Mondavi wine, strategy and expansion

GSM = Global Strategic Management; What is this? It's a first year class that has the main purpose of showing us the different ways a company is structured and profitable in the same time. The final grade is the result of a final paper related to the wine industry which of course, we had to familiarize with (both theoretically and also practically by tasting a couple of bottles).

Anyways, this man...

gave us a hard time in coming up with a right strategy for his company. His name is Robert Mondavi and his company is the most prestigious wine producer in the US.

While reading the requirements of the final paper, I could not really foresee any real answers that I could use. What made a real difference was the group study. Amazing was the way we came up with strategy tools to use, what to look for, how to plot the wine industry structure and finally what to recommend to Robert to make his company even more prestigious!!! Although, I don't think he'll ever use our recommendations for his company, he should be thankful that we thought about him! Tonisha, Angela and I spent about 8 hours building a global strategy from scratch (no business background nor much previous business exposure in our group) as a result of industry and competitor analysis and future scenarios of the industry. We did a great job!!!

Therefore, let me conclude two things:
1) Group study is an amazing tool
2) Diversity within the group helps a lot
3) THE PROFESSOR IN THIS CLASS DID A GOOD JOB TEACHING US TO USE A STRATEGIC THINKING
(i'm sorry i ment to conclude 3 things)

Good job Dr. Roth!

ZZZZzzzz

It must be boring to tell you that things are not yet up to the schedule, because you already know that.

I want to mention that today, I and my fellow college's survived the hardest quiz yet in our MBA life. This class "Globalization and Corporate responsibility" is in my opinion one of the most efficient that we were exposed to and I truly appreciate what debates we all had so far as it was beneficial to us all. Unfortunately, I can't always say the same thing about Global Strategy Management class, which sometimes tends to be more theoretical than case study based.
How about this as a piece of news: today was my first day at work and as to celebrate this new day, I sat and talk to people, debating, studying some Accountancy and also doing some work. It seems that it will be very interesting but I will need to keep you updated on this issue.

There are so many things I could tell you but I'm afraid I will need to sleeeeeep. Good night!

china and no time

Today, I just want to say that I am very sorry for all my blog readers (which are maybe 2 or 3 or 4 - thank you guys) that I will not post very much.
That's simply because of my poor time management which drives me crazy sometimes. I'm very sorry and I publicly apologize for this incovenience.


Let me just tell you an update though: after my meeting today with my Chinese advisor, I can tell you that this will be a very hard program. Not only sounds very complicated, but it actually is. Getting to China is a challenge, getting used to live there is the top of challenges (does that make sense?)
On the other side, quoting a friend of mine(Nanda-very nice girl) who helped me with accounting today , I should feel very lucky that I am able to make a choice on where I will go, what internship I'm looking at and every other little things that I am able to choose. We should all feel lucky we are here...

Monday = bad day

Every person, no matter the cultural background, has probably a motto like this: "I Don't Like Mondays." Who does? Why? The answer is very simple: weekend is over and we start everything like it would be from scratch.
So, this Monday was no different from all the others in the Universe!

I started to realize today that I need to pull my s__t (that stands for shit, but I just don't want to say the bad word) together and do some real planning because this current strategy doesn't work. Speaking of strategy, it's important to know that it is always possible to change the rules of the game you play. How ? Just invent your own set of rules that the others will adhere to. The best strategy is definitely: Imagine what doesn't yet exists and that the market needs or will need in the future.


Now, back to pulling my stuff together, I just started today to plan a lilttle bit ahead of time (culturally different for me) as I am used to do things in the last minute, with my last breath. This is something I need to change; I also know how to do this: by means of force, someone has to force me. This is exactly what happened today, when "at work", I had to hand in the work schedule for July and August. WOW! But still, now my schedule looks like I have nothing else than work to do every week which is not true, so I will fix that as soon as I have someone to force me:) Any volunteers?

Thinking deeply, this might be one of the most important features the school will teach me: How to be a good time manager!!!! (Just as an example of how good I am at this at the moment: I am always behind the schedule and the class homework, I forget to call people or email, I don't have time to go to the gym or run and I don't have time to clean up my room nor sleep enough during the night) Well, I just think that there are worst things in life that this pure complain of mine.

Let's see how next Monday will be like!

My blog is one minute old :)

If you are here, you must know what a blog is. Just to make sure you do know, it's a kind of personal virtual diary which is available to the public.

I started this blog just a minute ago... why? Well, my roommate has one already and kept pushing me to start one. Finally today, I realized that this can be a good way to remember what you do every day, a good way to reflect better on everything that surrounds you. He was right, this is a good tool for that.

Just as an intro for today: my blog's nickname is akilliano. I kept thinking for a nice good name for this blog, but was not able to come up with something better. Akiliano means Adrian in hawaiian but I put two l's in mine simply because the simple one was taken by someone already. Maybe is not a very smart name, but it sounds ok to me.

Now my blog is about 10 minutes old, ten times older than a while ago, wow... time's running fast!?!