Inaugural Strathclyde Business Forum

Full time MBA students launched the first Strathclyde Business Forum on February 25 with the aim of setting up a platform for business school students to interface with industry leaders from Scotland and further afield.

The inaugural event had a flavour of India, with the session opened by the Edinburgh-based Indian Consul General, Parampreet Singh Randhawa, who looked at trade links between India and Scotland and growing areas of collaboration.

Senthil Kumar, CEO of I-FLex Solutions, which provides IT solutions to global financial services, then spoke on the growing opportunities and challenges for IT-enabled services from India in the UK.

March alumni event

The USGSB Scottish Alumni Associations next event will see Strathclyde Business School dean, Professor Charles Harvey, focus on high growth companies.

His talk, "Breakout Strategy: Meeting the Challenges of Double-Digit Growth" will examine a question asked by executives and leaders the world over - how can a company, seemingly coming from nowhere, transform into a formidable competitor in the space of a few years both in national and international markets?

For the past five years, Professor Harvey and his collaborators - the American leadership guru Sydney Finkelstein and the strategist Tom Lawton - have been researching the strategic practices of high growth companies, both new starts and established businesses: companies such as Boston Brewing, Dyson, LOreal, Samsung and Vodafone who have all broken out to enjoy double-digit growth.

On the basis of their research, they have devised a set of tools and techniques for strategy development and implementation. These have been road tested with more than 30 corporate clients in consultancy and executive contexts in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Professor Harveys talk will introduce the concept of breakout, the main types and practices of breakout strategy, and some of the models, tools and techniques that form the core of their forthcoming book, "Breakout Strategy."

The event will take place on March 9, 6.30pm for 7pm start, in the Court/Senate Suite, Collins Building, Richmond Street. Networking will follow from 8pm.

If you would like to secure a place for the guest speaker event, email your name, contact details and employers name to alumniscotland@gsb.strath.ac.uk. Places will be restricted so confirm your attendance early to avoid disappointment.

New member for advisory board

The latest member of USGSBs advisory board is Mary Dickson, managing director of First ScotRail. She joins senior managers from a wide range of industrial and public sectors and the seven-strong board is chaired by Iain McMillan, director of CBI Scotland. The other members are: Denise West, advertising director, Daily Record/Sunday Mail; Hazel Baxter, head of commercial initiatives, ScottishPower; Jim McColl, chairman and chief executive, Clyde Blowers; Billy Allan, senior partner Symphony Corporate LLP, and John Howie, managing director, Babcock Naval Services.

Mary Dickson was named as director of the year for 2005 at an awards ceremony organised by the Institute of Directors (Scotland) and held in Glasgow on February 16. 

Alumnus is keynote speaker at Baltic seminars

MBA alumnus Ian Moore, creative director and co-founder of Blue Chip Marketing, and author of "Does Your Marketing Sell?" - who featured in the last issue of Pioneer -  has been invited to be keynote speaker at a series of conferences due to take place in the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia at the end of this month.

The subject of this years event is Marketing Effectiveness, and the conferences are being run in conjunction with the American Marketing Association and other partners. Ian is giving an hours presentation at each of the three conferences and also running a workshop at the Estonian event.

Paper published

Researchers Paul Hibbert and Aidan McQuade have had an article published in M@na@gement in a special issue on inter-organisational alliances and networks. In the article, entitled, "To which we belong: understanding tradition in inter-organisational relations," Paul and Aidan explore tradition in the context of collaboration. They found that tradition, as a potential cause of failure or intertia, is inter-organisationally significant, and argued that insight into the nature of tradition allows participants to develop some useful language that supports more effective reflective practice in collaboration. To see the full text go to http://www.dmsp.dauphine.fr/management/

Meet the counsellors

This week we find out a bit about one of our counsellors in Hong Kong. Maurice Ma has been with the Strathclyde MBA programme in Hong Kong since 1993. A management consultant mostly working in Sydney, Maurice has professional qualifications in accounting, finance and IT. Maurice has extensive local and international experience in many different industries and has worked both in the private and public sectors.

His appointments include senior executive positions in organisations, including EDP consultant with the New Zealand Government and general manager of a hospital authority.

One of Maurices specialties is training and development. In the past 15 years he has taught various business management courses up to and including MBA leel. With USGSB, he teaches on the Management, Strategy and the International Environment module.