American Small Business: Is the EPA Crushing Our Spine?
June 23, 2012
I left business school with an MBA, focused inspiration, and a business plan meant to harness it. After the Waxman-Markey bill passed through the House, I anticipated impending emissions regulations and the formalization of a domestic commodities market that would help put US businesses on a path of accelerated reduction, heightened efficiency, and increased global competitiveness. Just how a regulated carbon market would look and operate on US soil was open for speculation, but the winds finally seemed to be shifting toward a future that used market forces to reign in carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide equivalent emissions rather than a system that left it to the clearly failing Invisible Hand.
In the end, I was short on three critical resources every entrepreneur must have to succeed: timing, team, and money. Although my effort
More MBAs at Apple under Tim Cook
June 5, 2012
No one can deny that Steve Jobs changed everything. His vision and leadership of Apple, Inc. shifted the course of history and the future that precedes it. While Jobs’ success at the helm of this lauded tech company cannot be understated, he did have certain idiosyncrasies and character traits that some may have wanted to change. For example, APPL investors would have liked a few more conversation with him over the years; something Steve Jobs was notoriously uninterested in. This lack of accessibility, however, is not a trademark of Jobs’ successor, Tim Cook.
As described in a recent Fortune article, Mr. Cook is continuing one of his past duties as COO—that of being an ear and voice to high value investors—on into his current role as CEO of the staggeringly wealthy tech company. Accessibility is just one
Kaplan GMAT Alumn: Making Business Social
May 10, 2012
In an earlier post, we kicked off a Kaplan GMAT student success story series. We want to share our students’ successes to inspire you to reach for your goals because they are attainable. In fact, your goals are so important to us that you can win cash and prizes just by telling us about them! We want to know: Where will you take you?TM
Jeff Gibbard never had a problem with creativity. But in order to get his social business agency off the ground, he needed to give himself a left-brain advantage. After preparing for the GMAT with Kaplan, he got a scholarship to Drexel’s fast-track MBA program and eventually founded his own social business agency.
Q: Why did you decide to get an MBA?
My undergrad degree was
5 Reasons to Consider Working Overseas
March 29, 2012
By: Mona Abdel-Halim
If you’ve considered working in another country, now might not be a bad time to do so, particularly with today’s job market still looking dismal for young professionals. In fact, over the past five years or so, the rate at which Americans are leaving the U.S. has risen sharply. The number of expatriate Americans in 2011 was around 4 million, and the number continues to rise.
Plus, these opportunities to experience new cultures and gain unique work experience will certainly set you apart from your peers in the future.
Check out these reasons to consider heading overseas for your career:
New career opportunities. Whether you currently have a job or are searching for something new, heading overseas is a great way to open up new doors for your professional life. For instance, if you’re already employed, it’s possible that you’ll
Will the business of education change forever?
February 9, 2012
As my regular readers know, I often write about trends in higher education. After all, I am a professional educator and I work for two very successful players in the industry. One of the more interesting trends out there is the shift to virtual classrooms over the traditional brick-and-mortar model. At Kaplan, we recognize the immense opportunity laid bare by teaching in the cloud. We can reach more students in more places and can cater our product offerings to match the needs of anyone interested in beating a grad school entrance exam.
Our Classroom Anywhere classes take live face-to-face instruction to a whole new level (e.g., depending on class size, students can expect to have 2-4 dedicated, highly qualified, full-time instructors at their beck and call from Class 1 until Test Day). For folks
Does MBA = The Big Buck$ ?
January 22, 2012
I don’t read Forbes magazine with any regularity. If there is a copy in the dentist’s office, then I might pick it up and look at the cover, but will rarely be enticed to actually open it and read an article. However, as is becoming ever more apparent, the age of print media is ceding tremendous ground to its virtual counterparts. As proof, I come across an interesting Forbes article online with some notable frequency. Here’s the latest eye catcher:
“The MBA Megabucks CEOs” has a title I just couldn’t pass up. Maybe it was the timing—GMACs’ 2012 Alumni Perspectives Survey Report was recently released and in it we learned a couple things about remuneration trends with MBA degree holders. Anyway, it reads almost like an article out of People; full of straw-man
Creating decision-ready MBAs
January 16, 2012
“I want to see MBAs who can jump in and make decisions, not jump in and learn to make decisions.”
– Henry Kravis, co-founder, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
If you haven’t already, at some point during your MBA you’ll catch wind of the case study controversy. Well, controversy might be a tad hyperbolic, but there is definitely a strong contingent that derides their use and usefulness in training effective managers. Columbia Business School entered the fray in 2008, not to add more verbal fuel to the fire, but rather offer an actual solution, or, at minimum, an alternative.
Led by Columbia’s dean, R. Glenn Hubbard, the institution devised an approach which utilizes a “decision brief” rather than the traditional case study. Unlike a case study, decision briefs provide limited information from which students must
MBA Mamas
January 11, 2012
My wife had our son while she was in graduate school. I wrote about it a little in a previous post. It has now been about ten months since the little guy made everything so much better simply by showing up, and my ideas about what it means—truly means—to be a parent have broadened, deepened, and been filled with sublime detail.
The Economist recently published an article entitled “Of MBAs and Motherhood” that I highly recommend anyone give a read. Even if you don’t have any kids or plan to have any while you’re in school, you will definitely learn and work with many people who do. This article may help provide some helpful perspective for everyone, regardless of their role in perpetuation of the species.
My wife and I struggle everyday to meet the
MBA job prospects
January 7, 2012
In a recent post, I brought you some welcome news about the 2012 job outlook for MBA hires. Well, good news is a wonderful thing in such an economic climate and WSJ’s MarketWatch threw together some interesting bullet points from GMAC’s report you might want to peruse.
With 2011 behind us and so many of you clamoring to get the GMAT out of the way before the test change in June 2012, it’s sometimes hard to lift up our heads and have a look at what happens after this whole grad school thing is over. Well, now is a good time to do just that ‘cause it sure looks like roses.
Trendsetting MBA curriculum changes at Harvard
January 5, 2012
Harvard Business School gets a lot of press. HBS is a giant in the field of graduate management education and is a coveted appointment to many aspiring MBAs. Institutions around the world look to HBS for leadership in the field of management education. I would literally be amazed if any student of business, graduate or undergraduate, had not read at least one Harvard Business Review case study and/or white paper. In fact, the case study method for educating business managers was started at Harvard and has subsequently influenced business education across the globe (although, cases have been made against the case study). Well, change may be afoot once more and Harvard’s class of 2013 will be the first guinea pigs.
In a recent Economist article, HBS’s new FIELD method is
