Benedictine College Offers Comprehensive Executive Education Course

Benedictine College is now offering an intensive business leadership development course entitled Planning with Vision; Executing with Precision. The 4-day seminar, with dates available in May, July, and August, is geared to benefit senior level managers with experience in one or two functional areas, middle level managers with high potential, and small business owners. The course includes subjects such as finance, marketing and production management and it will be led by Dr. Joseph L. Brickner, a member of the Executive MBA faculty at Benedictine College and former Assistant Treasurer at Southwestern Bell Telephone Company (now known as AT&T).

The course is designed to allow participants to discover how disparate business functions must work together. Brickner uses a computer business simulation program (Capstone Business Strategy Simulation) that bridges the gap between theoretical class work and the real world. The simulation allows his students to run a business using the tools required in the real world while not encountering the risks.

The Capstone Business Simulation makes learning fun while the student gets to test management theories in a surprisingly real life simulation, said Jeff Caudle, Vice President of Bank of Atchison and a former student. Seeing how the cumulative effects of multiple decisions result in positive, or negative, bottom line outcomes is invaluable.

More: benedictine.edu

UW venture capitalist team wins national competition

It looks as if the University of Washington may have some budding venture capitalists walking the halls.
For the second time in the past three years, a team from the UWs MBA program won the national Venture Capital Investment Competition.

People are pretty excited around here today, considering who we beat, UW business school spokeswoman Nancy Gardner said.

Other schools that participated included MIT, Harvard and Michigan. The competition, hosted by the University of North Carolina allows students to emulate the job of venture capitalists. As part of the competition, the teams evaluate a pitch from an entrepreneur and then put together terms for financing. They are judged by real-world venture capitalists.

More: seattlepi.nwsource.com

B-schools just teach ‘theory’

In today’s rapidly changing global economy, upper management in most companies are becoming increasingly dependent on junior managers to take “complete ownership” in their areas of activity.

In fact, asking them to function more or less as entrepreneurs themselves! That can be exciting. But are most of our MBA graduates ready?

A tremendous amount of learning happens both inside and outside the classroom. While the breadth of material covered does not leave room for as much depth, the degree definitely leaves the graduating student confident of the theoretical exposure that he has acquired, coupled with the urge to try it out in practice.

But B-schools seldom provide the intermediary layer between theory and practice, especially in the context of running a business unit as a whole - as an entrepreneur.

I felt this strongly when I faced the first major crisis in my company and the core team of MBA’s that we had were unable to step up.

More: inhome.rediff.com