Pocket MBA - 2009

Pocket MBA, a 2 days workshop on Managing in a Global Recession was organised at Hult IBS,Dubai for executives in Middle and top management. The idea behind this initiative was to offer useful insights for executives to navigate in the current economic downturn and explore new areas of growth.

The Pocket MBA program featured world class professors in the field of Strategy, Innovation, Negotiations and Business Executives from diverse industries, like President of Emerson - Mr. Dave Tredinnick, Partner of Arthur D. Little - Dr. Daniel Deneffe, Managing Partner of Stanton Chase - Dr. Panos Manolopolous, Managing Director of Sandpiper Consultants - Mr. Daniel Ough and many more. Hult faculty from accross the world can be seen in full action in the video (below).

Executives from Ford Motor Company, Kraft Foods, KPMG, National Bank of Dubai, Al Naboodah Auto and many more companies from Middle East and Asia Pacific region attended the program.

Formula One Corporate Challenge

(L-R: Olena Polishchuk, Tushar Yadav, Varun Bokadia, Srihari Chodagiri, Kay Nikookary, David Inbarajan, Rohit Kajariya, Mayya Babayeva)

I was the part of a team who took the task of making the Formula One car model and racing it on the track. There are two things which I would like to share. The good one first - race result, we won all 6/6 races. The ultimate result, team Fantom lost the challenge.

The challenge was not only limited to who wins the race, otherwise Fantom's car is unbeatable, but there were 4 other parameters were involved:

First - Fastest car wins (which was ours for sure)
Second - Team outfits (There is no way anyone can beat us on this)
Third - 7 mins presentation (We screwed-up big time)
Fourth - Corporate Sponsorship (Well, it was kind of tie with Velocity Warriors)
Fifth - Media coverage (Disaster for us, still I think why we completely ignored media)

Being a engineer at FoMoCo and now a Business School Student, completing this daunting task of making a car model from scratch was a great experience I had. This task gave exposure in all areas which are encountered in a life of a business executive. New product development, resourse management, Team building, monitoring various phases of a project, press conferences, dealing with media, building brand, handing sponsors, managing finances..... I throughly enjoyed the stress and sleepless nights we spent over period of 6 weeks.

Below are few short clipings.....

Team Fantom designers speakings about the car design and manufacturing processes

Team Fantom media coverage with ING Renault F1 Team at Dubai Mall, Dubai

Special thanks to Olena Polishchuk and Mayya Babayeva for being the brand Ambassadors of Team Fantom.