Home Stretch: Perfectly Irrational training for the real world.

Image by nrkbeta via Flickr

It is really an internal debate over what are the concepts that I will be able to use when I get into the real world. Something that I liked about Fuqua, are the marketing classes that taught us to break the most fluffy aspects of consumer behavior into concrete tools that we can analyze rationally. One of the possibly last courses that I will take in my academic life is the class of behavorial Economics taught by Dan Ariely. He has done a great job of telling us about the psychology of a perfectly irrational world, where we travel a long distance to avail of a shopping sale to feel good about our perceived mental calculation about the utility value that we derive from the shopping. I put a liberty of using a non-licensed pic of the professor in my blog to keep this in my records for future. Some day 20 years later, I will remember what Dan told us about decision making. When I will cringe at a stupid, irrational decision of somebody, i will remember the perfectly rational rationale of an irrational mind:)

As i get ready to cruise by the home run of MBA, I tell myself that this is the time to take advantage of all that I can possibly ask from the school. I missed out on greening the business workshop, but attended the Training the street seminar, today to learn about ways in which businesses create valuation models to ensure post merger value. There are always choices to make in a business school. I have not been able to take some great courses this term, but that has not stopped me from being a part of the blockbuster Dan Ariely's class on Behavorial Economics, that talks about human beings tendency to stay irrational.

Talking of irrationality, when i sat among future investment bankers, in a finance modelling class today, I told myself that I can apply some of the technical finance theories to other areas. It is willingness to be creative, and flexible that can make us transfer our skills from finance into strategy, marketing, and business development areas. The concepts that apply to mergers & acquisitions, can be deconstructed, and reconstructed to apply to customer acquisition models.

I was thinking about the fact that we still need to choose our tools that can drive decisions at the workplace. It would really be all about creativity that would help define the way we shape our future!