Joseph Fahrendorf - 1st Year Case Competition -- bing.com vs google.com

Last Friday was the Internal Case Competition for the 2011 MBA class. Since I am trying to broaden my MBA experience and hone my public speaking skills, I decided to take part in the competition. My team was comprised of three other first year students: Emily Bae, Joseph Lopez, and Chris Kessler. The case was on Microsoft (circa November 2008.) At the time their search engine, msn.com, was a distant third to Yahoo! and the behemoth Google. We were asked to conduct analysis on Microsoft’s current search engine and to produce recommendations accordingly. After extensive research on both the market composition and the existing client experience, our recommendation was for Microsoft to pioneer a brand new experience called, Microsoft MiLife (patent pending).

MiLife is an all-inclusive system where a user sets up a personal profile and comprehensive data is collected and maintained for each person. This would be a person’s Internet identity and a portal to everything they need online. For example, MiLife would be an amazon.comfor the entire Internet, not just for things placed on Amazon. Our goal was to avoid regurgitating bing.com, but to make bing.com better.

The project took us the entire day to complete and we presented to four judges (one of which was Dean Wruck) the next morning. Although we were uncertain that the judges would like our idea, we pitched our idea with as much passion and energy as possible. Later in the day we learned that we had won the case competition for our room and we received Barnes & Noble gift cards. This also means that my team is eligible to represent Ohio State in the Big Ten case competition.

Overall, the case competition was worthwhile. Although it took up a lot of time (all day Friday and half a day on Saturday), the pros certainly outweigh the cons.

-Joe Fahrendorf

This was reposted from Joseph Fahrendorf's Fisher Grad Life Blog.

Fisher Graduate Student Association - Joseph Fahrendorf's Fisher Grad Life Blog

One group that has received the majority of my spare time is the Fisher Graduate Student Association (FGSA). This group is the de facto student council and is responsible for implementing change based on student feedback and suggestions. In order to do this, we have the responsibility to delegate funds to different student groups so they are able to make the largest contributions to the Fisher community. Therefore, we are also responsible for approving new student organizations that seek funds.

This quarter we received a request from a group of students seeking to start a Fisher Racquet Sports group. After listening to the group’s formal proposal, we determined that it would be in the best interest of Fisher College to approve this organization. Some of the sports that will be included in the racquet sports group include ping pong, badminton, cricket, tennis, squash, racquetball, and several others. Congrats to all the individuals who worked so hard to get the group approved.

On a side note, FGSA is still seeking individuals for the next group of social chairs. If you have an interest in actively planning next year’s social events, please email me.

- Joseph Fahrendorf

Joe Fahrendorf - Fisher Grad Life Blog -- Professor's Hilarious email

Long weekends are great. I was able to practice Finance and catch up on some of the reading I was unable to do last weekend because I was in Cincinnati for the Bengals game. Well as it turns out, long weekends are also helpful when you are trying to nurse a black eye. Although my eye is looking better, it is not going to be normal looking for at least another five days. As a result, I decided to email my professors to tell them that I have a black eye and that I hope it won’t be a distraction in class. What resulted is one of the funniest emails I have ever received from a professor…

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Dear Professor,

I just wanted to let you know that I have a pretty nasty black eye that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. I was accidentally elbowed while playing basketball in the gym on Friday afternoon with several classmates. I don’t want this to be a distraction in class tomorrow, so here is a heads up.

Best regards,

Joseph Fahrendorf

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2 minutes later…

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Joseph,

Yikes. If you wanted to cover this up, you could always pull off the eye patch. If you go down this route, I’d recommend a turtleneck and a blazer to compliment the look. That said, looking like a villain from a James Bond movie may be more distracting than just having a black eye.

See you tomorrow.

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This was not the response I expected. I would actually try the “villain from a James Bond movie” look, but I think the black eye alone will be funny enough for my classmates.

- Joe Fahrendorf

This is reposted from Joe Fahrendorf’s Fisher Grad Life Blog.

Joseph Fahrendorf's blog - MBA basketball injuries

It’s official… MBA students are not meant to play basketball. Tonight I drove a classmate to the ER after he had a bad fall during a basketball game. Initially we thought he broke his ankle, but it turns out that it’s just severely sprained. Obviously an injury such as this is bound to happen; however, this incident is the 4th Fisher 2011 basketball injury since school began.

Earlier in the year a group of Fisher MBAs were playing basketball in the ARC and during a wild loose ball scramble, one of our classmates tore his Achilles tendon. Four days later, another MBA student went down with a nasty high ankle sprain. Roughly a month later, a third classmate broke his foot in a pick-up game. These are troubling stats, especially since the Fisher MBA intramural basketball team starts our season next week.

Feel better Greg. We need you back next week.

- Joe

This blog is reposted from Joseph Fahrendorf's Fisher Grad Life Blog.

Managerial Negotiations - Fisher College of Business MBA blog - Joseph Fahrendorf

As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I am taking an elective called Managerial Negotiations. First year MBA students who have a GPA above 3.25 are allowed to take one elective during their second quarter. I figured Managerial Negotiations was a great choice because it is not only applicable to business, but also to everyday life.

The class is designed to allow us to practice different negotiation tactics each class in small groups. This safe environment allows us to get out of our comfort zone and really test different theories and strategies. Today’s class involved a negotiation between two individuals: one interested in selling a manufacturing plant and the other interested in buying a manufacturing plant. The buyer and seller each knew several common facts such as the appraisal value of the plant and the selling price of a slightly newer manufacturing plant in the same area. Although this common knowledge allowed us to get the conversation started, there were other areas that we had to consider such as: the building’s depreciation, falling land value, synergies between the companies manufacturing set-up, and the time it would take to build a new plant if an agreement couldn’t be reached. Somewhere in the middle we needed to come to an agreement.

I left my negotiation very happy with the deal we struck. I bought the plant in the lower part of my target range which I developed before entering the discussion. As it turned out, my deal was right in the middle of the class’ purchasing prices: five groups bought the plant for less, six groups sold the plant for more, and two groups were unable to reach a deal.

Joe





This post was republished by Joseph Fahrendorf's MBA blog.)

Football is over... time for school

It has recently become very evident that I will have little free time this quarter. Between working on my core classes and my recently invigorated summer internship search, this might be my busiest quarter of the year. I guess for the benefit of my MBA degree, the Bengals lost in the playoffs yesterday to the NY Jets. There is no doubt that with my team out of the playoffs, I will now have significantly more time available each week. Gone are the days of spending endless hours on espn.com to get the most up-to-date information on my team, gone are the Sundays of spending four hours watching the game and then several additional hours either too happy or depressed to do any work.

I was actually at the Bengals game this Sunday with my dad and brothers. The 1 degree wind chill was not nearly as bad as losing. I’m still upset about the loss, but eventually I will adapt to life without football. Hopefully I do this sooner rather than later, especially since I have an important phone interview with a recruiter from Cardinal Health on Tuesday. I will be speaking with her about their summer marketing internship and hopefully I can make a positive impression.

-Joseph

This post was republished from Joseph Fahrendorf's Fisher Grad blog.

Columbus winter warning

There is no doubt about it: the Columbus winter is harsh. For the past seven years I have taken great pride in my ability to survive the winters of New Haven, CT and New York City. When I decided to move back to Ohio, I never thought twice about the Ohio winter. I clearly underestimated its potential.

Since the beginning of the month it has snowed pretty much every day. Although the accumulation has not been too heavy, it has been an obnoxious amount capable of covering my car, which inevitably delays my departure for class by 15 minutes every morning. Not only is it constantly snowing, it is absolutely freezing outside. It is so cold, that I succumbed to driving to the gym a few days ago. Although this might not sound bad, you should know that the gym is about 300 meters from my place and is clearly visible from my apartment. Where is global warming when I need it?

Joseph Fahrendorf

This was reposted from Joseph Fahrendorf's Fisher Grad Life Blog.

Q2 - Joseph Fahrendorf

Tomorrow is the first day of the second quarter. Christmas break was great, but I’m glad that it is over. Three weeks is a long time off and towards the end I started to feel restless.

This quarter I am taking five classes. Four are mandatory: Cost Accounting, Finance, Operations Management and Marketing. The elective that I’ll be taking is Negotiations. Even before taking a single class, I think I can say that I’ll prefer the second quarter over the first quarter classes. Marketing and Operations are two areas that I am considering as majors.

I wish I had better news to report. I am writing this blog as I watch my beloved Cincinnati Bengals get crushed by the NY Jets. Fortunately the Bengals are in the playoffs and it just so happens that they’ll be playing the Jets in Cincinnati next weekend in the first round of the playoffs. I’ll need to make sure to get all my reading done during the week so that I can return home this weekend to attend the game.