My life in a blog

IMBA Chinese Track student at The University of South Carolina, Moore Business School, I'm currently living in Columbia, SC and traveling all over the place

Check out my other blog: My life in pictures http://akillianopix.blogspot.com or better check out my Flickr account www.flickr.com/photos/adifromusa/

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Parts Emporium, Operations Case = pain

How can a two page case in Operations Management can screw us as hard as this one? WOW!
The case seems very simple when read first as it seems to be very straight forward. Actually, it hides behind a very complex framework and implications.
It took my team about 10 hours to figure it out. Much like the Leadership case, with the only difference that with 80% of our efforts we will be able to pull probably less then 20 points worth of grade for this case (following the 20-80 analysis method).

By the way, this is the definition of this law: "The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that for many phenomena, 80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes."

This guy, Pareto, obviously Italian observed that 80% of income in Italy was received by 20% of the Italian population.

Here are some life, day to day applications of this guy's law:
1. Work: Twenty percent of your efforts produce 80 percent of the results.
2. People: Twenty percent of the people you know (friends, colleagues, family) provide you with 80 percent of nurturing support and satisfaction.
3. Business: Eighty percent of the sales are made by 20 percent of the sales team.
4. Focus: Twenty percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your success.
5. 10% of wikipedia users make 80% of all edits ->>>> UHHHH... this totally contradicts the whole Operations Management class
6. Look at this Pareto chart :) now this is life under operations analysis!

For the ones who don't know the case I'm talking about, check the link in the title.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Time is money... Entrepreneurship

What an interesting day we had: tons of business idea presentations. Just today, in only one room the total value of the business idea presented worth at least some 4 or 5 million US$. In one room, 25 business plans that will make history in the future.
We had Wall Street bar (a place where you go and pay the drinks according to the demand and supply rules), Electronic menus for the restaurants, where you can order without having a waiter, Family Planning and counseling for Chinese people, ordering cheap Online Sandwiches, making books from user's blogs etc. Amazing ideas, good entrepreneurs... Here is a video from an innovative idea by Team 10 who can make your dreams come true, even if you want to become a rap star:

Monday, September 04, 2006

Back to classes

Holiday is now over! Back to classes as of tomorrow. No more long night sleep, no more nights on the beach, eating out and having fun with friends at some Irish Pub in Charleston... fun is now over... LETS GET BACK TO BUSINESS

Operations, Marketing, Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Economics = this week is just dedicated to you guys!!!!