Inside the London MBA

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After 4 years, we decided it was time to give our blog a makeover.  Please visit our new look blog, complete with a fresh group of London Business School student bloggers from our MBA, Masters in Finance and Masters in Management programmes at London Business School student views.

The new site retains all of the content found on this blog, along with a few new features that we hope you’ll enjoy. We look forward to welcoming you to the new site, and hope you continue to follow the London Business School student experience!

If you link to this blog, please adjust your links accordingly.

 

We have moved to http://blog.students.london.edu/

 

India Business Forum Conference

Every year, the India Business Forum at London Business School organises a fantastic conference. This year's event is scheduled for the coming Thursday (23rd of April). Keynotes and panelists from India and London Business School will explore and debate the theme: "Innovative India: Creating Value and Opportunities".

I'm especially looking forward to this year's conference as it coincides with the Indian General Elections. I'm hoping to get the chance to pick the brains of some of India's biggest leaders -- both from government and the private sector.

If you're reading this blog as a prospective student, this conference will give you a good glimpse of the kind of opportunities London Business School offers.

I'd highly recommend attending. Tickets can be bought here.

Lord's

It never fails to happen. Every single time I walk on St.John's Wood Road, be it the middle of the night or in the morning, I feel goosebumps. Even though I've spent the last decade living outside India, Cricket holds a special place in my heart. I was too young to remember live images of Kapil Dev lifting the World Cup from the pavilion balcony in Lord's, but the video is etched in memory of most Indian cricket fans. That win, as heavy underdogs against the much favored West Indian team going for a three-peat, catapulted Indian cricket and laid the foundation for the subcontinent becoming the emotional home of the sport.

One of the special privileges of being a student at London Business School, is access to the facilities at Lord's. As a member of the Squash club, I get to walk into the Lord's complex and play, not 30 yards away from the members pavilion. Of course, the "idiosyncrasy" of English tradition apply here as well -- one has to only be dressed in whites :-) I for one find quite like it and find it very nice actually, especially coming here from the United States, where as long as you had clothes on you were good to go -- for most things.

I hope St.John's Wood Road never stops to make me feel the way I do. It is certainly one of those really small things that make living and studying in this part of the world so wonderful.

Innovation...

- a word we keep hearing everywhere these days. Innovation in management, innovation in energy, innovation in technology etc. etc. etc. However, I can't imagine our life without constant, positive change. It's one of those things that continues to make our lives better and more interesting each and every day.

Here at London Business School, we have a club for pretty much anything: finance, entrepreneurship, venture capital, consulting, private equity, sailing, golf, rugby and so on (phew!). A new addition, as profiled by Vipul a few weeks back, is the Innovation Club. Truth be said, it isn't really a formal club yet, but we did have our first introductory meeting today to discuss potential goals, vision and strategy. While I've stopped getting surprised at the International diversity at the school, the breadth of professional backgrounds still doesn't cease to amaze me -- we had students who had worked in Advertising, Technology, PE, Banking, Consulting and even a couple from the World Bank.

Ideas were shot left and right across the room and we arrived at a promising list of events and activities for the term and the club's immediate future. If you're at school and haven't joined the Innovation Club discussion group, you're certainly missing out on what promises to be an exciting organization. No one can deny the power of innovation and its place, right on top of every company's agenda as they try and navigate today's tough economic and environmental challenges.

And we’re off…

The entire class is here. Orientation week is over. But the fun has only just begun.

As a new student starting his MBA at London Business School, I could've hardly asked for a more exciting start to the program. As you can tell from the experiences of my fellow “20-ten’ers” below, we’ve all had an incredibly busy yet amazing two weeks. I obviously had heard about how diverse London Business School was before I got here, but what lay in store still managed to surprise. My study group, like those profiled in the other posts has seven people – all from different countries (India, Japan, Switzerland, France, United Kingdom, Turkey and Canada). If I can’t learn about global management and leadership in an environment like this, I don’t know where else I’d go. I could go on and on (and want to ☺ ) about the neat things from my brief time here, but my friends have done immense justice to that.

“I’ve waited 28 years for this” was what I told the steward at Lord’s. As a die-hard Indian cricket fan whose earliest memories of Indian cricketing glory was watching Kapil Dev hoist the world cup from the balcony at Lord’s, I always have wonderful memories of the ground. When we reached there on our first day of orientation, it was a special feeling. I guess Lord’s place in cricket is like that of Lambeau field in Football (the American kind) – a place that has been witness to remarkable legends and sporting history. Now that Lord’s is only a few minutes walk from school and home, I hope to enjoy some matches there (starting with a county game this coming weekend). More to come on that…

I’m sitting in a room now at school, working on my “Good Idea” for a competition run by the entrepreneurship club (and of course writing this blog) and I feel nervous – not the bad kind of nervousness, but rather that of excitement. The next two years have a lot in store for the 320 of us – classes and exams, interviews and jobs, parties and friendships, heartbreaks and successes. The thing in common though is the school and the fact that all of us will be in this together -- trying to cross the finish line, leaving no one behind and at the same time ensuring that we all enjoy every minute of this wonderful journey.