During Goizueta Career Connections of GCC, all the MBA student in the school get a chance to interact with representatives from companies sponsoring the event, work on real business cases and test their knowledge and abilities. This year we were privileged to have Mr. Douglas Lattner, the Chairman and CEO of Deloitte Consulting LLP, as the key note speaker of the event. In addition to his prepared remarks about our school, the current state of the economy and its effect on recruitment and career preferences, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, he spent a lot of time answering questions that all the students were impatiently waiting to ask. One of the most interesting aspects about the key note session was the speaker's ability to instill humor in his responses to keep the interaction informal, and informative. Interactive Learning Modules The Interactive Learning Modules or ILMs feature interactive business cases presented by company representatives from sponsoring companies. This gave the students a great opportunity to interact with the experts, test their ability to solve complex business problems and help them comprehend the intricate nature of business world. This year many companies came to our campus and worked with the students to give us a taste of real world scenarios and everyone loved all the sessions. I attended the Consulting ILMs where we interacted with teams from two leading consulting firms, working in tandem on business problems that they had experienced. As you know, case based teaching is a norm in business schools, and ILMs take this learning to another level by bringing people who work on real business cases every day to the school to provide the background and the challenges faced by them in coming up with solid recommendations, and help their clients succeed. In each of the sessions, students got the opportunity to put on their consulting hat and think like a pro. We got a great opportunity to present out ideas, ask relevant questions and understand the logical steps of problem solving. At the real estate panel of ILM, reputed senior professionals from industry leading firms came to give us the general ideas of real estate consulting career. One of the more fascinating realizations was the use regression analysis in real estate consulting, which I'm told was a novel insight. More interestingly, last year a team of Goizueta students prepared a comprehensive case study for the redevelopment project of City of Copperhill, Tennessee. Those students were presented with a Certificate of Appreciation by The City of Copperhill and their work was very much appreciated.

From left to right: Thomas Greco, Aaron Kuney (both MBA '09), Professor Roy Black (Head of the Goizueta Real Estate program), and John Blankenship (MBA '92) from GVA Advantis

In one of the marketing modules the discussion consisted of an overview of one of the leading consumer goods products company's brand, an analysis of how they determine different prices, and how the dynamics of competition change with each consumer segment. The students formed teams and developed strategies for firm to gain market share back from competitors for one of their product lines. Similarly in one of the Healthcare modules, a pharmaceutical company went through the pricing scheme during the event of a new drug's introduction to the market, and how it is related to physician prescribing and patient purchasing behavior.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS