Peter Smith: Blog

My Stra­tegic Think­ing class (MGMT 302) is going reas­on­ably well. Nev­er­the­less, there are a couple of things that are notice­able in the class. Firstly, in the first class of the week–which is based on a test to motiv­ate the stu­dents to read the text in a timely fashion–the stu­dents are reluct­ant to engage in con­ver­sa­tion …

Sig­urd Ols­son also did a pretty good essay. I think it is inter­est­ing to com­pare and con­trast it with the other two essays on Carl Zeiss Jena that I have already pos­ted here. Once again, thanks Sig­urd for let­ting me use it here as an example to other students.

It was the last class of MGMT 302 — _Business Policy & Strategy_ today. At the end of the class I played “Never can say Good­bye” (See below for the details), and I came over all mel­an­choly. The stu­dents have been a good bunch and I like them immensely. But, for vari­ous reas­ons, this is …

I’m still mark­ing essays from _Business Policy & Strategy_. I’m sur­prised by how long it is tak­ing me — what does that say? Any­way, I’ve just fin­ished mark­ing Howie’s essay (Howard Hunt); and I really enjoyed it. It has a very dif­fer­ent feel to Pene’s excel­lent “essay”:http://www.petersmith.org/diary/archives/2004/10/15/carl-zeiss-jena.html. I think it goes to show how dif­fer­ent …

I’m about half way through mark­ing the cur­rent assign­ment and sev­eral trends are appar­ent. Firstly, the ques­tion is about the issue of evol­u­tion­ary or revolu­tion­ary change. Many people are focus­ing on *what they would do*, rather than look­ing at the issues of what sort of change is appro­pri­ate for the firm. Many people deal with …

As part of _Business policy & stratey_, stu­dents have to write a small (guided) ana­lysis of CZJ. This example is by Pene Geard. Whilst I haven’t fin­ished read­ing all the cases yet, this is the best so far. Well done Pene. I hope oth­ers can learn from your work (and thanks for let­ting me post …

We’ve fin­ished mark­ing the _Peer Reviews_, and spent the morn­ing com­par­ing and con­trast­ing everyone’s assign­ments. A num­ber of things stand out when look­ing at the assign­ments as a whole. * Many essays came with a mean­ing­ful title — super. * The second para­graph often began with some­thing like “I took the role of CEO …”, …

I think one of the most power­ful read­ings of the course, *par­tic­u­lar at this point in time* (with the Com­merce Comis­sion, take-overs, insolv­ent firms, firms who are just real­ising that they might not win) is the one that is indic­ated in the Black Book (and in the Red Book?) by: _Also see web­site– “http://www.jimcollins.com”:http://www.jimcollins.com (Con­front­ing …

In a thought­ful “comment”:http://www.thereflectivepractitioner.org/armi/archives/000514.html CR says: bq. …stu­dents in the course can’t really be reas­on­ably expec­ted to have a detailed know­ledge of com­pet­i­tion law and hence we rely on what DPE say… and I would agree with that; it would be unreas­on­able of DPE to expect stu­dents (com­merce stu­dents?) to have detailed know­ledge of the …

As reques­ted, I think it was by Helen, I’ve opened up a dis­cus­sion on Cecil to allow you to exhange ideas with one another about the up com­ing writ­ten case ana­lysis of Carl Zeiss Jena (CZJ). I hope you find it use­ful. If it is use­ful, I was won­der­ing if you would like me to …

*Yes* Because of Rochelle’s bereave­ment, I had the class mark them­selves using a little table I’d pre­pared. I think the table did two things. Firstly, it helped to struc­ture peoples com­ments a little, and secondly, because it expli­cit allowed only four attempts, it caused people to be less forth­com­ing with ‘off the cuff’ remarks. In …