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Events
We, the MBA2013s, are finally getting into the groove of college / academic life. Everyone has started to expand their knowledge base, attend events, meet experts and build connections across areas of their interests.
I, along with few other classmates, had the opportunity to attend an API conference last week. APIs are a buzz word, not only in the tech industry but also in the media, travel, retail and other such sectors that hold and control large amounts of data. And therefore, all of us were keen to learn about the current and potential future action within APIs. We heard speakers from Guardian, Expedia, Nokia, ASOS, Qwerly, Twilio and few others -- and found the conference incredibly helpful.
Among many interesting insights, following were the main takeaways for me:
I, along with few other classmates, had the opportunity to attend an API conference last week. APIs are a buzz word, not only in the tech industry but also in the media, travel, retail and other such sectors that hold and control large amounts of data. And therefore, all of us were keen to learn about the current and potential future action within APIs. We heard speakers from Guardian, Expedia, Nokia, ASOS, Qwerly, Twilio and few others -- and found the conference incredibly helpful.
Among many interesting insights, following were the main takeaways for me:
Leaving the sunshine of London, we were surprisingly greeted by the rain of San Francisco. We didn’t let the weather damper our spirits as we headed over to VMWare for the start of the trek, energized by the colourful tales of entrepreneur and now CTO Javier Soltero we headed over to electric car company Tesla. After a fascinating analysis of the electric car market we took a tour of their factory and posed for pictures with their sexy roadsters hardtop. We finished the day with dose of innovation, at IDEO, and checking out the legendary shopping cart that has been featured in many of our classes here at LBS.
Mato Peric, Mark Shmulik, Aditya Joysula and Bogdan Grosu represented London Business School at the 6 th Annual Boston Tech Strategy Case Competition sponsored by Ericsson. The competition is a unique opportunity to propose strategic plans and ideas to executive level leaders from Ericsson, network with MBA students from all across the globe and at the end of the day, if successful, win a substantial financial prize.
Great success for the “What is tech” event, co-organized by the industry and technology club on the 15 th February. About 75 students from full time MBA and executive programs attended the event and the speakers of the panel were flooded by questions. The panel of LBS alumni was very diverse in terms of industry and experience: Google - Michal Bohanes - MBA, Strategic Partners Manager Google - Clancy Childs - MBA, Manager Google Analytics McKinsey BTO - Marcio Souza, MBA, Associate Consultant Vodafone - Simon King - MBA, Head of Programmes, Internet Services Vodafone - Ian Visser - Chief Architect, Internet Services/Consumer Services Oracle - Vassilis Constantopoulos - MBA, Senior Director, EMEA Industry Strategy & Insight
The format of the event was a very open discussion between the audience and the guest, among the major point that came out:
Do you need a technology background to work for a technology company? Definitely not, but you need to be passionate about it and even if you do not know the technical details you must be able to understand and speak about the business model. For example, if you are invited for an interview you should be able to answer to the question: “How does Google make money?” ;-)
Is it easy to get an international relocation? It is harder than in the past, a lot of people are interested in getting a job in the US headquarters located in the Silicon Valley but, unless you have really unique skills, it is very hard to get a job there. Technology consulting companies (McKinsey BTO and Oracle) highlighted a very interesting aspect of the international relocation, basically, since consultants work at the client site for some of their employee it does not matter where they choose to live as long as it is close to an international airport.
How do you see the trade-off between working for a corporation vs working for a small start-up in technology?
The speakers agreed that it depends on what you are looking for, if your objective is to have complete freedom and equity in the company then start-ups are definitely better. At the same time corporation guarantee your pay slip at the end of the month and almost all companies (especially Google) give you the opportunity to be involved in side-projects that interest you, giving you the possibility of exercising your entrepreneurial spirit.
How having an MBA helped or is helping you in your current role/company? Different answers to this question:
Google: an MBA is nice to have but you could end up working in the same role of people who do not have it, it is more a formal gateway
McKinsey: it is absolutely necessary to join as an associate, there are very few cases of experience hired people
Oracle: an MBA is nice to have but not absolutely necessary, what happen usually is that if you apply the skills you learned to are going to progress quickly in your career.
Vodafone: it depends on the areas, in some areas, like Corporate Strategy, you absolutely need it
The format of the event was a very open discussion between the audience and the guest, among the major point that came out:
Do you need a technology background to work for a technology company? Definitely not, but you need to be passionate about it and even if you do not know the technical details you must be able to understand and speak about the business model. For example, if you are invited for an interview you should be able to answer to the question: “How does Google make money?” ;-)
Is it easy to get an international relocation? It is harder than in the past, a lot of people are interested in getting a job in the US headquarters located in the Silicon Valley but, unless you have really unique skills, it is very hard to get a job there. Technology consulting companies (McKinsey BTO and Oracle) highlighted a very interesting aspect of the international relocation, basically, since consultants work at the client site for some of their employee it does not matter where they choose to live as long as it is close to an international airport.
How do you see the trade-off between working for a corporation vs working for a small start-up in technology?
The speakers agreed that it depends on what you are looking for, if your objective is to have complete freedom and equity in the company then start-ups are definitely better. At the same time corporation guarantee your pay slip at the end of the month and almost all companies (especially Google) give you the opportunity to be involved in side-projects that interest you, giving you the possibility of exercising your entrepreneurial spirit.
How having an MBA helped or is helping you in your current role/company? Different answers to this question:
Google: an MBA is nice to have but you could end up working in the same role of people who do not have it, it is more a formal gateway
McKinsey: it is absolutely necessary to join as an associate, there are very few cases of experience hired people
Oracle: an MBA is nice to have but not absolutely necessary, what happen usually is that if you apply the skills you learned to are going to progress quickly in your career.
Vodafone: it depends on the areas, in some areas, like Corporate Strategy, you absolutely need it
Last week around 40 LBS first year students had the privilege of visiting the offices of the world’s largest e-commerce company, Amazon. This was a great opportunity for students to get to know Amazon up close and for Amazon to discuss with the LBS community the company’s great summer internship opportunities.
The presentation started with a description of Jeff Bezos’ famous sketch depicting Amazon’s business model and unique selling point: low cost structure will drive low prices, which in turn combined with a wide product selection will drive customer experience; excellent customer experience will increase traffic, which will attract many sellers, which coming back to the beginning of the cycle drive a great product selection at low prices. This model is simple yet brilliant and it laid the foundation for Amazon’s tremendous success. Amazon just launched its latest international store in Italy and in terms of streams of revenues it relies on 3 strong segments: customer retail, web services and sellers.
The presentation started with a description of Jeff Bezos’ famous sketch depicting Amazon’s business model and unique selling point: low cost structure will drive low prices, which in turn combined with a wide product selection will drive customer experience; excellent customer experience will increase traffic, which will attract many sellers, which coming back to the beginning of the cycle drive a great product selection at low prices. This model is simple yet brilliant and it laid the foundation for Amazon’s tremendous success. Amazon just launched its latest international store in Italy and in terms of streams of revenues it relies on 3 strong segments: customer retail, web services and sellers.
Ian Thornton, VP Investor Relations visited campus on Tuesday 18th January to present the business model of one of the largest global semi-conductor firms. Returning growth figures on average of 30% per year, ARM is the fastest growing company in its field.
Ian kicked off with an introduction into the history of the company; founded from a joint venture between Apple, Acorn Micro and VLSI. After a few name changes, Advanced RISC Machines was agreed. Started in a converted turkey shed in Cambridge, the company now employs around 1900 staff, of which 2/3 are R&D engineers.
Ian kicked off with an introduction into the history of the company; founded from a joint venture between Apple, Acorn Micro and VLSI. After a few name changes, Advanced RISC Machines was agreed. Started in a converted turkey shed in Cambridge, the company now employs around 1900 staff, of which 2/3 are R&D engineers.
Last week, closing the autumn LBS term, we had the pleasure of hosting GJE for an Intellectual Property talk. Gill Jennings & Every LLP (GJE) is a London-based firm of European Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys and is one of the largest patent and trade mark firms in the UK.
Quickly into the presentation we learned about the possible forms that intellectual property usually takes: confidential information, copyright, trade/service marks, designs and patents. Relevant to our interests, the presentation focused on patents and trade/services marks. The discussion turned very interactive immediately and we learned about what a patent is, what are the requirements for obtaining one and about patentable subject matter (for instance computer programs are not patentable). The patent discussion culminated with details about how to approach an IP strategy and clarifications about the process of getting patent protection.
Quickly into the presentation we learned about the possible forms that intellectual property usually takes: confidential information, copyright, trade/service marks, designs and patents. Relevant to our interests, the presentation focused on patents and trade/services marks. The discussion turned very interactive immediately and we learned about what a patent is, what are the requirements for obtaining one and about patentable subject matter (for instance computer programs are not patentable). The patent discussion culminated with details about how to approach an IP strategy and clarifications about the process of getting patent protection.
This year saw the Technology Club put on it's inaugural Dublin Career Trek. The trek saw 20 students travelling over to Dublin to visit some of the key players in the technology space in Europe.
Last month, the Technology Club hosted a presentation from Simon Schneider, founder of OmniCompete and an LBS alumnus. OmniCompete helps governments and companies to foster innovation though by running competitions. The largest such competition, is the annual Global Security Challenge (GSC) which Simon started while studying at LBS.
On Tuesday night we had the pleasure of having Adrian Chamberlain, former CEO of MessageLabs and senior VP of Symantec, as speaker in the Technology Club speaker event series. He shared with us the challenges he faced in scaling up an already successful software company.
MessageLabs was founded by Ben White in 1999 and has always been focused on offering products for protecting from internet threats (e-mail viruses at the beginning, then spam and multi level protection). They used a revolutionary concept for that time; instead of focusing on writing the patch for a specific virus (like all the other anti-virus software) they used a heuristic algorithm (Skeptic) that predicted the level of danger of e-mails. That solution started being a competitive advantage when the number of viruses coming from the internet grew exponentially. In that moment was no longer possible to create and distribute the patches in a timely manner, and MessageLabs grew and became one of the most successful companies in the internet protection sector.
MessageLabs was founded by Ben White in 1999 and has always been focused on offering products for protecting from internet threats (e-mail viruses at the beginning, then spam and multi level protection). They used a revolutionary concept for that time; instead of focusing on writing the patch for a specific virus (like all the other anti-virus software) they used a heuristic algorithm (Skeptic) that predicted the level of danger of e-mails. That solution started being a competitive advantage when the number of viruses coming from the internet grew exponentially. In that moment was no longer possible to create and distribute the patches in a timely manner, and MessageLabs grew and became one of the most successful companies in the internet protection sector.
Roughly 60 incoming students including MiMs, MBA2012s, Executive MBAs and others attended the club’s kick off event on September 7th. After covering the club’s plan for the year, available positions, and answering attendees’ questions, the highlight of the evening took place, an insider look into the innovation process as it is in Nokia presented by Nokia’s David McGrath, Nokia’s Head of Global Innovation Scouting. Following the presentation and a Q&A session the kickoff event concluded with a networking reception at Park restaurant where students could follow up with discussions with the club committee members.
Aug 31st 2010 - We held an unofficial welcome event @ Windsor Pub to meet and greet the incoming class. I was amazed at the number of students that showed up - definitely way more than our RSVP numbers would suggest. I guess the venue didn't hurt :) A good mix of students came from across several programmes at LBS. It's exciting to be able to feel the energy, the enthusiasm that the fresh batch is bringing onto campus. I suppose we were all starry-eyed first-years at some point!
On Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 - Parker Moss, Head of Strategy at GSMA, presented a talk about mobile health care. He gave his views on opportunities in the health care industry (obviously, focused on the roles that telecom's could play), citing 1) wellness 2) phone doctor services 3) clinical productivity tools and 4) remote monitoring as areas with significant potential.
One of the key issues with developing solutions for mobile health care is the high amount of fragmentation in the market - the market structure needs to be improved to allow large-scale, common applications to be developed and adopted by key stakeholders (issues with insurance providers, for example - unable to support them all). The other issue is the amount being spent on IT infrastructure - this would also need to increase in order to match the kind of growth and realization experienced in other industries.
One of the key issues with developing solutions for mobile health care is the high amount of fragmentation in the market - the market structure needs to be improved to allow large-scale, common applications to be developed and adopted by key stakeholders (issues with insurance providers, for example - unable to support them all). The other issue is the amount being spent on IT infrastructure - this would also need to increase in order to match the kind of growth and realization experienced in other industries.
On Tuesday, May 11th, we invited Matthew Pollard, a member of the LBS faculty, to come and share his thoughts on the iPad, as an informal review. Afterwards, he sent his iPad around and we all got to try it out.
Some of the apps that he went over included:
iBook - very cool, slick eReader
dropbox - nice interface on iPad
Marvel - comics that are somewhat animated
Some of the apps that he went over included:
iBook - very cool, slick eReader
dropbox - nice interface on iPad
Marvel - comics that are somewhat animated
As part of the Tech Club Speaker Series at London Business School, Chris Lane , Director of Corporate Strategy for the Vodafone Group gave a fascinating presentation on Wednesday May 5th, Chris covered Vodafone’s roles in the history of mobile service as well as its part in adopting new standards and a bit on its plans for the future. Mr. Lane also provided an insightful view on how the move from voice to data over the mobile network is not necessarily a bad thing for mobile operators, explaining that operators want to sell us “buckets” of minutes+text+data, and as long as we keep paying the right price for the “bucket” it doesn’t really matter what we do (minimal impact on profitability for the operator).
Last Monday 26th the Tech Club presented Peter Finnie , partner of Gill Jennings & Every LLP , the European Patent and Trademarks Attorneys firm.
Peter and his team educated us on definitions, processes and costs on the issue of trademarks and patents for technology businesses. The main learning points for entrepreneurs who are developing new technologies or ideas were: IP can have different forms: patents, know-hows, trademarks and copyrights IP give you the right to exclude others of using your intellectual property. You can use it to keep your competitive advantage, as defensive strategy and as source of money (e.g. licensing) Registering a patent could be a lengthy and complicated process (GJE documents below can give you a better idea) Explicitly identify in your business plan the aspects of your business that might require IP and addressing the risks and required budget. A careful analysis of the IP issues is highly valued by investors so they can take better decisions on investment and calculate exit strategies
Peter and his team educated us on definitions, processes and costs on the issue of trademarks and patents for technology businesses. The main learning points for entrepreneurs who are developing new technologies or ideas were: IP can have different forms: patents, know-hows, trademarks and copyrights IP give you the right to exclude others of using your intellectual property. You can use it to keep your competitive advantage, as defensive strategy and as source of money (e.g. licensing) Registering a patent could be a lengthy and complicated process (GJE documents below can give you a better idea) Explicitly identify in your business plan the aspects of your business that might require IP and addressing the risks and required budget. A careful analysis of the IP issues is highly valued by investors so they can take better decisions on investment and calculate exit strategies
Last Monday Infosys came to present on campus, facilitated by the Asia club and the Tech club. I personally remember Infosys as the India-based company that could develop IT solutions at lower costs and with higher quality code than any competitor. A company that would hire only the very best graduates from IT degrees. And it’s apparently also, as its visit to LBS shows, a company that is looking for great MBA graduates.
I know I don’t need to practice 40 cases, learn the finance lingo, or prepare for the milk-round. But what do I need to do to get an internship in industry, more specifically, technology??
Luckily, the Technology club organized a great '101 on Tech Internships' last Wednesday evening, better known as 'meet the MBA2010s in Tech'. A panel of interns from Amazon, BT, Google, Skype and Vodafone answered all the questions we have been dying to ask…
Luckily, the Technology club organized a great '101 on Tech Internships' last Wednesday evening, better known as 'meet the MBA2010s in Tech'. A panel of interns from Amazon, BT, Google, Skype and Vodafone answered all the questions we have been dying to ask…
The convergence of media, technology and telecoms was more than apparent at the Media Summit organised at the London Business School on Friday. Tech club members couldn't help but well up with pride to see our own President - Daniel Mazini - deliver the closing remarks as co-chair of the summit.
Other than Daniel they were many familiar faces from the technology club and all of the panels focused heavily on technology. It became apparent that technological advances had caused all of the media industries woes...and it's current success stories. One panelist told us that content is King...but distribution is Kong...and it is technology which has ripped up the old distribution platforms and added an almost infinite number of additional options.
The short answer seemed to be that media is now desperately looking to technology to come up with answers to help define it's future.
Other than Daniel they were many familiar faces from the technology club and all of the panels focused heavily on technology. It became apparent that technological advances had caused all of the media industries woes...and it's current success stories. One panelist told us that content is King...but distribution is Kong...and it is technology which has ripped up the old distribution platforms and added an almost infinite number of additional options.
The short answer seemed to be that media is now desperately looking to technology to come up with answers to help define it's future.
Tech club had a great kick-off event last Tuesday 29th. Despite the loud competition from Industry Club's drinks on the hallway outside we were able to gather more than 70 Tech aficionados to hear a short presentation about the club's plans and a GREAT first speaker Martin Geddes, Head of Strategy from BT Design.
We received enthusiastic comments from students that really enjoyed the speech and classified it as: “truly refreshing”, “surprising” and “indeed a quality talk”.
We received enthusiastic comments from students that really enjoyed the speech and classified it as: “truly refreshing”, “surprising” and “indeed a quality talk”.
The 2009/2010 Tech Club kick off will take place on September 29th.
At this event we will host a presentation and Q&A session with Martin Geddes, Strategy Director of BT Innovate & Design, a division of BT Group. Martin will present his vision (and BT’s) about the future of the Telecom industry. We will also introduce the Technology Club and describe our goals and events planned for the next year.
At this event we will host a presentation and Q&A session with Martin Geddes, Strategy Director of BT Innovate & Design, a division of BT Group. Martin will present his vision (and BT’s) about the future of the Telecom industry. We will also introduce the Technology Club and describe our goals and events planned for the next year.
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