Week 36: Holiday Break and the John Molson International Case Competition

Week 36 has ended and I find myself in Montreal representing Queen's at the John Molson International Case Competition. It has been an interesting week filled with ups and downs, but overall a very valuable experience.

The cases are written for the competition and therefore some of them need a little additional work before they could be published. However, since they are not published there is no way the people competing could have seen them before and this ensures a level and fair playing field. The judges are different for every round and come from the business community of Montreal with a few special representatives from abroad. Although the rubric for judging is standard it is ultimately up to the panel of judges to interpret it and therefore results can vary significantly. Although our team did not make it to the semi-finals to compete, I do believe that we had a very strong team and the training Queen's has given us to date allowed us to be excellent competitors. I firmly believe we had a team that given different circumstances could have been finalists.

It has been very interesting to meet all the different schools at the competition and to represent Queen's on such a public forum. There is too much to discuss in this posting, so I will write a more indepth posting at a later date.

Classes start again this Monday. We have an additional 21 students joining our ranks from international schools. In addition we will be missing several of our classmates that have departed to study aboard. Friday was a special "orientation" for these new students to help them integrate to our team-based learning style and our social culture.

Furthermore, there is already studying that needs to be completed for Monday's classes! From the looks of the electives I have chosen, the workload will be demanding. Time to dive back in and roll up my sleeves to get back to work!

Finally, there is unofficial information circulating that applications for next year's program are way up and the school is ahead of filling the positions available compared with previous years. This will make it tougher for late applicant's compared with previous years.

Week 35: Holiday Break (con't)

Week 35 ends and Canada finds itself in a deep freeze! The West Coast is shaking off from huge dumps of snow. I'm back in Calgary visiting friends before catching my flight back to Kingston and the temperature is -24 C, -32 C with windchill (i.e. -11 F & -26 F respectively), which is pretty representative of the prairies in general. Ontario and Quebec find themselves hovering around 0 C in the south and a little colder in the north, which probably means the roads are skating rinks. Finally eastern Canada, in particular Halifax, finds itself warmer at - 10 C (14 F), but with tons of snow. I only hope the people headed to Halifax for the MBA Games this year are able to make it. From the looks of it they may not be able to. I wonder what some of my classmates from warmer climes are thinking at this moment. (Aside: Here is the link to the video introducing Queen's to the other schools and the video for a CSR event)

No more grades have been posted. We are still waiting on 3 more courses to be posted.

I feel like I have had a long enough break that I am ready to get back to work to finishing this degree. 4 more months to go and I need to find a job in an economy that isn't exactly rosy. Classes resume in a week from Monday so I had better make the most of the time I have left.

Week 34: Holiday Break (con't)

Week 34 ends and Christmas has passed. No new grades have been posted. A few Christmas greetings have been passed around.

Received a sample case from the organizers for the John Molson International Case Competition coming up in Montreal. I should get around to reading this before returning to Kingston, but there is plenty of time yet.

Not much else going on with respect to the program. I am starting to get bored, which is a good sign that I may finally be rested after going so hard for several consecutive months. Also, I am beginning to formulate different job hunting alternatives and wondering how to proceed with my search for employment.

Week 33: Holiday Break

Week 33 ends and so does our first week of break. Nothing much to write about, just a few more grades posted.

Week 32: Capstone Simulation (Module 8)

Week 32 has ended and with it so has the week long Capstone Simulation. Wow! Hard work, but very awesome. To sum it up in two words: LIFE CHANGING.

Everyday this week we have entered our decisions into the LINKS Enterprise Management Simulation and awaited our results. 2 decisions were due everyday: one at 12:30 PM and one at 5:30 PM. Results were made available from the previous quarter at 7:30AM and 1:30 PM everyday. This was to allow people the luxury to sleep. Also, 2 memos were due everyday detailing your teams strategy and decisions with references to all of your MBA courses and learnings. A final 5 page report is also do tonight at midnight.

Basically the 13 teams were separated into 2 "industries" with 7 teams in industry A and 6 teams in industry B. Both industries were identical, but separate (ie they did not interact with each other). The basis was that you were manufacturing "set-top boxes" for TVs. You could conduct research, request market studies and many other information gathering actives. These in turn would help you set your price, marketing budgets, choose distribution channels, choose regions/countries to sell in, take out loans, increase capacity, change product configurations, etc. Overall it is impressive the level of complexity that can be simulated. It is also impressive how competitive MBA students can make an activity such as a week long simulation.

Industry A was won by team 417 who came from the mid-field with an impressively well thought out strategy to sell high volume low quality products. They blew the competition out of the water, pretty much literally. This industry had people all over the place: low end, high end, mid end...everywhere.

Industry B was won by team 407 who excelled at making and managing margins to maximize profits. This industry was tightly clustered for the entire game with everyone locked in a price war.

Congratulations to the winners who will have their teams immortalized on the Capstone Simulation plaque.

With the end of this module we are also seeing the end of our teams. We have been in these same teams since May and now we find ourselves saying good bye. In addition there are several people that will not be returning after the holiday break. Some of these people will be away for a few months and some are gone to finish their degrees abroad on exchanges. To celebrate we are embarking on the "twelve pubs of Christmas". Should be fun, but it is still bittersweet.

We have from today, Dec 12th, off until Jan 13th when classes start-up again. Finally some time to spend with my wife. Also, the first week of January is MBA Games in Halifax! I'm not going, but a good portion of the class will be there and I hope they do Queen's proud.

Well, I'm now off to practice a case for the upcoming John Molson International Case Competition starting on Jan 5th 2009 in Montreal. Afterwards we will meet up with the class. This is a long week...