IMC

February 12, 2008
Comments and two questions:
One of the specific challenges of the residency program is to offer to the companies the best set of knowledge and skills of the students. Of course, we are offering bright, educated and most often work experienced students from Northwestern University. However, we also need to offer to the companies a person with a specific set of skills and knowledge (see some of their requirements above). We are building a new list that will include elements of the new "communities, stakehoders and web 2.0" class. For example, the students will know about the running debate on the "wisdom of the crowds" vs. the "culture of experts and their credentials". They will know about new polling methods using automated dialing and success and their use in business (Rasmussenreports.com). They will understand some of the valued uses of Second Life (for training and education) for Electrolux. They will understand about building longer term relationships and stakeholder maps with stakeholders from the work of GE . Healthcare. Tokoni.com has given them experience on understanding how communities can be built around sharing of experiences with discussion with the Founder and Chair of the new firm as well as the start-up experiences of the same person on eBay. In other classes they understand the value of databases, how to construct and analyze them. They know how to use the more advanced elements of SPSS for statistical report generation. From Finance they know about ROI, Break-even, performance ratios, activity based accounting, balance sheets and income statements and more. They certainly understand the key ideas of marketing with a much strong consumer and stakeholder orientation. I need to build this list to include many more specific skills and help to implement strategies. For example in the Spring MPR class with YUM! brands they will know how to use some of the most expensive and productive media and advertising tracking systems for planning and decision-making. What else can I add to this list?
One note I want to add: If you will go the You Tube site that I have attached, you will see what many of the faculty consider to be a terrific self-marketing effort of a student to qualify for a highly competitive internship at the Coca-Cola company. The student shows enormous maturity and creativity to stimulate their interest. What do you think?