Two things I will never forget about MBA

No matter what I take away from my MBA degree there are two things that I will never ever forget. These are: DeBeers and Boston Chicken.
These two case studies have drained so much out of me, that I barely have enough energy to finish my other courses. Funnily, I do have some time to blog about them. I will describe in a little detail about both these cases.

First up, DeBeers.

We are using the DeBeers case in our Skills for Leadership class. What I literally take from these classes is that we are being taught how to think. Really, they teach us how to think. On the firth thought, it seems funny how can you make one think by teaching, but I have discovered this course is effective and makes you look at the same problem from different perspectives. So, the case is about how DeBeers (South African Diamond Company) is trying to battle the AIDS/HIV problem in South Africa. Primarily, DeBeers focus is to tackle the problem for its workers itself and if there are funds available, then extend the cure to the community too. This is a problem of sustainability for the company as they are trying to do this all by themselves with the South African government providing no help (note that this case dates back to 2003-2006 and the South African government does have various AIDS/HIV plans in place now). So that is the whole DeBeers case. We have to study the sustainability of their AIDS/HIV program in these lights and try to solve the problem using three different thinking procedures (analytical, critical and strategic).

Next up, Boston Chicken (aka Boston Market).

Now, the Boston Chicken case is being used for our accounting course. We have been given Boston Chicken's financial information from 1994 and we have to make a judgment on whether to invest in Boston Chicken or not. So the first thing to do is look how the company is doing currently. It was a surprise to find out that the company went under in 1998 and was bought by McDonalds in 1999. Now it becomes very difficult to do an analysis after knowing what will actually happen to the company in just 5 years after this investment has to be made. It is made even worse when the case does not provide you enough information to make the investment call. I wont divulge the answer to this case yet because it is still not due for another 2 days. But what I have experienced while doing this case is so influential that I have to mention about it. It really made my accounting concepts really clear and gave me an insight into the financial analysis part of accounting.