Finally, the blog posts the actual time that I write the blog instead of some random number. This is very important to me. Anyway, this will be a quick post.
Total number of Chinese characters learned: 35
Total number of words learned... 45?
And now a recap of Business Strategies Class (all numbers in 24 hour time, because that's what my phone displays):
Today's Strategem: Openly repair the walkway, secretly march to Chen Cang.
This was a pretty straightforward assignment, and it involved knowing when to fool your enemy into thinking that you're doing an obvious thing, while the whole time you're doing something completely unorthodox. Here are my notes from the class, written in real-time.
13:02- Setting up powerpoint
13:10- Still setting up powerpoint
13:14- Teacher begins class by essentially reading what we were supposed to read for class out loud to us.
13:22- Finishes our assigned reading repeat and tells us the story of Chinese startup alibaba.com.
13:23- Business advice! "getting investors is important." ...
13:33- Continues reading out loud straight from the powerpoint- currently rehashing information stated ten minutes ago. Wow, I guess investors ARE important.
13:38- Repeatedly refers to a number on the powerpoint which reads "82 million" as "84 million." No idea what is lost in the translation.
13:40- States "so that was a brief view of the company's history"
13:41- "And now for a view of their business model..."
14:00-"in 2005..." "it helps to get media attention"
14:05- Tenuous connection is finally made between strategem and business case study.
14:07- Break.
14:20- Assignment for group debate/discussion given. We (team 1) receive: "You are the senior managers of Alibaba. You believe that Alibaba's strategy has been_____. Back up your points with examples."
14:25- I convince the group that a really good demonstration of the Strategem would be to stand up and tell nothing but lies about the company to confuse the class.
14:26- My team tells me that this is unrealistic because everyone has all the facts about the company in his/her hands.
14:30- For lack of a better idea, my idea wins out.
14:50- I deliver a speech about how, even though Alibaba.com is making tons of money and has very bright prospects, the arrival at this position was entirely through luck and as such we, the senior management, wish to sell off all of our subsidiaries to our competitors.
14:55- During question and answer our competitors express a desire to purchase one of our subsidiaries. We agree to talks.
15:00- The teacher asks if any group has anything more to share. We say "HA! We're not going to sell our subsidiaries! We arbitrarily built five more websites while you were fooled by our deception! We totally Chen Canged you!"
15:01- Anarchy.
Ok, so most of that might have just been a diversion from the obvious statement that class was boring... Chen Cang!
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2 comments:
I read Kacey from 14:20 to 15:01 this morning. And we agreed that "For lack of a better idea, my idea wins out" is a very you way of getting ahead in the world.
And then we missed our Muppy.
How did you get the time thing to work?
Please tell me this is exactly how it happened!
If I had any idea that business could be this much fun, maybe I would have taken business classes as well, so that I could lead my group in fooling others...
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