AMP Treatise

The CFO of elong.com (a chinese travel site, also available in english) who was also the the CFO at sohu.com came and gave a speech to the club today. All-in-all a very interesting speech, but it does kind of amaze me that this guy would even come to the school and on such an informal occasion to speak to what must be a relatively small group. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good thing, and probably speaks volumes about CEIBS reputation in China...

For next term, starting on Jan. 9th, we have the course names but not any descriptions. They are all required, so in a way it doesn't really matter.

• Managerial Accounting
• Operations Management
• Business Finance
• Corporate Governance & Business Ethics (<-- thanks for this Enron/Worldcom/Adelphia!)
• Strategic Management

For Term III, we have this bidding process where we try to "win" our spot in classes. For students, there isn't much to it but it gives the administration a good idea of what classes are popular and which ones aren't. If there is not enough demand, then they will consider dropping some classes. Not sure what I'll take so far but I've gone from caring about the subject to caring about who the teacher is.

Marketing Research (Prof. Kwaku Atuahene-Gima)
Many companies fail not because they have poor products and services but because
of poor marketing decisions, which is itself the result of lack in-depth and sophisticated
understanding of their markets. This course is designed to enhance your competence in
marketing problem analysis and decision-making, just like consultants do. Hence, this is not a
statistics course but rather an application-oriented program that provides you with the tools to
diagnose an organizational marketing problem and to develop a solution. At the end of the
course you should be able to accurately conceptualize a marketing problem, form appropriate
hypotheses, design a study to test the hypothesis, collect and analyze data using appropriate
statistical software, interpret and present the results. This course should be a foundation for
your success in the group consulting projects (GCP).

Project Management (Prof. Mike Brooks)
Course objective:
To provide the student with a complete understanding of Project Management and it’s
application in a modern business context; the process, methods and techniques, areas of
application, and the key issues which influence success or failure.
In addition, to provide the student with a framework for managing a Consulting Project
in preparation for the Group Consulting Assignment.

Pedagogical techniques:
This module will combine the following teaching methods:

• Formal lectures built around case studies
• Group and individual exercises
• A project simulation

Proposed coverage:

• The elective will cover the following areas:
• The characteristics of “management by project”
• Types of projects typically encountered in a business setting and the risks to be
• managed. Project types to include:
• Information Technology Projects
• New product/service Development
• Business restructuring including process re-engineering and improvement.
• Consulting projects in preparation for the Group Consulting Assignment
• (including an overview of the consulting process)
• Change Management Projects
• The Project Management Lifecycle – key characteristics
• Designing an effective Project Organisation structure
• Managing the Scope of Work – Work Breakdown Structures
• Managing Cost, Resources and Time – Estimating, Planning, and Scheduling.
• Project Knowledge and Information Management
• Project Leadership and the Project Team
• Risk Management

Areas not included:

• Project finance will not be covered.
• The use of computer based project management information systems will not be
• covered.

Industrial Economics (Prof. Zhu Tian)
The course of Industrial Economics applies economic principles to explain
and understand real-world behavior of firms, markets and industries. It covers classic topics of
strategic behavior and market structure as well as topics in technological change, internal
organization of firms, regulation, antitrust and productivity analysis.

Human Resources Management （Prof. Xiao Zhixing）
This course offers participants a deep understanding the people side of strategy and
organization, with a focus on China. It will benefit greatly those who are moving into senior
associate and manager roles in consulting and banking industry; those taking on managerial
responsibilities in multinational firms; those planning one day to launch a start-up; and those
moving into roles as HR manager.

Management Consulting (Prof. William Reinfeld)
What is Management Consulting -- history of the industry, how it differs from other
applications of management, what are the personal qualifications and qualities a good
consultant must have
Skill development -- communications (listening, talking, writing), logic, analysis,
problem solving, creativity; writing proposals, writing reports, making presentations, etc.
Business development -- market focus, selling, value, pricing, planning, branding
Management -- client management, project management, people management,
knowledge management

Change Management (Prof. Michael Miles)
This course is designed to increase the understanding and skills of participants in
relation to conceptualizing, planning, carrying out and evaluating change interventions in
human systems. It will focus on learning how to work collaboratively with clients and client
systems to identify needs for change and to ensure that the change interventions, once
planned, are accepted by the client system as legitimate and useful to the overall functioning
of the system. A special focus of the course will be on the systemic nature of change and
intervention practice. With this in mind, the course will focus on increasing participant
understanding of social change processes and the necessary system conditions that underlie
practical human systems change efforts.

The central concept of this course is intervention, a term that can be defined as the process of entering into an ongoing relationship with a client (either persons, groups,
communities or organizations) with the expressed purpose of helping them improve. The
variety of interventions which the course covers ranges from those driven by power to those
based on the development of common values and strategies by all participants. In this sense
the course is non-prescriptive in terms of the content of interventions. The critical learnings
from the course, however, will focus on how to make change work in the real world, including
practical implementation of final change processes.

The process of the course will be highly interactive. Participants will be expected to
interact both as individual contributors in a large group setting as well as members of small
working groups during class, to speak openly and frankly about their personal perceptions of
class-related experiences and materials, and to participate actively in class discussions based
on assigned readings and/or their own personal and group-related experiences from other
settings. The process of the course will also include an organizational simulation focused on
the dynamics of change in an organizational system as a way of providing the class with a
common experiential reference point. Since the course is designed to examine real-world
issues, participants should be expecting to use their own classroom, home, and work
environments as key sources of data and information for class discussions and assignments.

Course Objectives

• to develop an increased understanding on the part of each participant of the process of change intervention, including the development of client relationships, client system analysis, intervention planning, implementation and evaluation;
• to develop an appreciation of the systemic nature of change process, with a special focus on organizational systems;
• to develop an understanding of different approaches to change intervention;
• to increase the skills of participants in data gathering, change strategy development, and organization development processes, and in the use of specific tools and data gathering/analysis approaches which can be used in carrying

Investment Banking （Prof. Gao Yan）
This course imparts a basic understanding of the investment banking business as an
intermediary in the capital and merger markets and demonstrate how it serves both its issuing
clients and investing customers by focusing on several services it provides, and several
analytical techniques for solving problems. Lecture notes, cases, outside readings, and guest
speakers are used. A part of the grade is determined by class participation.

Advanced Management Accounting （Prof. Peter Clarke）
The course entitled Advanced Management Accounting builds on and develops earlier
accounting courses. The primary objective of this course is to create a sound theoretical and
practical ability in the the area of Managerial Accounting as it applies in modern service, retail
and manufacturing organisations. The course would be beneficial to all those students that
will work in an enterprise that utilises modern management accounting practices and
techniques in planning, evaluating and controling the performance of managers and related
business units.

Supply Chain Management （Prof. Thomas Callarman / Steven Brown）
The practice of supply chain management is widespread in all industries around the world
today, and companies are quickly realizing that competition is no longer company-to-company,
but supply chain-to-supply chain. Therefore, effective supply chain management is a
competitive advantage in today’s global economy. In this course the important topic is
discussed from four perspectives: supply, operations, logistics, and the integration of these
areas.

At my gallery from a trip to Yangcheung Lake.

http://www.apaulsson.com/gallery/categories.php?cat_id=28

I'll be arriving back in NY Saturday night December 17th and leaving to go back to Shanghai January 3rd. Hope to see everyone!

Last weekend we had a group meeting starting at 10am Sunday morning. This, usually, is not a good sign. Or, more accurately, a sign that you're going to be spending the rest of the day in a little discussion room holed up with Excel spreadsheets, textbooks, case studies, and multiple versions of a Word document. Normally, this also includes lots of arguing, from the mundane ("I'm TOTALLY against italicizing the 3rd heading!") to the fundamental issues that should have been solved several days ago ("What do you mean you want to rethink the distribution channel!??! We settled on it last week and this is due tomorrow!"). However, things seem to be taking shape as this particular meeting involved a high level of productivity (fueled by KFC) and that I think we actually had fun. Or at least I did.

After finishing the Marketing case that we were preparing some "team-building" was in order. In the West, we call this "networking." Although, it is far more akin to having dinner and drinks than any sort of formal event. Somehow, I think it genuinely matters to the Chinese the distinction between simply saying dinner and drinks and team-building.

Gas prices affecting Hummer sales?? Nah....

The Mess That Greenspan Made: Hummer Overfloweth

The results of the 2005 Thunderbird Innovation Challenge are out. Our group placed 59th out of 321 submissions. Not bad at all, but Top 50 would have been super. I contend that the judges have no VISION!! The judges that reviewed our business plan left comments that we're able to read but what was strange was how many of them essentially contradicted each other. However, there was one common theme, we didn't have enough financial supporting evidence, which is to say that we had NONE! For our plan, that would have been entirely too much work and being that this was due during midterm week, we just had no time. We place 2nd out of the 9 CEIBS teams competing, with the top team at 47.

Results are here: http://www.innovationchallenge.com/ChallengeResults.htm

If you're interested in CEIBS, the link above (and below) is to the new Student Ambassador program. Amazingly, I think EVERYONE speaks at least two languages so you're bound to have someone there that speaks your language. Details are provided on the website.

CEIBS Student Ambassador

This is a pretty crazy news report and video about the CEO of Apex Digital (the company that sells those really cheap DVD players at Best Buy) being forced to sign his entire company over to one of his Chinese suppliers. Not that this is common, but still an amazing story nonetheless.

Video News - Financial Video Reports

Shangahi Stuff

Friday Night Party (AKA the Black Sexy Party)
In somewhat of a rash decision, our resident Indian decided to have a Halloween party at the school on Wednesday, a mere two days before the event was to take place. In a flurry of activity, some clever re-branding, and significant effort, the Black Sexy Party was born. I was nominated to be the DJ, which ended up being much harder than expected since the internationals and Chinese have vastly different tastes in music. Regardless, its hard to go wrong with the Jackson 5, James Brown, and Earth, Wind, and Fire! Oh, I know you wish you were there now. Also, starting the party off was a special selection of Halloween music. However, and I dare you to try this yourself, the number of Halloween songs that are actually tolerable is severely low and reserved mainly for songs you will only tolerate once a year, such as the Monster Mash, Thriller, and the Ghostbuster's Theme. The bartender actually had to go out and buy more liquor in the middle of the thing since we ran out (started with 15 bottles of liquor + beer).

Latina Masks & Knives
At the restaurant Latina (Brazilian BBQ churrascaria for those of you lucky enough to have been to one), we encountered a very, very scary sight. All the waiters/waitresses where wear masks. Now, this in and of itself is nothing to be concerned with and actually quite a pleasant sight. Until you realize that their job description is to roam around the place with pieces of meat and cut people slices WITH HUGE KNIVES! And they couldn't even see where they were going.

Space Ibiza
We got invited to the grand opening of this club, one of the more famous in the world and based off the coast of Spain on the island of Ibiza. This is really the first club I've been to in Shanghai so I can't really compare it to much else but it was really pretty impressive, at least the design. We were supposed to have a free shuttle take us from a hotel in Pudong. We got there, got on the bus, then expected to be taken right to the venue. However, we failed to ask a critical question, "Are we making any more stops?" Because the answer was yes, four! In the end, if you have the right perspective, we got a nice scenic tour of zhong Shanghai. If you have another perspective, it was a 90 minute bus ride for a 30 minute trip! But once inside, and although it was a bit far away from anything else, I was impressed. The place was an open space four stories or so high. Drinks were cheap, especially for a club, at about 25RMB for a beer. But, and this is going to sound weird, too many foreigners!!!

School Stuff

New Regime of Chinese Lessons
Tomorrow, a Dutch guy and myself start private lessons in Chinese. Eight hours per week in addition to the 4.5 hours we're doing in the classroom provided by the school. Chinese is really had but I feel like after being here for three months that I should be able to speak more. Hopefully, this will help. I just need to eliminate US$50 per week from my budget to fund it!

Finance Club President
I was elected the President of the Finance Club last week. My victory speech went something like this:

Thanks everyone for supporting my campaign for this very prestigious position. I'd like to commend my competition for the high quality that they set. There was some mud slinging and I had to throw some people under the proverbial bus in order to rise to the top, but I think you'll be happy with my dictatorship. I mean leadership. Everyone who would like to shake my blessed hand, please line up on the right. But please, no autographs. Ok, maybe some for the kids.

OK, so I ran uncontested and there was no competition. Still not quite sure what that means but I have heaped upon myself another helping of work. I know, not the smartest move I could have made!

Exchange Students
We have a new wave of exchange students her for the next 6 weeks or so. They come from Barconni in Italy, London Business School, Rotman in Toronto, McGill in Montreal, and a couple more. They have got the sweet life. Many of them have dorm rooms on campus as well as apartments in the city! Also, their course schedule isn't the most grueling ever conceived. I am not convinced I also need to be an exchange student.

New OB professor
Part I of Organizational Behavior ended two weeks ago and we're not onto Part II with a brand spanking new visiting professor. The new Professor comes from Canada and is a fantastic teacher. This part of the course is more about person to person OB and small groups, as opposed to

Course Mid-Term Results
We've gotten our Marketing report back we scored just about average. We had some problems with vagueness and having too many ideas and not enough information about each of them. The fact that we were limited to 6 pages double spaced really hurt us. I think we could have easily doubled the page count if we were allowed.

Statistics came back very good, but that should have been expected since I have a lot more statistics experience than most people. It would have been a very omnious sign had I NOT done well.

Still waiting on the Accounting exam result.

OB Part I exam went terribly. However, and I will not get into the specifics right now, the entire OB Part I course grade may get scrapped due to the exam that was given.


Finally, I need to update this space more often with less words rather than huge sporadic posts.

Saturday was the grand opening of the new exported club Space Ibiza in Shanghai. Here is the view from the 3rd floor balcony. 

The two organizers of the event dreamed up three activities for the party and also a fashion show. Paper dancing was the only one that actually happened, though. And lame as it was, it was actually very funny. Every woman takes off one of her shoes and puts it in the middle of the room. Then the guys go and pick one of the shoes. He then has to go around and find out who it belongs to (the "Cinderella" part). Then they get a square of newspaper opened and laid our flat. In our case, this was the esteemed Financial Times, to which I'm sure the editors would have rejected as appropriate use for the newspaper. The couples then dance when the music comes on but have to stay within the confines of the paper. Music plays for 30 seconds to 2 minutes then stops. Anyone off the paper is disqualified. The newspaper is then folded in half and the process repeated. 

 

With drunk Germans passed out in lawn chairs on the balcony in a witch hat. And leather pants. 

This is the inside of a cab, which I think I described before. The plastic shell surrounding the driver and all. I still haven't figured out if this is to protect the driver from passengers or the other way around. But it is quite intrusive. 

One of the many lighted buildings in Shanghai. This particular example had all sorts of swirling colors and is really cool. But, I have to ask the question.... Why??? Not that it's not cool or anything, I just want to know who approves these things. 

Among my favorite foods in Shanghai, and cheapest, was in attendence at the F1 race. This is a meat stick guy. They carry these long, thin grill things around on their bikes, pour some coal into it and then they have all sorts of meat on sticks (hence, MEAT STICKS!!). They put this spicy seasoning on top and is one of the best late night post-bar foods ever. However, its very, very important not to ask what type of meat it is. Perhaps matching pizza in the US. Also in attendence, and you really CAN'T get away from these guys are the rolex peddlers. EVERYWHERE! 

Race winner and the youngest F1 World Champion ever, Fernando Alonso, 24. First year in a long time that Michael Schumacher hasn't held this title. 

Turn 1, lap 1 of the Sunday race. Surprisingly, no accidents. 

A perfect example of Chinese feng shui architecture. Many buildings have holes smack in the middle in order to let the evil spirits pass through. Relatedly, traditionally the Chinese think that evil spirits only travel in straigh lines so old roads were designed to be curvy to thwart the efforts of the devils. Finally, in old homes, you have to step over a raised block at the front door. This prevented evil spirits from entering the home. 

After qualifying on Saturday, we somehow took a wrong turn and ended up in the bus section for what seemed like THOUSANDS of children. They were everywhere and chatting us up in English at every chance. I mean, how many times can you answer the question, "Hello! How are you???" 

Start/finish line of the F1 Chinese Grand Prix. Pit lane is on the left and the expensive seats ABOVE pit lane, with the still pretty expensive seats on the right. At least they were safe if it rained. Which it didn't.