Headline Sep 09, 2014

''' SOME BUSINESS SCHOOL ! : 

SOME BUSINESS PLUNGE ! "'

ONE-SHARE-PIECE-PEACE  for every single student in the world. 

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FOR SOME YEARS  the big  drugmakers have been  dreading  an approaching     ''  patent cliff  '' -a slump in sales as the patents on on their most popular pills:

Expire or are struck down by legal challenges, with few new potential blockbusters to take their place. In 2011, 

The patent on the best selling drug in History expired -Liptor, an anti-cholesterol pill which earned Pfizer nearly $11 billion in revenues, in 2010.

In all, blockbusters with a combined $170 billion in annual sales will go off patent by 2015.

What is supposed to happen now is that lots of copycat firms rush in  with ''generic''  (ie, chemically identical}  versions of Liptor at perhaps one-fifth of its price.

Alas! the business world and surviving profitably in that world, is getting to be a Cliffhanger exercise. 

At the Harvard Business School, in the third novel part of the course, students will be given eight weeks, and seed money of $3,000 each, to launch a small company. 

The most successful, as voted by their fellow students, will get more funding. It remains to be seen if this amounts much more than a  souped-up business plan competition:

Though Mr  Nohria says he hopes some real businesses will be created : If only Harvard Business School  had thought of this when  Bill Gates   was thinking of starting Microsoft, or when 

Mark Zuckerberg was creating  Facebook   -perhaps the school would have received shares in those firms. 

It is unclear how much the  one-week  working assignments will achieve.

Pankaj Ghemawat, a management guru says, "the literature suggests that an immersion experience needs to be at least   2-3 weeks and be backed up with time in the classroom.''

The Harvard Business School Students class room preparation will have to be pretty thorough, then, to make up for the brevity of their field trips.

Moreover, some of the Harvard Business school alumni who have agreed to offer work experience at their firms say they are unsure what meaningful work they can offer the students.

  

Privately, some faculty members are sceptical that all this change will be worthwhile.

In January  2011,  the vote in favour of trying the field method was   "as enthusiastic  as you could get from a faculty,"  says Mr Nohria, wryly. He wisely ensured that:

The ownership of the idea was widely spread by delegating design of the new curriculum to several faculty committees. The vote gave the  go-ahead to run a ''delicate experiment for   3-5   years-

To see if we can move the needle." he says, compared with the  13   years it took to develop the case method into more or less what it is today 

The experiment does not come cheap, adding  10  to  15% to the course's cost:

Students pay at least    $ 84,000    a year  -which Harvard Business School will bear while it figures out what works.

A lot is at stake:

For where   Harvard  Leads,   other universities may, just follow.

Wonder, what the hell is happening in the developing world,  business schools?! Time I pay them a visit and maybe attend  a few classes. Learning a few things, even this late in life, should be a lot of fun. Hahaha!

Thank you for reading and see you on the following one. 

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on the  World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' Achieving More Together '''

Good Night and God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless