Friday, November 24, 2006

20060918-0924

Sept 23,2006 Saturday.

I just finished the 3rd week of Mod 1. It's a big week since we'd finished our first formal examination, includes LAW and FIBD only. (FIBD=Financial Impact of Biz Decision, nice name, eh?) I did pretty good and quite confident will get a good score. I am happy that I understand those accounting basics very well, that saves me since the FIBD questions are bit tricky. Prof. Turner didn't give us an income statement that we used to have along with balance sheet to build the cash flow statement. Instead, he gave us a cash flow statement built with direct method and there is NO income statement. That really killed a lot of classmates since you must know how to calculate net income based on given dividend and retained earning information. Time was bit rush when I finished typing answers for all law questions. I really open to all classes since every class is designed for entrepreneurship. I know everything I'd learned will help my start-up effort. Many studends have a pre-perception like "oh, I don’t like finance" or "ouch, law must be bore". That's very negative since it will create more or less resistance.

I also start taking more proactive approach to leverage resources around the campus. I had talked with Prof. Mandel, associate dean of undergraduate, who hosted the session to discuss new cases that Supreme Court may hear this fall when reopen. I am trying to understand those fundamental impacts the legal system had over US today. For example, as Prof. Mandel said, if he is meeting a female student, he'd better keep the office door open so as to avoid any potential problem about sex harassment. He said my interest covers a very broad area and he tried to give a more general idea about how law changed US society such as the way people interact with each other and so on. Finally he'd given me couple DVDs that some Supreme Court justice held discussion with general public about the legal system. I'd also booked three appointments with different professors in communication, LDO (yep, leadership in dynamic organization) and CMDO (creativity management in dynamic organization, yep, Blank center guys) next week. I finally realized it will serve my best interest if I can launch my start-up during school year. After all, if it failed before the whole MBA program, I just need to look for a job as other classmates do. Nothing I will loose. As always, the time in school is the best time for you to try things out. NO worry about apartment rental. No worry about tons of bills to pay. NO worry about job. So I want to launch a bunch of website, includes two dating (or let's say, people meets people) website, one family tree social networking website in China (sorry, really a copycat of two other US website, amiglia.com and family 2.0. I hate that) and the most important, my "turn negative into positive" website. By hosting that website at the same time, I can leverage the fixed cost such as hosting/server and do some cross-promotion. Sort of like what I want to achieve with ND biz. A company called New Factory Partners (need to verify) is also working on a similar module. They started like 10 website so far and sold few to other ventures already. Let's do it.

I enjoyed being helpful too. I'd sent JB, the LDO professor, an email that suggested him to try cold call a bit so more students will speak in the class. That not only will give me a chance to hear more new idea/comments but also enrich their class experience, plus strengthen confidence and speaking skills. JB gave me a warm reply did a very approach to do that. In the next class, he was intended to look for students who raised their hand for the 1st time and slowly everyone realized his intention. Thus many students raised their hand for the 1st time in class. At the end of the class, JB said this is one of his best class discussions. I am proud of it. Also when I'd learned a Japanese student in my section and also living in campus that he average only slept 4 hours this week to read case, I was very surprised. That will ruin the next whole day! When he told me his English reading is very slow and he felt necessary to read all assigned materials before class, I offered to brief him any case materials in the evening we need to read before class but he can't finish. That will give me a good opportunity to strengthen my English speaking too and to testify my ability to abstract the case.

Another thing I'd suddenly realized this week is that, I hate Japanese government not really because Japan did invade China before but the fact it tried so hard to deny or to polish that ugly history. How can you deny something actually happened? I think that's why I have no bad feeling towards average Japanese at all. Anyone who wants to deny the fact won't win my trust and respect. And I believe that is a key reason why Germany so quickly won forgiveness from other countries they'd invaded during WWII. Pity Japanese government doesn't realize that tile now.

It's getting bit harder to keep writing the diary at Babson. I'd decided to at least keep writing weekly journal now. Then will try to write journal during the week if time has. It's really a good thing to do. It's a data so the more data you have, the more powerful it is. Can't imagine how I feel when I read about 100+ journals I'd written during Babson time in the future. Must be very cool!

Oh, almost forget. I finally got my Dell Axim X51 PDA from eBay bidding! It's actually new. It's awesome, especially when I figured out how to sync directly with Babson's exchange server to load my email, calendar etc without connecting to my laptop. Really great since I may use computer in Olin building or Horn library and create new appointments based on emails. Not to mention the fact I can use Skype to call my wife in Montreal for free! I also got a Skypein number now, so it's almost a mobile phone but I do NOT need to pay around 40 bucks monthly bill to Verizon, Cingular... The only pity came when I realized Babson is NOT really 100% WiFi covered. Well, Boston will launch a city-wide WiFi network that free for public in 2009. Bit too long, eh? Now I really believe in the prophet that telephone service will become free within 10 years because of VOIP and WiFi advancement, at least in North American. WOW.


OK, I will finish the biz executive summary for my big idea now. haha. Forget to mention, had coffee with some classmates today but the Latte really make me feel sleepy?! Now I think I like Indian tea more since it will add sugar and milk to it. how nice it is... And also even though I'd missed the IDEO workshop hosted today, Marin gave me a very good brief about it. Sounds like IDEO’s success are really duplicable. They mainly introduced a creative innovation process and had designed so far 4000+ products for corporate clients. The IDEO guy from their NY office in today's session said based on an industrial report, IDEO is ranked the 16th most innovative company in the world and he commented that all the top 15 companies are IDEO's client. Funny... And I think that's exactly what China needs now. We can beat anyone (almost) in manufacture area but we lack of innovation. So price is the only effective way to differentiate each other. What a bad thing! How about setup a similar business in China? I remembered that in 2005 when I chatted with JYJ couple in a coffee shop near XiangShan, I'd mentioned to build my university, the 1st department I will build is an industry design department so it will quickly provide mostly needed graduate. Now by combining this IDEO idea, it will become a nice way to generate cash and spread branding of my university at the same time.

Here is IDEO's internal working process, as people experienced in today's workshop, as the video we'd seen in the CMDO class and as described by the IDEO guy today:

1. received the requirement, for example, design a new bag.

2. Conduct extensive customer review with specially designed questionnaire, may last 3 or 4 months. This also includes closely watching the way individuals using their bag.

3. Identify all facts had gathered then summarize into function groups.

4. Start discussion by asking question "how might we...". For example, how might we carry our bag freely with either single shoulder or both shoulder or single hand? How might we use bag to carry things without looking for small items inside? etc

5. For each "how might we..." question, start brain storming.

6. Now summarize brain storming ideas then start voting.

7. Start drawing outline of the final products then start voting. Only design received certain votes will be adopted into actual design process. Everyone can vote for any idea only once if they like it.

8. Final prototype stage

9. Customer feedback and refine

10. Done!

7. Start design products include those features.

No comments: