MBA Carrier Design is a course led by guests who are NUCB Business School alumni actively participating in various business areas worldwide. During this course, our students can shape their understanding on carrier-related issues by asking questions and hearing stories from MBA degree holders fighting at the frontline in their respective businesses. Today’s guest speaker was Professor Harashima, who had been working as an industrial engineer for Denso for over 30 years.
What is “MBA”? It’s an abbreviation of “Master of Business Administration”, which is the title one receives after having completed Master’s degree in NUCB Business School.
The topic and prep research
Today’s topic was the history of Denso and its new businesses. The students had to prepare for this class by reading a selected case and doing a pre-class assignment on the constantly evolving management strategies of an automobile industry. They had to put themselves in a place of a Denso employee (the protagonist of the case) and try to rank the importance of a new business conducted by Denso, not forgetting about the growth and development of the company as a whole.
Think about the cause of failure, basing on past events
At first, the class talked about examples of failed businesses and the reasons they failed, as Denso has a history of unsuccessful projects on lithium batteries and mobile phones. Professor Harashima asked the students: “If the technology was not the reason for a failure, then what was?”, to which the students replied with many interesting propositions, such as: “Insufficient knowledge or information about the industry”, “Lack of huge funds required for starting a new project”, or “You could not compete with rivaling companies in terms of the cost”. The Professor often replied that the students were thinking just like him all these years ago, but there were also pupils who managed to accurately identify the problems happening when launching a new project. After that, the discussion moved to the topic of successful businesses.
The fun of Active Learning and your view on work
Since today’s discussion was focused on a very well-known company, most students could easily comprehend even the most specific aspects of the job it does. Through the debate, they had a chance to experience what it is like to be a company employee responsible for identifying problems and finding solutions, so they understood a little bit the joys and sorrows of work. We hope that the MBA Career Design course will help them become pro-active workers, always ready to solve problems occurring in their future companies.