As I write this I realize that for a small 20 person company I have done an inordinate amount of talking and writing in the past 5 weeks. Between presentations, phone calls, spreadsheets and emails I must have surely broken my previous record for 5 week word wizardry (posts to this blog count too). And what makes it even more remarkable is the fact that this has been done under a veritable oath of secrecy where you are not supposed to talk about the real thing-the company's technology.
All this writing, talking, spreadsheet trickery and industry report browsing has resulted in huge amount of data. Almost six weeks gone and with the deadline for mid way presentation looming large, I'm at a point where all the data better make some sense. Guess it is high time for some real MBA magic. I better take out all the P's and C's to throw at the data. And muster all the forces that Porter has vested in me to whip this data into shape, for not much time is left.
One thing that I learned from the experience so far is a fair amount of time spent in scoping out the project in the beginning can be the most important factor in how successfully you can execute the assignment. So, although the pressure to show results and please immediately is high in an internship, but spending some time to define the project well might be a good idea.
There is lots of information to organize and models to develop, but there definitely is more clarity now about things that looked impossibly vague at the onset. And although it’s fun to joke about Ps and Cs, quite a bit of that understanding is due to those little lessons from marketing or operations or accounting- the bits that cling to some corner of your mind even after everything else in the class is long forgotten.
I’m reasonably sure that the strategy that will come out of this project will be logical. Is it going to be business class case worthy? Well... that is a different matter.
(359 words)
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