Expectation Management has assumed sudden significance post the subprime. It has become the favorite word for recruiters to keep hungry employees at bay and in due course has indeed become a jargon if aptly employed can help you manage an irate anything. But with my one year at ISB coming to a close, expectations have resurfaced as valid data points which amongst other tenable benefits, help quantify nostalgia. But resurface they do, on all fronts, academics, life, future plans, money… you name it and there’s a past reference of commitment to be bettered or modified. But mostly, you think of where you came from and whether it matters to where you go … and my mind occasionally goes back to engineering, which was where my professional learning began and it continues till date.
I am an engineer by profession and my past experience at work consisted of advanced applications of what I learnt way back in college, until one day I decided to move off to study business management. The decision was the determinant of a matrix of numerous rows and columns, some easily quantifiable and the others not so, with a healthy distribution of probability spread across them. But eventually I came to the program, I studied, I enjoyed (one of the best years of my life) and now during the final week at the School, I look back upon the decision much like an outward sailor glancing at the receding beacon. And a thought does cross my mind on which I will speak in detail (I did write a blog on this once earlier but it was of a general nature)
What can an experienced engineer expect of a 1 year MBA at the ISB? I speak for the electrical sciences and computers, but for most of the branches I guess the degree of transition is the same. We spent our time all along in the hard world of circuits and voltages. Sparks flying didn’t sound as interesting as it does reading Page 3. “Burnt your hands†wasn’t considered credible experience for someone to soak in satisfaction. And “exploded on my face†is unthinkable even to the eternal optimist. Essentially we spent our time looking inward.
In return, from an MBA, what I learnt was the customer, the market, the needs, the outer world. Human beings and not technology became first priority, consciously. I learnt to analyze them, preempt them and to interpret the analysis in the light of business economics and mutual benefits of both the customer and the enterprise. As an engineer, new product management taught the essential tools to estimate market size, brand preference, the value perceived by the customer on each aspect of his product, and the future anticipated sales. These models are generic but lend itself to easy treatment for complex markets and products. For an engineer starting to conceive a new product, these inputs are not just essential, they are literally oxygen.
Personally, for me industrial marketing (B2B marketing) was enthralling. The course contained cases that talked of high-tech products, longer sales cycles, complex pricing decisions (even for the same product), branding tactics and even its dependence on the entire supply chain.
Talking of supply chain, it can be an amazing eye opener, as to how important and contributing supply chain efficiency can be to the entire product development process. It has a direct impact on demand satisfaction, inventory costs, supplier risk management etc. Each of these noticeably has an impact on product price and that’s as defined is the “willingness to payâ€.
From the finance side, corporate finance (specifically project finance) dealt with various avenues for arranging capital to execute any project, the risks involved and the concomitant cost premium to be borne by the borrower. The cost of financing, understandably, remains an important factor for price, as well as the success of the project. Managerial accounting too plays its part in identifying the cost distribution in all activities related to engineering development. While the strategy courses promise to teach you about competition and how not to tackle them.
Hence in a nutshell, for an engineer completing an MBA (with the assumption that he wishes to continue in the same domain still), he learns to go behind the scenes to derive why a product is developed in the first place, for whom it is targeted, its potential and sales (= profit) expected. Once the product is being developed, the promotion blitz and branding etc. takes over.
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In a way, he learns the economics of the business, needs of the market and understands how to sell his product. That’s what product development essentially is for, in the first place, i.e. to serve the needs of the customer and gain some profit out of the service.
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