Whirlwind month...oh yeah, are there classes going on too??
How did November suddenly become the busiest month ever? Oh yeah, the combination of the ECP (Entreprenuership Consulting Project), and the ATKearney Business Competition. ….
White Thanksgiving??!
SNOW!!!!! Who would have guessed big clumps of falling snow, sticking on the ground an inch or so, in mid-November????? Wow! This florida girl always appreciates a good snowfall.
ATK coming up! Amsterdam here we come. Didn’t realize the work involved, ATK is like an intense ECP, especially with this case about launching a new business. Some groups stressed about ECP, we have double which is an adventure. Character building, right?? Hard to believe first term is over in 3 weeks!! Well except for exams….in January! Such a great set up really. But all that in just 2.5 weeks really, wow.
Judge Competition Final...congrats, you have just won an extra 2 weeks of work!!
Wow I cannot believe we won the ATKearney competition!!!! I still remember the day we signed up…initially I hadn’t planned on doing it at all. I learned in high school after doing a ton of activities that sometimes it just isn’t worth it to add a ton of extra work to your life!
Then the guy who won last year, Ben, came and talked about it and I started to think ok maybe it would be cool and maybe we could actually do well. I went to the MBA syndicate room as they announced anyone who wants to do it meet there, and I sort of hung around the edges of the group, not sure who I’d want to work with. Makes a huge difference! They were going to start matching people up by background, when I saw Hugo and Panos and started chatting. They said they needed a female presence, and maybe would I like to join. I hesitantly said ok, and then found out Rory would be with them as well. Funny as Rory is in my study group but cool.
So that was it! We called ourselves ‘Orama’ (meaning ‘vision’ in Greek, as suggested by our Greek-in-residence, Panos), and we were off. Couldn’t believe I had subjected myself to extra work! We worked many long nights on it, and were selected as one of the top 3 groups out of the 15 that entered. Today was the second round, the school presentations. We presented to a panel of ATKearney judges for 15 minutes our vision of ‘ACME car company.’ This was meant to be the next revolution in automotive companies, a company that re-leases used cars, offers varying packages to customers (more like a mobile-phone company), and attempts to generate revenues over the lifetime of the vehicles, also using cheaper manufacturing if any. I was nervous beforehand and unsure about our quality of info and analysis. However……we won first place!!!! Crazy. 500 euros each and going to Amsterdam in 2 weeks! To compete in the European finals.
