Block 2 Term 2 class summary
Day 1
Finance
We kicked off Block 2 with our favorite (??) subject and professor this term in Finance with Matteo. First we reviewed the Ocean Carriers case which was our between block team assignment and then jumped into the new topic for this block which is stocks and bonds. Day 1 focused on Stocks and Saturday class will focus on bonds.
BTBR
Back for part 2 and focused this block on “asking good questions”. We first discussed how we had practiced asking questions over the holiday period with a partner, before jumping into a different trio to each share a problem or issue we are having at work or professionally and the others prepped “good” questions to ask to help them with the situation. Open ended questions work best.
Marketing
Ended the day with Marketing which still adds a nice bit of energy for the end of the day. This first session of the block focused on Understanding Customers. We learned that satisfaction doesn’t necessarily correlate well with Share of Wallet at an individual customer level and an NPS score can tell a bad or incorrect story. Stephen provided a Buyer Decision Process Template to use to identify the stages of the process – Recognition, Search, Evaluation, Purchase and Post Purchase.
Day 2
BTBR
We sat in a different seat and had a different partner for this exercise today, which had us choose a difficult conversation we needed to have with someone and we could then roleplay having that conversation by asking good questions with our partner. We identified our observations, feelings, needs and requests to end with a hopefully good question to ask in the end to help with the difficult conversation. We have 2 pieces of homework 1) Peer feedback to 5 people due Feb 11th (focused on those we have worked with in class and 2) Sharing an example of a good question or difficult conversation we had on the BTBR B Courses discussion space.
Macro Economics
Don opened with some information about the midterm and its intent. The best way to prepare is to use the review sessions with Fin (GSI) and do the practice questions in Gradescope. If you have additional time and desire you can also add the optional My Econ Lab.
We then opened discussion with the Fed announcement on rates. Reminder our team assignment in addition to the midterm is to produce the next FOMC forecast (FOMC = Federal Open Market Committee) and make an informed guess at what the federal fund rate will be in March. The main topic for today was discussion on Aggregate Demand and Aggregate Supply and then on Labor Markets. See “what you need to know” slides from Don below.
Marketing
Today’s Marketing session was on Segmentation and Targeting. Opened with discussion on Lego and how it caters to different age groups as different segments. You should brainstorm ideas for your segment but remember that brainstorming is hard and most of do it badly! Think about the “Jobs to be Done’ for your product when identifying segments. We used the Calyx Flowers vignette to demonstrate how identifying different “Jobs to be Done” helps you identify your target segment. Then assess persona’s (People who do the “Jobs to be done”) although use icons instead of pictures to avoid bias. Finally select your target and identify the market size using TAM – Total Addressable Market – TAM = n*q*p, where n = number of buyers, q = average qty purchased per buyer per year, p = average purchase price per unit. Make sure your target is accessible and differentiated.
Day 3
Macro Economics
Session opened again with review of Financial Times stories (getting in the habit of reviewing the FT news (and understanding it) is a great key takeaway overall from this class. This second Macro session this block was focused on Fiscal Policy including discussion on deficits and exchange rates. Understand the make up of the current account and the differences between GDP and GNP. Understand real exchange rates and differences between the long and short run. What you need to know slide from Don below;
Marketing
The key memory from this class will of course be the “Stand for Something” cheer. The main concept here is your unique positioning in the market and creating Brand value. We reviewed the Swatch case which we all prepared notes on and discussed how they identified a market segment and positioned their product uniquely to serve the untapped market and did things differently!
Finance
The final session on Saturday is always a tough one for everyone and even the energy of Matteo wasn’t quite enough to keep everyone fully engaged but as always we love our “learning by doing” exercises. The subject was bonds and at least we had a bit of a preview of this topic from Sunil in Accounting. We will solidify our learning by doing with the MFL homework quiz. We ended the session with an awesome overview from Wei on the Silicon Valley Bank crisis.
And we are done! See you in 2.5 weeks!