Harvard Business School - Day 23

Tuesday, 29 Sep 2009
Today we had a strategy session using HTC ( http://www.htc.com )as the case study. HTC is now the worlds 4th largest manufacturer of smart phones, behind Apple (iPhone), RIM (Blackberry) and Nokia, with approximately US$4b in sales.
The case was focused around HTC's competitive positioning and what it can and should do to move forward and realise the company's aim of being one of the big three smart phone manufacturers. To make matters more interesting we had Peter Chou the CEO of HTC present for the discussion. Peter is a Harvard Business School AMP 171 graduate. He also had the opportunity to speak to the class on HTC and for us to have a Q and A session. Once again you can only marvel at the power of HBS to be able to entice these global executives to come and give up a day of their valuable time.
The strategy sessions are taken by Prof. David Yoffie. He is among other things a director of Intel (the computer chip company) ( http://www.intel.com )and has held this position since 1989, a company that that turns over a mere US$35b and has a gross margin of more than 50% (that's some business).
Not all the classes are this insightful and there are a couple of lecturers that while they are able to facilitate reasonable discussion, we feel that there is not really the depth of learning or new insight hat we would hope for.
Some of the participants are starting to get a bit distracted as their spouses arrive (or are due to arrive) for the mid-term break. This is the first time HBS have had the family program during the course, it is normally at the end to coincide with graduation. It will be interesting to see what the view is, but personally I think that now we are in the right mindset and routine fully separated from our normal professional and personal lives, it is a shame to risk derailing things by introducing family into the process.
We also got our 360 degree feedback pack yesterday afternoon. It is an interesting process to work through and there are certainly a few learnings and things to work on there for me. A big thanks to everyone that was asked to fill it out as I know the sheer volume of questions was a bit daunting. I promise I will try and be a better person!!