Ohio State Remodels the Fisher Full-Time MBA Program
Just as 2018 draws to an eventful close, the Max M. Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University has announced a major remodeling of the Ohio State MBA.
The New Ohio State MBA
According to a new release from the school, the new Ohio State MBA “takes advantage of Fisher’s strong relationships with employers and recruiters to cultivate career competencies sought by organizations.”
Flexibility and tailoring the curriculum directly to student needs is the primary emphasis of the newer MBA model:
“Students will undergo an assessment at the beginning of their MBA experience to identify their strengths and skills gaps. Their program builds on these strengths to close the gaps so they earn an MBA that fits and distinguishes them in the marketplace.”
This MBA curriculum also “incorporates immersive, cross-functional projects with top companies and organizations locally and globally.” These changes include a Global Applied Projects to enhance international experience and exposure, a Business Lab Project to get hands-on experience with major local companies, and a Core Capstone Experience at the conclusion of the program.
Fisher College of Business Dean and John W. Berry, Sr. Chair in Business, Anil K. Makhija, says, “Continuous innovation is a priority which is explicitly highlighted in the college’s strategic plan. This innovation guides our approach to how all of our programs are delivered.”
Fisher’s full-time MBA Co-Director Roger Bailey, when discussing the new changes, says, “The data-driven approach to this redesign has yielded a full-time MBA program that is able to maximize the potential of each student. We are excited about how these many changes leverage Fisher’s strengths, and the increased value it will provide to our students, our alumni and the greater business community.”
News of the school’s changes to the full-time MBA come just one year after it adjusted its highly-regarded Working Professionals MBA; its part-time format counterpart. In 2017, Ohio State added a weekend option to the program, which previously only featured a weekday evening schedule.
The new Ohio State full-time MBA also arrives just 12 months after Fisher introduced its 10-month Specialized Master in Business Analytics program.
For more information on the recently revitalized Ohio State MBA and its other programs, head over to the official school website.
Kellogg On Pharma’s Lack of Innovation, and More – Chicago News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Chicago business schools this week.
Everyone Wants Pharmaceutical Breakthroughs. What Drives Drug Companies to Pursue Them? – Kellogg Insights
Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Professor of Finance Dimitris Papanikolaou recently co-authored new research that illuminates why “pharmaceutical firms these days often make minor changes to existing medications instead of delivering innovative drugs.”
The study, which was co-authored with HBS’s Joshua Krieger and MIT Sloan’s Danielle Li, found that “financial frictions may be limiting innovation.”
According to the article, “The researchers found that firms were eager to work on novel drugs—under the right financial circumstances. When pharmaceutical companies got a windfall, such as a sudden increase in profits, they were more likely to spend it on developing novel drugs than on incremental improvements.”
You can read more about the trio’s research here.
Kadiani Finds Passion for Social Entrepreneurship at Gies Business – Gies College of Business News
The University of Illinois Gies College of Business recently profiled current Master of Accountancy Science student Hamed Kadiani whose social entrepreneurship journey began as part of student organization Illinois Enactus, which helped him understand his desire to see “what the root of the problem is, and then develop a solution that fixes the cause, not the symptom.”
Kadiani later served as project manager for Project Oasis, an “online center that connects immigrants to resources in Champaign-Urbana, provides access to 75 resources in six main focus areas such as healthcare and education, [and] teaches immigrants financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills.”
According to the interview, Kadiani plans to become a CPA but shared his ambitions to some day run for political office.
“I hope I made an impact on campus, but I truly believe this work made more of an impact on me. I am who I am today because of this university and Gies College of Business.”
You can read more from the Gies College of Business News profile here.
Mendoza’s Marketing Major Puts a Strong Emphasis on Digital Skills – Mendoza Ideas & News
Notre Dame Mendoza’s Marketing Department recently recruited Professor Timothy Bohling, who will teaching Digital Marketing to both undergraduate and graduates in spring 2019.
Having previously held senior executive leadership positions at Stratasys, HCL Technologies, and IBM, Bohling’s research and teaching interests are “centered both on scholarly rigor and practitioner relevance in areas of digital marketing, customer relationship management, decision modeling, customer lifetime value and innovation adoption.”
The Mendoza Marketing Department has introduced four specialized tracks that emphasize data-based strategies: marketing decision analytics, brandscaping; consulting and market development; and digital marketing.
You can read more about Bohling, his research, and the 2019 courses here.
Schulich Alum Shares His Experience, and More – Toronto News
Toronto’s business schools have seen some exciting developments from students, alumni, and faculty this week. Let’s take a look at some of the high points.
Alumni Stories: Michael Zanella – MMgt – Schulich School of Business
A Schulich School of Business alum was recently profiled on his time in the school’s new 12-month Master’s of Management program.
Michael Zanella, a 2017 graduate, who turned his education into a role with Ceridian Dayforce as an Implementation Consultant Associate. You can watch his full interview below.
Wine, Beer, Spirits Brand-Builder WX Names Michael Lukan CFO – North Bay Business Journal
Michael Lukan was recently named the official new CFO of WX Brands, a company that creates wine, beer, and spirits. Lukan, an alum of Western University Canada’s Ivey Business School, co-founded Wine Hooligans in 2013. He has also worked at Purple Wine Company and Sonoma Wine Company. With news of the Lukan’s arrival at the company, WX Brands President and CEO Peter Byck says, “His well-rounded experience and entrepreneurial mindset will make him a great asset for WX Brands to continue to build on our tremendous growth.”
Regarding his new role, Lukan says, “Peter and the WX team have positioned the company for tremendous growth by delivering an exceptional customer experience and I’m looking forward to helping realize this opportunity.”
You can read more about Lukan and WX Brands here.
What Is Less Scary in the Dark? – Scientific American
Ping Dong, a Professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and Chen-Bo Zhong, Professor at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management, recently conducted a study that examined the, “impact of visual darkness on people’s perceived risk of contagious-disease transmission.” The researchers predicted that the darkness would make people feel more separate or insulated from one another, so they would be less squeamish about the germs of those around them. In fact, the study concluded that being in a darker environment would make subjects reduce their caution when it came to unethical behavior, of which might include cheating on one’s significant other and other acts of selfishness.
Their research showed that perceived risk of contracting airborne illnesses decreased when participants were in more dimly-lit rooms, as well as when they were wearing sunglasses. “In addition,” writes Scientific American writer Cindi May, “visual darkness increased participants’ perceived distance from the confederate, and this increase in distance mediated the reduction in perceived risk of contagion in the dark. Their fear of non-contagious diseases did not depend on the lighting.”
You can read more about the duo’s research here.
How To Create Your Own Internship, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
How to Land an Internship That Doesn’t Exist Yet – D’Amore-McKim Blog
The D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University recently published an account of how Matheus Dos Santos, DMSB ’19 created his own internship at Brazilian bank branch Banco Bradesco.
Dos Santos, a Brazilian native, sought out an internship at Banco Bradesco as an opportunity to “learn more about the industry” while he spent his summer back home in between his first and second years at D’Amore-McKim.
Dos Santos reports, “When I was talking to them about a summer job, they didn’t have any process in place. They weren’t sure at first how to hire me formally, and since I’ve started, all sorts of people have come up to me to say that I’m the first one the bank has hired for this kind of position.”
AP Photo via Victor R. Caivano
Dos Santos helped Banco Bradesco “develop an online trading platform to reach millennials.” Edilson Fontenele, head of customer experience at Bradesco and Dos Santos’ supervisor, writes that Dos Santos’ appeal was his unique perspective as a “millennial who knows the Brazilian environment and also had exposure to international markets.”
You can read the full article here.
The Big Leap – Sawyer Business Blog
Sawyer Business School student Jennifer Wiens writes candidly about the precise moment she decided to transform her life and career. After being laid off from her job at a Seattle biotech company, Wiens chose to move cross-country to Boston in part to “go where the jobs were” but also because she thought Sawyer “could help me capture that sense of control in my career.”
Wiens simultaneously began her Sawyer EMBA and a stint as Charles River Labs’ global product manager where she coordinated “multiple teams and meeting with clients all around the world.” She writes about how the two fed into each other.
“Because of my Suffolk experience, I don’t feel like I’m out of my element. I’m explaining business concepts to people who’ve been in business for 20 years. I’m teaching them current approaches to certain things.”
Then Wiens pulled another 180 by leaving the Charles Rivers Lab gig. As part of her EMBA capstone course, she created a business strategy and marketing plan for Advanced Dental Sleep Medicine, which offers “alternative, non-surgical ways to reduce sleep apnea.” According to the article, both of which worked so well that the “owner convinced her to leave Charles River Labs and come work for him [as] full-time employee number three.”
Wiens writes, “The company’s gotten a lot of good buzz, so the business is poised to explode and franchise out. And that’s where I come in.”
You can check out the full article here.
3 Steps Toward Safer and Sounder Software – MIT Sloan Newsroom
Deutsche Bank CIO and head of safety and soundness Frédéric Véron recently gave a talk at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, where he shared 3 pieces of wisdom for making software “safe and sound.”
Véron said “safe and sound” software is about a “mix of hyper-awareness, good planning and foresight, and learning quickly from mistakes.”
According to the article, “hyper-awareness” involves knowing “how all your software is actually being used day-to-day, ensuring all stakeholders in development understand the full scope of the product, and continuously taking baseline metrics to understand what can be considered normal operating conditions for a system.”
Good planning and foresight entails that “all of the different procedures that will be necessary to maintain the system in production mode need to be thought through ahead of time. You can always bolt it all on later, but it will cost you more money and it won’t be native or work as well.”
Véron advocates “failing and adapting fast” by adopting agile and DevOps. “The whole point of agile is about adopting the philosophy where you break down major efforts into smaller efforts, allowing you to do incremental releases so that you can make a small change, and if it isn’t working you can pull it out of production quickly without impacting the whole thing.”
He elaborated, “Safety and soundness is about ‘How do we make the enterprise safer and more sound, right from the get-go?’ Not just when things happen, but before things happen.”
The full article can be found here.
