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The AIM Blogger

The AIM Blogger
A 2007-2008 MBA Student blogs about his life and times at the Asian Institute of Management

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Here We Go Again
2008-02-05 11:01:00
I haven't blogged much about schoolwork and class load, and there's a pretty good reason for that: things have been pretty manageable for the last two weeks.But this week seems to be different. There has been a steady increase in deliverables and group work that it looking less like a spike in the workload and more like a deluge of deadlines. To give you an idea for what we have lined up this week: a quiz on Financial Management 2 (FM2) on financing defaults and restructuring, argumentation sessions in Management Communication (MC), group case analysis in Marketing Management (MM), another group case analysis in FM2, requirements gathering for a project in Development of the Enterprise (DE), and the finals for our Management of Cost and Profit (MCP). And if you're taking care of extracurricular activities (like me) and coordinating for your Walkabout* and arranging your Action Consultancy (AC) or internship, this week is really a heavy one. Sleep may once again become a luxury fo...

Johari Crazy
2008-02-03 23:23:00
For the last two weeks, our Human Behavior in Organizations (HBO) had us talk about "authentic leadership" and we had three cases to discuss this matter. The last activity had us create our Johari Window, a tool to see where our vision of ourselves intersect with our external relationships. So, you could imagine people sending emails to everyone asking them to fill-out his or her Johari Window.Here's how my Johari Window looks like: Arena (known to self and others) clever, confident, idealistic, intelligent, knowledgeable, witty Blind Spot (known only to others) able, accepting, adaptable, brave, calm, caring, cheerful, complex, dependable, dignified, energetic, extroverted, friendly, giving, helpful, independent, ingenious, introverted, kind, logical, loving, mature, modest, nervous, observant, organised, patient, quiet, reflective, relaxed, religious, responsive, searching, self-assertive, sensible, sentimental, trustworthy, warm, wise Façade (known only to self) Unknown (known...
More About: Crazy

W. SyCip Graduate School of Business has a New Website
2008-02-03 06:44:00
The W. SyCip Graduate School of Business (WSGSB) recently updated its website-- a fresh new design, updated and more relevant content and, in my opinion, better information for prospective students.Prof. Ricky Lim gave me a heads up on the new site and he has been very upbeat of new features of the site, particularly the multimedia integration. One of the nice features is Prof. Lim's brainchild, AIMTube, which shows some AIM videos. I'm also proud to point out that the "Life at AIM" section points out to this blog. Sweet!While the new site is big improvement, Prof. Lim has said that the site is still in its Beta Stage and improvements are still in the works. So check out the WSGSB website!
More About: Website , Graduate School

Live Blogging at SWS Surveys: 2007 in Review
2008-01-31 07:12:00
I'm live blogging here at the Soriano Hall of the Asian Institute of Management for a lecture organized by the AIM Policy Center. The lecture, entitled SWS Surveys : 2007 in Review , is the 73rd lecture of the Globalization Lecture Series.The main speaker of the event is Dr. Mahar Mangahas of the Social Weather Stations (SWS), one of the biggest and most respected poll organizations in the Philippines. It's interesting to note that The AIM and SWS have been presenting the annual summaries of the SWS surveys for the last seven years.Dr. Mangahas highlighted the key national surveys of public opinion SWS ran in 2007, and there are interesting findings:Hunger in the Philippines reached a record high in 20072007 was an election year in the Philippines and it showed-- people were very much interested it the national Senatorial elections and local Barangay elections.Filipinos were generally indifferent to global eventsFilipinos followed closely the rising of oil prices. I find this natura...
More About: Blogging , Live

Business War Game!
2008-01-30 13:43:00
Our MBA batch just had our very first business war game for our Development of the Enterprise (DE) class. What's the war game all about? Competitive Intelligence.The game we played is called Operation: Teltech and it consists of four rounds where in a group of five students represented a telecommunications company with starting market share points in the industry. The basic objective was to allot certain points to implement your team's strategy-- to "attack" another team to gain market share points, to "defend" your position to prevent other teams to get your market share, and to "expand" by tapping into growth markets outside of your opponents. There are more complications in the game such as varying market potential and the time pressure.My team represented a company that started with 16% market share, thus it wasn't the market leader-- more of like a middle-of-the-pack player with a niche in one of the five service segments in the industry. As soon as game time started, we cho...
More About: Business , Game

Q & A with Yvonne Larcher
2008-01-29 01:32:00
I recently interviewed Yvonne Larcher, an exchange student from Vienna who was recently part of AIM's Internationnal Student Exchange Progam(ISEP):The AIM Blogger (TAB): Hi Yvonne! Tell us something about yourself: your academic and professional background, interests.Yvonne Larcher (YL): My name is Yvonne Larcher and I study at Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. Before starting my studies I have worked as an accountant in various accounting companies in the west of Austria for 4 years. Personally, I like traveling, meeting new people/cultures (to learn from them), chatting and a lot more.The last trimester I was able to visit the Philippines and to attend my exchange semester at AIM. TAB: What factors did you consider in choosing AIM as your international exchange school?YL: One factor was that before coming to the Philippines, I have never been to Asia. My intention was to spend the exchange semester in Asia. So I started a selection process with the focus...

In Defense of the WAC
2008-01-24 10:46:00
Our MBA batch recently held a forum with WSGSB Associate Dean Prof. Ricky Lim, MBA Program Director Prof. Mau Bolante and the MBA Program staff. The purpose of the forum was for the MBA students to give feedback on the program so far, particularly on the quantitative subjects, clarifications on the Action Consultancy (AC) and the Management Research Report (MRR).The class feedback has gripes that I agree with, but there is one sentiment that I totally disagree with: The class wants to have no more Written Analysis of Cases or WACs. What bull! I believe the WACs are what separates AIM MBA grads from "cookie-cutter" MBA programs. I believe that is what toughens us up and I believe the WACs have contributed to the development of the MBA class significantly.As of now, we have done 11 cases for the WACs and weare slated for one more. Prof. Ricky Lim has stated that he will consider the suggestion. My appeal to my classmates and Prof. Ricky Lim: please stop and think about this. The class...
More About: Defense

Feedback Like These Make Blogging Worth It
2008-01-24 06:49:00
I recently received this from my email, with a subject line that says "Thank you!":Hi Regnard, I just wanted to say thank you! I've been reading your blog: http://theaimblogger.blogspot.com/ and it's really given me some insight as to what to expect at AIM. I have been accepted at AIM for the 2008 MBA program and have been a little curious as to what to expect. Your blog has certainly been an interesting read. Thanks again. Note: I did not include the sender's name for privacy purposes.Wow. The email is really simple but I found it very powerful. Blogging my experiences in AIM has been more of a channel of self-expression of my reflections and gripes of the daily MBA grind. I knew people would see this blog and hopefully appreciate the work not just by me, but also the whole MBA class is doing. The mere fact that a person was affected by this blog positively in a way validates the effort that I've put into this blog.When I was looking at applying at AIM, I really did not h...
More About: Feedback , Worth , Make

The 360°Consumer
2008-01-23 15:05:00
I recently attended a very interesting talk hosted by the AIM Policy Center. The title of the forum was The 360° Consumer , and it is the 72nd installment of the Globalization Lecture Series.The talk had four parts-- the main lecture by Junie Del Mundo of EON, reactions to the lecture by Prof. Jose Faustino of AIM and Ricky Alegre of the Philippine Marketing Association, an open forum and the synthesis of the lecture from Prof. Federico Macaranas of the AIM Policy Center (He's also our professor in Macroeconomics).So, who is the 360°Consumer? The focus of Junie Del Mundo's lecture is the Millennial Generation (the youth born between 1980-1995 ) who consumes media via the the traditional and the new channels with regularity. He went to described the buying capacity of the youth (Php 37 Billion!), how we consume media (preferring the internet over TV). describing our attitudes (skepicism, techno-savvy, high expectations to name a few) and how to reach out to us.The 360°Consumer: Juni...

Open Hand, Striking Fist
2008-01-21 01:37:00
I've been enthusiastic about our General Management and Ethics (GME) class since our very frst session. Our professor, Prof. Jesus Gallegos, is very good and the topics are very interesting.For the first few class meetings, we have been talking about Mission and Vision of the firm. We have discussed cases (IBM, Shangri-La, Johnson & Johnson) where the mission and vision of the company was tested, formulated and implemented. As an assignment after the cases, we were asked to come up with our management framework, a la Michael Porter's Five Forces, based on our understanding and learnings from the cases.Here's what I came up with: The Open Hand , Striking Fist Framework of Mission & Vission Cascading (or simply, The Open Hand, Striking Fist Model). My framework is based on how a firm would communicate and implement the company's mission and vision to the members of the organization depending on external stimuli and nature of the company.Here's a slide show for better appre...

AIM Preview 2008
2008-01-20 00:42:00
The Asian Institute of Management is having a series of talks called The AIM Preview , where the talks give potential MBA, MM and MDM students a taste of what's it like to study in AIM. Apart from the admission requirements, talks also focus on the way of life in AIM, a primer on the Case Method and a few tips on surviving business school. Faculty and students like me will be there to answer questions as well.A good thing about these talks is that they are also mini-seminars on management and leadership. The last Preview I attended focused on the power and wisdom of groups. If I'm not mistaken, the next set of talks will feature management topics from management guru Peter Drucker. Those mini-seminars are definitely worth any would-be manager or leader's time.I invite all those who are interested in pursuing business graduate studies to attend The AIM Previews. Each talk is very interesting and a good way to research to which MBA program you will attend. I attended an AIM Preview ...
More About: 2008

Field Trip to Yakult Philippines
2008-01-16 08:06:00
Our MBA class recently went to Yakult Philippines in Calamba, Laguna for a plant tour and visit. The activity is part of our Operations Management (OM) class under Prof. Nani Roxas. Our class went on two separate trips and our section went in the morning.This is one of the few activities I was able to bring my camera so I'll probably have the images below speak for themselves:Early birds, before the bus left (L-R): Shu Wang, Karen Sumcio,Neil Risos, Kristine Duque, Anton Del Rosario, Paolo Tomas & Ha Kim Lien)Ready to roll out! (L-R): Prof. Nani Roxas, Shu Wang, Pia Sanedrin, Neil Risos, Julie Chua, Nina Laquinadum,Paolo Tomas, Ha Kim Lien, Deepti Srivastava, Shonal Jadia)Yakult, here we come! (F-B): Karen Sumcio, Neil Risos, Rosie Avila, Kristine Duque, John Ray, Anton Del Rosario)Pair #1: Paolo Tomas & Cheska HerreraPair #2: Rajat Gorawara & Julie ChuaThe Yakult Plant: 7 million bottles of Yakult are produced here every day.Ready for briefing: Our class was sterilize...
More About: Trip , Field

Vox Populi
2008-01-14 09:21:00
Yeah, I heard you.I ran a poll to know what you folks would like to see more of here in The AIM Blogger and the topic that got the most votes is AIM admissions, followed by AIM students. It makes sense because the AIM Admissions Office started the application for the next batch of MBA students already.So what's in store for The AIM Blogger in the next few postings? Well, there will be more coverage on admission-related information, plus some insights for prospective students. Another is I'll try to feature more of the students here, from the MBA, MM and MDM programs. Of course, there will still be the occasional happenings in and outside the AIM classrooms.I'm taking a cue from that poll despite the fact that it only had 14 votes. Why? It's a nod to everyone who has read this blog religiously and shared their thoughts by commenting on my blog posts. Besides, Marketing Management (MM) taught me to love my current reader base; after all it is more costly to retain a lost reader th...
More About: Vox Populi

Perspective
2008-01-09 19:28:00
I received a forwarded email from Ramon M. de Vera, Chairman of the AIM Alumni Association (Philippine Chapter):We received with profound sorrow news of the death of Bob Chandran in a helicopter crash in Indonesia yesterday morning. At that time, AIM MBM class 73 was in Boracay celebrating its 35th anniversary. We remembered Bob as being just a year behind our class. And almost instinctively there were anecdotes and remembrances about Bob who was well regarded.There will be tribute coming from his friends and associates from all over the world for Bob. He lived a life full of challenges rewarded with one achievement after another. We join many who will pause and remember him and his family in prayer. As the alumni of AIM share with pride in the achievements of Bob, we now also share in the grief of his family.The AIM family will hold a memorial service for Bob Chandran with details to be announced later. For now, we assuage our grief with the thought that Bob lived his life f...
More About: Perspective

New Year, New Gripes
2008-01-08 02:53:00
It's 2008 and the new year brings a lot of new things for our MBA class.First, we are starting a new term. With the new term, we have new subjects such as Financial Management 2 (FM2), Development of the Enterprise (DE) and General Management (GME). We have yet to meet all of our professors for the new subjects, but we have already had a class with Prof. Gracia Ugut in FM2. Also, the new term still has favorites like Management Communication (MC), Marketing Management (MM) and Operations Management (OM).Speaking of Operations Management, we have an upcoming midterms tomorrow and there will be a few fortunate folks who will be exempted from taking the exam. The exempted list includes MBA students who got a grade of P+ or higher. The basis of the exemption is the much-vaunted, oft-maligned Class Participation (CP) and the results of the QDP* Exercise done during the last term.The exemption list itself has started murmurs around the batch about how the list was drawn up-- why are som...
More About: New Year , Year

2007: An MBA Student Looks Back
2008-01-02 21:04:00
It's 2008 and I'd like to take this time to look back at 2007 for us first year MBA students at AIM.July:While not the official start of the MBA program, July was the month of the Pre-MBA program where I met most of my classmates.The Pre-MBA days were also known for its blistering pace in the classes.I remember I was seated next to Nina Laquindanum and Jen Valenzuela on the first day. We were all together on the same group discussion during the application.First Indian that I met: Archit KulkarniFor some reason, "Clear as mud" became Prof. Larry Tan's catch phrase.August:The MBA's official start.Probably the days of "making a good impression," in and out the classroom.Notable activity of the month: The team building exercise where we had our first set of CAN groups.More notable activity of the month: Our very first WAC!The "Young MBA Graduate" phenomenon startsSeptember:I got sick and heard people calling me "the guy who collapsed," although I did not."Exams" officially became a...
More About: Student , Back , Looks

On Viral Marketing
2007-12-19 06:05:00
One of the courses that I've gone to appreciate in the MBA program is Marketing Management (MM) under Prof. Joe Miranda. The Case Method, in my opinion, really brings out the best in our MM classes. We've already covered a lot, such as market research and components to a successful marketing program, but not so much on one specific item that has caught my attention: Viral Marketing.According to Wikipedia, Viral Marketing is defined as "marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses." I highlighted social networks because this blog is part of one-- the Blogosphere. I wouldn't be surprised if this blog would have a"word of mouth" effect on prospective MBA students.As for the Viral Marketing, we did tackle a case before on non-traditional marketing channels such as mobile devices and the web, but our class discussion focused on t...

Ah, The Christmas Vacation
2007-12-17 02:17:00
The "real" vacation season started for us MBA students last December 14, Friday. We did not have class that day, but we did have a group paper deadline for Quantitative Analysis (QA).From that point, the exodus of students not based in the Philippines began. A lot of Indian students steadily started going out of the dorm with their luggage bags and excitement of going back to India. Students trickling out of AIM is usually see them waiting for cabs in the lobby area, with other classmates bidding adieu, even temporarily.Here's a list of things of things I've been able to do since the vacation:Eat lunch at homeWatch TVSleepRead a book not related to AIM!Shop for Christmas giftsParty hard :DI'm sure other folks have found the time to rest and do stuff. So to the AIM students all over the world, greetings to you and have great Christmas vacation.
More About: Vacation , Christmas Vacation

The Longest Day
2007-12-13 01:24:00
(This post could also be called "Eight Hours of Financial Management.")We had our Financial Management 1 (FM 1) final exam yesterday and boy was it a monster exam. The exam was originally from 9 am to 2 pm, and I thought it was more than enough, but, boy, am I glad they changed the schedule to 8:30 am to 5 pm. I'm glad our Asian Business Systems (ABS) professor, Brahm Prakash, was willing to reschedule our classes to next year to give us more time to do our finals.The exam had two parts: Part 1 was a 40-point multiple choice section that focused on capital budgeting, weighted cost of capital (WACC), earnings per share (EPS) and stock prices, and capital structure. Everybody in class thought that part was very challenging. After taking that part of the finals, I felt there was an anvil that fell down from the heavens and dashed my MBA hopes.Part 2 was a case analysis and I think it was harder than any of our Written Analysis of Cases (WAC) where we're given 13 hours to finish. Fo...
More About: Longest

The Economics of Doing Everything
2007-12-11 04:29:00
I remember in one of the meetings with our learning team's mentor where he shared the wisdom of having learning teams or CAN groups-- You can't do everything. That's why you have a team that will roughly have a finance person, a marketing person, a quant guy and operations person. The team composition, hopefully, creates synergy and build on the strengths of the members.However, I do think that a single person can do everything. However, that person has Economics against him or her. There's this thing called The Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns or more popularly known as Diminishing Returns. Applied in our "do everything" situation, hypothetically a person can do everything, but at a steep price-- perhaps putting in an impractical amount of time, or having huge inefficiency in accomplishing the that feat. Doing or being everything is not impossible, but rather impractical.We can also apply another economic concept, Opportunity Cost, into the picture. We can say that the time ...

AIM Student's Christmas Party
2007-12-09 06:51:00
Last Friday, December 7, AIM held the Student's Christmas Party at the Zen Garden. The very capable Master in Management (MM) folks were the ones in charge of throwing the party and they did a very good job.The party's theme was "Mahiwagang Paskong Pinoy" which roughly translates to "Enchanted Filipino Christmas." As the theme suggests, Filipiniana or Filipino-inspired costumes were encouraged to be worn. It was nice to see non-Filipinos wear the Barong Tagalog and Camiza DeChino for a more casual look. I sported a more contemporary look-- a Magdalo Group-inspired get-up. (I'll post pictures and videos as soon as I get them from our designated photographers).I performed with the band that kicked off the program. While our performance wasn't so perfect, we did have fun playing Christmas songs like "All I Want for Christmas is You" and "Pasko na Sinta Ko," a Filipino Christmas song.There were lots of giveaways and games. It's good the organizers were able to get lots of sponsors ...
More About: Christmas party

The Six Word Description Theory
2007-12-07 03:47:00
I'm running a social experiment to test a theory I've developed. The theory is called The Six Word Description Theo ry and it posits that an object's qualitative attributes can be adequately and satisfactorily described using six words.My theory was developed while thinking of how to minimize the responses for an interview and it was inspired by Six Degrees of Separation. I'm developing this theory to extend it to describing abstract ideas and how it would apply to tagging and labeling for items on the web. It's like developing this rule of thumb: A blog post can be adequately described using six tags or labels.I'm validating this theory with a survey that will go through the typical hypothesis testing some theories undergo. The survey has only 10 questions and may be finished in 5 minutes. Please take the survey via the link below:Take the Six Word Description Theory Survey.I'd appreciate your help in validating this endeavor.

AIM Preview
2007-12-05 14:33:00
AIM had its first AIM Preview today. The AIM Preview is a an event where prospective MBA, MM or MDM students are invited and a brief talk on business and management is given. The talk for today's session was by Prof. Ricky Lim and his topic was "Leading the Swarm," which focused on the wisdom of teams and groups.Although us students were not required to attend the event, a few classmates and myself attended. We even answered questions about life in AIM-- academics, social life and the joys and pains of being in the MBA program. It was like us giving testimonials to encourage prospective folks to attend AIM.Personally, I'm glad I attended the talk. The AIM Preview really showed AIM at its best-- the presentations and the talk highlighted the case method and benefits of being in the MBA program. I've been very weary the past weeks and even I wondered why I'm here in AIM. The talk reminded me of the reasons why I chose AIM and why I attended the MBA program. I found it quite reinvi...

MBA Blog, MBA Blogger and AIM MBA
2007-12-04 09:20:00
What do MBA Blog , MBA Blogger and AIM MBA have in common?The three are all phrases in which this blog places well in Google Search. For the key phrase MBA Blog, The AIM Blogger places #7 out of 9,790,000 results. This blog also places #8 for the key phrase MBA Blogger out of 2,210,000 websites found by Google. And finally, searching for the phrase AIM MBA in Google will show this blog at #5 out of 1,750,000.What do those results and rankings mean? The results mean that this blog is in a good position to be read by those looking for a site about MBA's. It's also very likely that someone looking for information about the MBA program in AIM will happen upon my site if they were looking for it in Google.Personally, it's one of my goals for this blog is to place in the top 10 for the key phrase Asian Institute of Management. Currently, it's in the top 80 results and the top 10 will probably happen if a lot of people find this blog relevant when searching for the term.So for now, I'...

Another AIM Blog
2007-12-03 09:54:00
It's always nice to see fellow students from AIM sharing my liking for blogging. And I'm very pleased to feature Jing Sinay-Ocampo from the Master in Development Management program and her blog.
More About: Blog

True or False: BS Can Lead You Into The Promised Land
2007-12-01 08:58:00
When I got my feedback from my mentor, I was initially disappointed because he essentially told me that I have been settling for mediocrity. Using Prof. Borromeo's words, my performance has been "blah." OK, I get it.However, I've had the chance to ruminate on that feedback session and I thought that he made a lot of sense-- if I've been settling in my comfort zone, then there's really no point in giving me an impressive feedback. I thought, well, at least that feedback has been relative to what I could do and my potential.Now the nasty part: After a few days, I got wind of some other people's feedback and I'm just dumbfounded. Some classmates who I thought were either so-so or a BS-machine (and I know they aren't really stellar) had a higher watch grade than me. Now, I don't want to sound like a whiner but I share on of my classmate's sentiments that the watch grades ride too much on perception and professor recall.Now, all this has made me come to the conclusion that shove...
More About: True , Land , Lead

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