Stacy Blackman’s B-School Buzz
Each week, we bring you news from the front lines with business school bloggers sounding off on life in the trenches.
Over on the MIT Sloan Blog, the latest entry shares one student’s relief and gratitude for having gotten to know professor Simon Johnson over the past few months. In addition to his considerable expertise and energy, the blogger shares that Johnson “has given even an economics ignoramus like me an understanding of what governments, corporations, and individuals can do to turn the tide of the crisis.”
In last week’s Technology and Operations Management class, Bradley Lautenbach (HBS) participated in a fascinating 90-person conversation about the role of for-profit companies in the development of social enterprise/initiative and the state of economic and agricultural development in India. “For 80 minutes we ping-ponged around the room, people chiming in with insight or commentary when they felt compelled to do so. And it was, by far, the most interesting conversation…I’ve witnessed in the classroom yet,” he says.
Shawn Brandt’s new post on the Kenan-Flagler Blog relates exactly how one crosses party lines. As a huge Duke fan from his undergrad days, Shawn gives us the FSBCF framework: Four Stages of Becoming a Carolina Fan. Now that he’s living at the other end of 15-501 (the road between Durham and Chapel Hill), Shawn would diagnose himself as a Stage 3 convert…who’s hanging on for dear life in the hopes that he doesn’t slip into Stage 4.
The Ruminator expresses some serious reservations at the planned expansions underway at London Business School. In his mind, expansion is a double-edged sword. More alumni mean more employers hitting campus and a bigger endowment in the long-run, but could spell space shortages, quality dilution and missing out on important career presentations in the short run.
Professor Andrew McAfee on the HBS Faculty Blogs is starting to get into the microblogging utility Twitter. Until now, he’s “tweeted” almost exclusively about IT and Enterprise 2.0, but it’s time for more. “I’m combining my penchant for asking questions with my desire to learn more about Twitter, yielding a tremendously exciting new initiative called “andyasks,” McAfee says. “I’ll tweet at least one question a day, and people can reply with their answers. If you’re interested in participating, simply follow me — “@amcafee” — on Twitter and reply to questions if and whenever you feel like it.”
On the Tuck School of Business Admissions Blog, Will V. says one of the more surreal aspects of business school right now is studying efficient market theory in an academic context. And how do hedge funds fit into all this, he wonders? It can’t be a coincidence that the recent asset bubble coincided with the phenomenal growth in hedge funds and funds of funds. Thank goodness he’s got a good person to discuss these thorny matters with: his Capital Markets professor, Richard Rogalski.
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