The BIG IDEA for the GSB
Ideas on How the Best Business School in the World Can Get Better
Rags Vadali, '07
Issue date: 9/28/06 Section: GSB Life
- Page 1 of 1
Increasing Our Social Capital at the GSB
Amit Grover, '07
One of the fundamental dichotomies of GSB is the flexibility of the curriculum, combined with the initial bonding experience - LEAD
However, in speaking with some fellow students, I have come to the conclusion that there is a dark side to all this, which we could work on. I have seen a significant tendency (myself included) to stick to a core set of friends/classmates who I bonded with during LEAD/LOE/first quarter.
While it is inevitable to have this in any large group interaction, perhaps there is a structural social improvement that can be made to the GSB environment to further enrich this experience:
Some ideas I can think of:
1) Having some of the leadership/management/other soft skills classes in a more organized setting
2) Picking groups based on some LEAD criteria
3) Having more on-campus socials besides LPF and TNDC
4) Being randomly registered for one course you never asked for, just for the social experience
Improving Online Bidding System
Ryan Simpson, '08
Although I'm sure this won't be the best idea that is received, it is near and dear to many students' hearts at this time (at least the first year students).
The online bidding system needs improvement. Simply taking the basic classes (stats, micro, financial accounting), I still am NOT registered for any classes even after the first round of DAS. This being said, I think it might be beneficial for the faculty to really take a hard look at incoming classes to better determine what courses need to be offered at a particular point in time. The basic courses should not be an issue since they are the prerequisites for every other class with a financial slant.
Again, you may receive many emails with this same topic, so I apologize if it is a duplicate.
At Least Our Email Address Can Be Friendly!
Chungchi Chung
The idea is pretty simple, obvious, and easy to implement - provide a friendly email address to the current students.
This is simple because GSB only needs to extend its Email4Life alias program to its current students. Letting the students choose a friendly alias in their @ChicagoGSB.edu email address will improve the image of GSB the students are representing as many students use this email address on their business cards, resumes, etc. This friendly email concept has been adopted by many companies years ago. The current userid@chicagogsb.edu email address is hard to remember, and looks old-styled.
The University email system, CMail, already provides the users the opportunity to have a friendly email address by allowing the user to pick their own CNet ID online. This could be incorporated into our systems as an possible way to implement this Big Idea.
Laptop Charger station
Jason Hsiao, '08
What: The school should provide a laptop charging station in HPC. I'm guessing that about 70% of the school uses either an IBM Thinkpad, Dell, or Mac, so only 3 types of chargers will be needed. Maybe have 5 or 6 of each kind for a total of 15 chargers that you can plug your laptop into. It can also work like a coat check where you drop off your laptop, get a ticket, and pick it up later.
Why is this such a great idea: Because we're already carrying 50lbs of crap in our backpacks. Without the power adapter, it'd only be 48lbs of crap. I'm betting that we can get the adapters for free from those companies since it technically promotes the use of their laptops on campus.
Database of Entrepreneurial Ideas
Howard Lu, '08
We at the GSB constitute a group of talented, diverse individuals with the world's highest per-capita concentration of entrepreneurial ideas. Yet these ideas almost surely go to waste quite simply because we end up pursuing careers that are more immediately lucrative. (And by that, I don't just mean Consulting and I-Banking.)
At the University of Chicago, we don't like market failures much. So let's be the first business school to do something about it.
What if we could create a clearinghouse for entrepreneurial ideas, whereby students can contribute gems of their entrepreneurial instinct to an online database that's shared with our alumni the world over? These contributions can be quite simple ("I believe there's an untapped market for breathe-easy shoes in Tokyo)" - or can be ideas that facilitate knowledge transfer ("What if someone applied this petro-chemical technology to the bio-tech sector?") - Else they can be blue prints for new business models. Whatever they may be, these entrepreneurial ideas may have escaped execution for a variety of reasons (e.g., lack of experience / finance / contacts / professional interest) - but I bet many of them will be very valuable elsewhere to alumni who are looking for business-savvy, insightful ideas.
And what better way to mobilize students and alumni than such a database that acts as a sounding board for the GSB's growing entrepreneurial program? This online resource would feature built-in search capabilities (e.g., "Japan; Consumer Markets; Apparel"), and would produce the sort of student-alumni entrepreneurial sparks that other business schools can only dream of.
I encourage you all to think seriously about how we can make this happen. Let's do it!
Tech-savvy PBS and RBS
Vineeth Subramanyam, '07
Summer's officially done and I'm back with more miles, a fatter wallet and the sound perspective that befits a second-year student. So listen up folks, I have a couple of suggestions that might just make your lives easier. The question was about a big idea that would improve the GSB experience. So I decided to tap into my year's worth of top-tier biz-ed to present a 3C analysis of one particular annoyance that has lingered since my first quarter. Students find it frustrating, other schools do it much better and we definitely have the capability to change it. So why not?! I'm talking about our bidding systems, RBS and PBS.
First, let's talk RBS. Having gone through several rounds of bidding and DAS in the past quarters, I find that the system seriously lacks usability. To bid for courses, students are typically looking for three pieces of information: (1) course list for that quarter, (2) course pricing and (3) course evaluations. Under the current system, since this information is not provided all in one place, students have to open multiple windows to track these elements - one window for each - when conducting their research. Alternatively, students download a spreadsheet that contains more columns that they'll ever need. Further, none of the web pages that carry these pieces of information have good usability. For example, since most column headers are not fixed, users have to scroll all the way to the top again to confirm the heading of the column they're looking at (especially painful on the course pricing page). Furthermore, the evaluation and course pricing pages don't contain the course name! This is particularly frustrating because the user has to open another window to actually map the course name to the course ID. The result is that students end up spending way more time in bidding for courses than they should need to. If the system could be improved to address these issues, the bidding process would be drastically simpler. Seriously, why cut into our TV time?
Second, let's talk PBS. For the benefit of the first-years and those second-years who stopped recruiting after their first interview - this is the placement bidding system that is your best friend, your worst foe and your main point of contact for all things recruiting. Again, this system could be drastically improved, particularly in the presentation season. With a largely fluid presentation schedule that changes everyday, I'm amazed that the information is relayed in the form of a spreadsheet that is uploaded with every change. Students are expected to download a new spreadsheet every time. I may be biased to Internet technologies (having worked at an online retailer), but wouldn't it be easier to put the entire schedule on the web that always stays current? While we're at it, how about moving resume deadlines, company-specific events, lunch and learns, etc. to the web as well? And giving us options to refine the display by industry or date range? These changes would eliminate the painful job of assimilating different pieces of information from myriad sources. Again, anything to stay glued to that TV.
Having worked in a customer retention role in my pre-GSB life, I strongly believe in having a customer/user-centric focus; and from what I hear, our competitors do too. I've heard people who go to other schools rave about the user-friendliness of their computer systems. I don't see why we can't get there as well. It may take time, but I dare say students will have a better experience when they have one less annoyance (or several) that repeats every quarter. After all, some of the best ideas deal with fixing existing and persistent problems before introducing new ones. The good news, I suspect, is that we already have the capability to make these changes. That's my rant for now - gotta run, my TV beckons.
Better Co-ordination Desired between Student Groups and DSO
Suzan Sultan, '07
My big idea for the GSB is to initiate better planning among student groups and other GSB offices such as the DSO.
I recently realized that I would miss two upcoming group events because they both conflict with my classes on Friday. Upon complaining to a student group co-chair, I was informed thus: GSB has a de facto school-wide convention that student groups hold special events/ conferences on Fridays. I am not a student group co-chair, and, as such, was completely in the dark about this unpublicized GSB policy.
I, of course, have class on Friday. More importantly, a large number of students have class on Friday. Had the "de facto" policy been better publicized, I would have tried even harder to avoid Friday classes. The larger issue is that it seemed nearly impossible to avoid a Friday course this quarter. In my case, two of the courses that I registered for are only offered on campus on Friday.
So my question to the GSB administration is, "why are there so many courses offered on-campus only Fridays if that day is also designated for student group events?" I am a dues paying member of several student groups, and apparently all my money has gone the drain because I won't be able to attend any of the group events if they conflict with my class. I am not placing the blame on student groups. In my opinion, this is the fault of administration. Nonetheless, it would be nice to get a refund of my dues since I can't attend any events.
Part two of my Big Idea is for the GSB administration to publish such policies in the future and to seriously examine the conflicts that may potentially arise.
After finding that my suggestion to hold the two student group events on different days of the week was shot down due to this policy, I was also told that these events were scheduled months in advance. That's right, the events this Fall quarter were coordinated last Spring. This seems news only to me and the five other non-co-chairs in the second year class. Why then haven't these events been publicized far in advance (even a tentative schedule would be nice)?
I urge those of you that care to mention this to your favorite administrator. Meanwhile, I'll be in the Ida Noyes Pub Monday through Thursday if you want to share your deep thoughts with me.
And the Winner:
This was a tough set of suggestions to pick from. All the ideas, at the very least, deserve consideration by the appropriate authority. While we were intellectually seduced by the concept of an online database for entrepreneurial ideas (one more thing on the busy EVP Co-Chairs' plate?) and wouldn't mind a more user-friendly PBS, the idea of finally fixing the truncated Email4Life ids really hit home. Technically, this is probably not a hard problem to fix and the embarrassment/annoyance of forced email ids that reduce our online identities to something pretty unintelligible to most people who know us or result in a digit after our last name (we're taking bets in the office that around 2010, we'll have a slee100@chicagogsb.edu. For those keeping count, we're past slee28 at this point. Shoot us an email if you've got a larger number tacked on to your identity.)
Congratulations Chungchi, and thanks to you and everyone else who sent in their ideas. Keep them coming! Chungchi, shoot us an email to pick up your voucher for a week of lunches at the HPC.
-The Editors
Amit Grover, '07
One of the fundamental dichotomies of GSB is the flexibility of the curriculum, combined with the initial bonding experience - LEAD
However, in speaking with some fellow students, I have come to the conclusion that there is a dark side to all this, which we could work on. I have seen a significant tendency (myself included) to stick to a core set of friends/classmates who I bonded with during LEAD/LOE/first quarter.
While it is inevitable to have this in any large group interaction, perhaps there is a structural social improvement that can be made to the GSB environment to further enrich this experience:
Some ideas I can think of:
1) Having some of the leadership/management/other soft skills classes in a more organized setting
2) Picking groups based on some LEAD criteria
3) Having more on-campus socials besides LPF and TNDC
4) Being randomly registered for one course you never asked for, just for the social experience
Improving Online Bidding System
Ryan Simpson, '08
Although I'm sure this won't be the best idea that is received, it is near and dear to many students' hearts at this time (at least the first year students).
The online bidding system needs improvement. Simply taking the basic classes (stats, micro, financial accounting), I still am NOT registered for any classes even after the first round of DAS. This being said, I think it might be beneficial for the faculty to really take a hard look at incoming classes to better determine what courses need to be offered at a particular point in time. The basic courses should not be an issue since they are the prerequisites for every other class with a financial slant.
Again, you may receive many emails with this same topic, so I apologize if it is a duplicate.
At Least Our Email Address Can Be Friendly!
Chungchi Chung
The idea is pretty simple, obvious, and easy to implement - provide a friendly email address to the current students.
This is simple because GSB only needs to extend its Email4Life alias program to its current students. Letting the students choose a friendly alias in their @ChicagoGSB.edu email address will improve the image of GSB the students are representing as many students use this email address on their business cards, resumes, etc. This friendly email concept has been adopted by many companies years ago. The current userid@chicagogsb.edu email address is hard to remember, and looks old-styled.
The University email system, CMail, already provides the users the opportunity to have a friendly email address by allowing the user to pick their own CNet ID online. This could be incorporated into our systems as an possible way to implement this Big Idea.
Laptop Charger station
Jason Hsiao, '08
What: The school should provide a laptop charging station in HPC. I'm guessing that about 70% of the school uses either an IBM Thinkpad, Dell, or Mac, so only 3 types of chargers will be needed. Maybe have 5 or 6 of each kind for a total of 15 chargers that you can plug your laptop into. It can also work like a coat check where you drop off your laptop, get a ticket, and pick it up later.
Why is this such a great idea: Because we're already carrying 50lbs of crap in our backpacks. Without the power adapter, it'd only be 48lbs of crap. I'm betting that we can get the adapters for free from those companies since it technically promotes the use of their laptops on campus.
Database of Entrepreneurial Ideas
Howard Lu, '08
We at the GSB constitute a group of talented, diverse individuals with the world's highest per-capita concentration of entrepreneurial ideas. Yet these ideas almost surely go to waste quite simply because we end up pursuing careers that are more immediately lucrative. (And by that, I don't just mean Consulting and I-Banking.)
At the University of Chicago, we don't like market failures much. So let's be the first business school to do something about it.
What if we could create a clearinghouse for entrepreneurial ideas, whereby students can contribute gems of their entrepreneurial instinct to an online database that's shared with our alumni the world over? These contributions can be quite simple ("I believe there's an untapped market for breathe-easy shoes in Tokyo)" - or can be ideas that facilitate knowledge transfer ("What if someone applied this petro-chemical technology to the bio-tech sector?") - Else they can be blue prints for new business models. Whatever they may be, these entrepreneurial ideas may have escaped execution for a variety of reasons (e.g., lack of experience / finance / contacts / professional interest) - but I bet many of them will be very valuable elsewhere to alumni who are looking for business-savvy, insightful ideas.
And what better way to mobilize students and alumni than such a database that acts as a sounding board for the GSB's growing entrepreneurial program? This online resource would feature built-in search capabilities (e.g., "Japan; Consumer Markets; Apparel"), and would produce the sort of student-alumni entrepreneurial sparks that other business schools can only dream of.
I encourage you all to think seriously about how we can make this happen. Let's do it!
Tech-savvy PBS and RBS
Vineeth Subramanyam, '07
Summer's officially done and I'm back with more miles, a fatter wallet and the sound perspective that befits a second-year student. So listen up folks, I have a couple of suggestions that might just make your lives easier. The question was about a big idea that would improve the GSB experience. So I decided to tap into my year's worth of top-tier biz-ed to present a 3C analysis of one particular annoyance that has lingered since my first quarter. Students find it frustrating, other schools do it much better and we definitely have the capability to change it. So why not?! I'm talking about our bidding systems, RBS and PBS.
First, let's talk RBS. Having gone through several rounds of bidding and DAS in the past quarters, I find that the system seriously lacks usability. To bid for courses, students are typically looking for three pieces of information: (1) course list for that quarter, (2) course pricing and (3) course evaluations. Under the current system, since this information is not provided all in one place, students have to open multiple windows to track these elements - one window for each - when conducting their research. Alternatively, students download a spreadsheet that contains more columns that they'll ever need. Further, none of the web pages that carry these pieces of information have good usability. For example, since most column headers are not fixed, users have to scroll all the way to the top again to confirm the heading of the column they're looking at (especially painful on the course pricing page). Furthermore, the evaluation and course pricing pages don't contain the course name! This is particularly frustrating because the user has to open another window to actually map the course name to the course ID. The result is that students end up spending way more time in bidding for courses than they should need to. If the system could be improved to address these issues, the bidding process would be drastically simpler. Seriously, why cut into our TV time?
Second, let's talk PBS. For the benefit of the first-years and those second-years who stopped recruiting after their first interview - this is the placement bidding system that is your best friend, your worst foe and your main point of contact for all things recruiting. Again, this system could be drastically improved, particularly in the presentation season. With a largely fluid presentation schedule that changes everyday, I'm amazed that the information is relayed in the form of a spreadsheet that is uploaded with every change. Students are expected to download a new spreadsheet every time. I may be biased to Internet technologies (having worked at an online retailer), but wouldn't it be easier to put the entire schedule on the web that always stays current? While we're at it, how about moving resume deadlines, company-specific events, lunch and learns, etc. to the web as well? And giving us options to refine the display by industry or date range? These changes would eliminate the painful job of assimilating different pieces of information from myriad sources. Again, anything to stay glued to that TV.
Having worked in a customer retention role in my pre-GSB life, I strongly believe in having a customer/user-centric focus; and from what I hear, our competitors do too. I've heard people who go to other schools rave about the user-friendliness of their computer systems. I don't see why we can't get there as well. It may take time, but I dare say students will have a better experience when they have one less annoyance (or several) that repeats every quarter. After all, some of the best ideas deal with fixing existing and persistent problems before introducing new ones. The good news, I suspect, is that we already have the capability to make these changes. That's my rant for now - gotta run, my TV beckons.
Better Co-ordination Desired between Student Groups and DSO
Suzan Sultan, '07
My big idea for the GSB is to initiate better planning among student groups and other GSB offices such as the DSO.
I recently realized that I would miss two upcoming group events because they both conflict with my classes on Friday. Upon complaining to a student group co-chair, I was informed thus: GSB has a de facto school-wide convention that student groups hold special events/ conferences on Fridays. I am not a student group co-chair, and, as such, was completely in the dark about this unpublicized GSB policy.
I, of course, have class on Friday. More importantly, a large number of students have class on Friday. Had the "de facto" policy been better publicized, I would have tried even harder to avoid Friday classes. The larger issue is that it seemed nearly impossible to avoid a Friday course this quarter. In my case, two of the courses that I registered for are only offered on campus on Friday.
So my question to the GSB administration is, "why are there so many courses offered on-campus only Fridays if that day is also designated for student group events?" I am a dues paying member of several student groups, and apparently all my money has gone the drain because I won't be able to attend any of the group events if they conflict with my class. I am not placing the blame on student groups. In my opinion, this is the fault of administration. Nonetheless, it would be nice to get a refund of my dues since I can't attend any events.
Part two of my Big Idea is for the GSB administration to publish such policies in the future and to seriously examine the conflicts that may potentially arise.
After finding that my suggestion to hold the two student group events on different days of the week was shot down due to this policy, I was also told that these events were scheduled months in advance. That's right, the events this Fall quarter were coordinated last Spring. This seems news only to me and the five other non-co-chairs in the second year class. Why then haven't these events been publicized far in advance (even a tentative schedule would be nice)?
I urge those of you that care to mention this to your favorite administrator. Meanwhile, I'll be in the Ida Noyes Pub Monday through Thursday if you want to share your deep thoughts with me.
And the Winner:
This was a tough set of suggestions to pick from. All the ideas, at the very least, deserve consideration by the appropriate authority. While we were intellectually seduced by the concept of an online database for entrepreneurial ideas (one more thing on the busy EVP Co-Chairs' plate?) and wouldn't mind a more user-friendly PBS, the idea of finally fixing the truncated Email4Life ids really hit home. Technically, this is probably not a hard problem to fix and the embarrassment/annoyance of forced email ids that reduce our online identities to something pretty unintelligible to most people who know us or result in a digit after our last name (we're taking bets in the office that around 2010, we'll have a slee100@chicagogsb.edu. For those keeping count, we're past slee28 at this point. Shoot us an email if you've got a larger number tacked on to your identity.)
Congratulations Chungchi, and thanks to you and everyone else who sent in their ideas. Keep them coming! Chungchi, shoot us an email to pick up your voucher for a week of lunches at the HPC.
-The Editors
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