To do or not to do, that was the question as I glanced at the numerous electives on offer.
I finally decided on the following electives:
- Analytics and Models for Strategic Marketing Decisions
- Fintech and Blockchain
- Presenting with Impact
Analytics and Models for Strategic Marketing Decisions
In the digital age, data has been proclaimed the new oil or the most valuable currency. Curious about data driven business models, I decided to enrol in this elective.
My curiosity was further tickled when I realised “Lady Gaga”, “Netflix” and “BMW” were some of the case studies that Professor Amit Joshi would be discussing in the elective. Little did I know that analytics plays a huge role in deciding the arenas and seating capacity for an artiste’s performances. Nothing can be worse than a headline that reads “Lady Gaga plays to half empty arena”. And to avoid this unfortunate incident from occurring, data analytics and modelling is key to determining the probability of selling out arenas and the costs involved in not doing so. I never imagined data to be so powerful.
Fintech and Blockchain
Blockchain, fintech, bitcoin – these were all industry jargons that I had come across previously, but never really grasped their meaning completely. Hence, I along with 60 other MBAs, spent last weekend listening to Professor Arturo Bris as he carefully broke down the various components of the fintech ecosystem and explained the working of each component.
We gained a clearer understanding of how blockchain technology operates and the underlying principle behind a distributed ledger network. Imagine investing in cattle in Bolivia, tracking changes in the value of that cattle throughout its lifetime and selling it in a liquid marketplace to realise profits. The tokenization of asset classes, powered by blockchain technology has made investing in cattle ranching possible for retail investors and in the process provides additional means for portfolio diversification. And if I hadn’t realised it yet, blockchain was here for the long haul and its future applications were going to transpire sooner rather than later.
Presenting with Impact
I chose this last elective because it sounded fun, did not have any prerequisite reading and most importantly focused on communication strategies to engage and interact with all sorts of audience.
Richard from Dramatic Resources left no stone unturned as he got the MBAs focused on their physical and vocal presence. We acted out interview scenarios, received feedback from our peers and Richard, and re-enacted the scenario again. It was light-hearted with lots of laughter and importantly, lots of learning too.
I believe effective communication is essential to any business dealing and I look forward to improving my communication techniques in the coming days under this elective.
On a final note, it has been a tremendous pleasure of mine sharing my thoughts and insights on various events and adventures over the last four weeks. I hope you have enjoyed reading and taken some delight in living vicariously through my blog posts. Merci!
