Capstone project- the best learning so far

And I am back!. Toronto looks really beautiful. Watching black and white colors of nature like in 1940s  movies for past several months, it feels bliss to see colorful Toronto. I have been told that this was the worst and longest winter in past 20 years. And that feels encouraging because it means it cant get worse than this.

See that for yourself. view outside my window ( and that building nearby is Robarts Library)

I have read that people who have never lived in cold countries will go into a mild depression during first winter. I don’t think i went into depression but i felt a lot sleepy. Also I have been busy with new responsibilities and also school work. I am the President of Business Technology club and our exec team has sworn to change the club’s commitment to the students. We are an excellent, committed team who will make the club more engaging.  I am also VP of REVCA and yes i will give back all that i got from REVCA last year. So incoming students, be prepared for a exciting club activities from BTG & REVCA.

Capstone project

In my view, the past term wasn’t that intense compared to previous ones.  We had 1 capstone project and 3 courses ( Managerial accounting, negotiations, Corporate finance).My favourite was the capstone project.

Rotman believes that the future managers/leaders will make business decisions based on data. As more and more firms and embedding data analytics as their core competency , this really helps MBA students. Capstone project is the application of all learning I have had in this 1 year.  Each year 3 or 4 companies come to campus and present us with a real business problem they are facing currently.

Last year students solved a waiting time issue in Cancer institute in Toronto and it was implemented by the firm. This year we had 3 firms: the largest brewery, a world class hotel chain and an online insurance aggregator. (I have signed NDA and hence think i am not allowed to share their names). They presented us with their business problem. These arent well defined problem that I saw in case competitions but rather vague and complex problem because its real world.

Professor Bernado gave few lectures on  using model based decision making and how things should be looked at when analysing data. Also we had assginments to submit. Each company’s top executives came to campus to present their problems. In 2 weeks once we were ready, each team bids for what project they want. We were given secured access to their data (surveys, customer data).

The next 3 weeks were intense. I am a big fan of data analytics and i generally get hooked onto data. I remember once spending continuous 8 hrs analysing the customer data and deriving insights. Its so exciting when you know that you are solving a real world problem and these firms are going to implement what we suggest. Our team put some real effort and personally i spent lot of my time in this project compared to other courses. And it paid off. Our team is now selected for presenting our recommendations to the CEO of the company. We have sessions planned with McKinsey consultants who will coach us on presentation skills and review our deck. We will be presenting in 2 week and i will blog about that experience as well. (2 top teams from for each company will be presenting their reco to companies)

Overall i learnt one thing from the course. One can sit for hours and hours looking at data and deriving insights and it can be endless. But if you dont ask right questions you dont find right answers. The whole course and profs lecture was about thinking using models and asking right questions and then looking at data. I am happy that i have got this structured way of thinking and looking at data.