, belatedly, is the time to set new year's targets as every year. This year, again, I should stick to rather simple targets (rough allocation of time); this year is going to be a year of totally challenging new stuff:

• Career: to success in seed financing for the startup (50%).
• Private: to learn anew not to be bored; through studying Finance (MSc-level) and Economics (BSc-level) (20%), learning programming (20%) and absorbing various contents to write up a short fiction (10%).

Happy New Year 2015 monument, in a sort of traditional Japanese way with an orange.

Regrettably, last year I did not achieve much regarding my revised targets:

1. Keep exercise every week: Not really at all. After an accident in golfing, I stopped playing it. 
2. Complete the Cambridge MBA with writing up the final dissertation on 'innovation and corporate governance': Done, but not fully satisfied with what I wrote up.
3. Confirm a place, likely in London, for researching management in the UK while working on the entrepreneurial project: The startup goes well so far (definitely this is the greatest achievement unexpectedly), yet failed to secure a research position.
4. Draft a story of science fiction. An idea of multi-worlds/minds structure is there, yet still too vague to start writing.

Anyway, my life to get busy living goes on.

From a new year's trip to Grand Canyon in the US

It's a wonderful life (by Nomad Cinema); yes it is, indeed.

After suffering from a cold for days unfortunately, I just got recovered by seeing the movie. Yes, 'no man is a failure who has friends.' (It's a Wonderful Life, 1946, directed by Frank Capra)

If there's a chance, I utterly absolutely indeed recommend to see it in a cinema, with good audience who clap their hands to thank to the truly wonderful movie. Today's fantastic event was was organised by the Nomad Cinema, who is supposed to donate 100% of their profits to The Sustainability Institute a pioneering environmental and educational charity in South Africa.

It's a Wonderful Life by The Nomad Cinema at the Look Out in the Hyde Park.

Indeed it is one of the best movies to wish a merry Christmas. The ending is so beautiful and heartwarming and the performance by James Stewart is just incredible. Just for my foot note, I did not know the fact that Frank Capra was from Sicily, Italy, like Giuseppe Tornatore, who directed Cinema Paradiso. I see they believed in the power of cinema, arguably.

Learning Ruby on Rails

As I have been managing the company website, I realised I have to learn basics of web development. Therefore, last weekend, I joined a two-day workshop by Codecourse, which was a great opportunity to practically learn how to code with Ruby on Rails. This is my work-in-progress web applications.

It was really worthwhile course; what I essentially learnt was following:

• All the important setups for web application development: online console by Nitrous, html and CSS frameworks by Bootstrap, online application platform by Heroku, Static Maps API by Google maps, voice and SMS APIs by Nexmo,  some gems in Github, and online e-commerce platform by Stripe.
• How to practically develop (1) a personal website, (2) a web app to record locations and display in the map, (3) a web app to send a SMS text message, (4) a web app to upload pictures and purchase an order online, and (5) a web app to post status updates. So basically they are what you do mostly online nowadays (i.e. Wordpress or blogging, Messenger, Instagram, Amazon, Twitter etc.).
• While following instructions by the organiser and facing unexpected errors, essentially my learning was about how to identify an error (mostly typo or undefined class or method) and how to crack it mostly by yourself.

Nitrous' console image

The following is my personal memo on the very basics on Ruby on Rails so that I would not forget about it at all.

• To create a new project, command 'rails new the_name_of_the_project'. After run 'cd mysite", type 'rails server' starts the server so that you can check your code updates in your browser.
• application.html enables every page to contain the same code that is in the application.html.
• To add a new page, (1) open the routes.rb file in the config folder, (2) open the static_pages_controller.rb in app/controllers/, and (3) create a new file under the static_page folder.
• To use Bootscamp CSS, first you have to copy Bootstrap CDN to the application.html.erb.
• After you install in Gemfile (c.f. gem is a function defined/developed by someone already, e.g. Devise: sign-in and sign-up/authentication), you have to stop the server (Ctrl+c) and then run the "bundle install" command to reflect the changes while.
• To upload updated pages, command (1)"cd the_name_of_the_project", (2) "git add . ", (3) "git commit -m"Finished the project", (4)"git push heroku master".
• To create a database, run 'rails generate scaffold the_name_of_database', followed by name and definition of each column. (e.g. 'rails generate scaffold location name:string address:string latitude:float longitude:float')

34 countries visited so far, outnumbering my age at least

When counted, quite unexpectedly, 34 countries have been visited; moreover, I stayed at least one night (usually more) in 32 of them (two exceptions are Ukraina in Aug 2014 and Vatican in Sep 2014). 7 were added in the last summer's trans-Eurasia honeymoon trip. On the other hand, this year I have added Norway only, which was part of my MBA's Global Consulting Project, indeed.

I have never thought about such a travelling-the-world life before entering the university as an undergraduate (10+ years ago!!). However, south America, most of Africa, Middle East, and Central Asia are still missing. I should visit at least one new country each year so that the number can keep outnumbering my age.

UK's new initiative for digital entrepreneurship: Digital Business Academy

Online course for free by Judge and UCL; I've got to sign up to see whether the MBA (esp. Marketing) was worth paying for the high tuition.

The Digital Business Academy, a joint venture by Cambridge university’s Judge Business School, UCL, Tech City and start-up course designer Founder Centric (FT, 2014)

Two of the world’s top academic institutions (i.e. Cambridge Judge Business School and University College London*) decided to start free online courses of business topic** for 'those that have shunned formal education in favour of entrepreneurship to obtain some formal business training'. (FT, 2014)

* Where are other two?
**The list as of today covers eight courses:

1. Size up your idea
2. Set up a digital business
3. Develop and Manage a digital product
4. Make a marketing plan
5. Build a brand
6. Understand Digital Marketing Channels
7. Run a digital marketing campaign
8. Master finance for your business

Source:

Financial Times. Online course opens to sharpen start-up minds. 19 Nov 2014. Available from: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/bc7f0ca2-6e70-11e4-afe5-00144feabdc0.html

Interstellar

Admittedly, the story was a bit long and ended too happily? But that is not the point of the film. I would say, the story (e.g. going through a wormhole to reach another galaxy) and characters (e.g. the captain's son, Dr. Mann, etc.) were rather made up and thoughtfully ordered to just let a person (and a machine) going beyond the event horizon into the black hole (and somehow, however weirdly, he has not experienced 'spaghettification' by the strong gravity of the black hole). Period.

I know people love spacecrafts, but this was not super cool unfortunately.

Our imagination is highly bounded in timespace, or three dimensions and time. This film at least tried to reconstruct the boundaries of audience's imagination. Also, it amazingly showed how a film can show the advanced science of modern physics into the screen (of course with its budget of $160 million and more).

The last quarter or half hour or so was just amazingly structured to put all the mysterious pieces/scenes into one great big, clear picture on how this film ends. That part made it worth seeing the bit boring first half of the film. As some said, a good Science Fiction is also a good Mystery, indeed.

Might be a good idea to see 9 films that inspired the director. I should start with Metropolis as it was also recommended in the Film History evening classes at Imperial College London, as it affected a lot of science fiction films, notably Blade Runner.

1. Star Wars (1977)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
4. Alien (1979)
5. Metropolis (1927)
6. Blade Runner (1982)
7. The Right Stuff (1983)
8. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
9. The Mirror (1975)

* Happy is here half questioned because all the scenes after the event horizon could be just an imaginary memory of the farmer-turn-back-pilot who dreams a feasible return to the earth to see his daughter. Who knows?

SVC2UK 2014

The theme of this year's Silicon Valley Comes to the UK was a bit scattered, at least to me, compared with the last year's focus on med tech and how to cope with chronic diseases in the advance economy. I got some good hints on how da hardware startup should grow and learn its operational capability throughout the years of its journey to scaling up abroad. Note: it will take long time (5-10 years to become sustainable) so you'd better be prepared for the longevity.

Walking through St. John's College early in the morning, while developing my thoughts as follows.

Another personal finding is that I would not be able to like the Silicon Valley's culture of 'hyper high tension'. It is way too much for me, or I just became too old or introversial to accept it. I do understand that kind of way of making a rather emotional momentum in the market would do good for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who want money.

However so, for example, why people think Uber is changing the world? By utilising unutilised vehicles for the era of new sharing economy? As far as people move around, however, the energy consumption would be more or less same. Its $17 bn valuation, or value will be just captured from other transportation modes, unless it starts transportation services by self-drive car, which will be totally something new and existing service providers won't start as it is too risky and legally unclear who in the end is responsible and liable for any damage a self-drive car makes.

From Uber's blog:

We have some exciting news to share this morning. We have just closed a financing round with some of the leading investors in the world, raising $1.2B of primary capital at a $17B pre-money valuation. The total raise will be about $1.4B with a second close of strategic investors soon. We are thrilled to have top tier institutional investors, mutual funds, private equity and venture capital partners joining us.

The Imitation Game

We saw the film in the first day of its running. It was a good entertainment film for a Friday evening, but not a thing that moves you, indeed. I enjoyed how Benedict plays one of the most intelligent people the world once had (and miserably lost). Frankly speaking, without Benedict Cumberbatch, the storytelling was rather boring and could not go beyond my expectation. Yes, maybe I was not the target audience of the film, since I am a big fan of Turing Machine etc. as a Science Fiction lover.

The Imitation Game (3.5 stars out of 5)