CORe has been a nice addition to my holiday schedule, giving me a sense of purpose while I enjoy some time off before beginning work at the Boston Consulting Group in September. But the past couple of weeks have been somewhat more frenetic than usual.

I started CORe within a week of completing my PhD, and last week saw me officially graduate from Cambridge (finally!). It was a wonderful commencement ceremony and I had my family over from Malaysia with me, which meant that I had a busier than normal few weeks showing them around the UK to savor sights such as the ancient Roman baths in the historic city of Bath and the white cliffs of Dover. In addition, the academic papers I had submitted for journal publication had been reviewed and so there were a few things I needed to finalize as well. Therefore, I really did need to plan my HBX CORe time carefully around these activities and indeed ahead of these activities to ensure that I didn’t fall behind.

I found myself staying up a little later every night and even sneaking in some library time while I was back at Cambridge for my graduation to catch up on CORe. Here’s some photographic evidence:

Cambridge University Library

It was a rather intense couple of weeks that made me realize that this course really does require a certain level of commitment and perhaps equally importantly, stamina. The course content gets progressively more complex and difficult, and true commitment from the very beginning is imperative. Much of the rest of my cohort is taking CORe whilst being in full-time employment. Some even have the added responsibility of raising a family, being young parents themselves. I can only imagine how busy life must be for them. My cohort is probably superhuman.

However, it has been an incredibly rewarding experience so far. I measure my progress not by the quiz scores I score every week, but by the true practical value CORe aims to deliver - how well-versed am I in the language of business?

And I have quite literally been astounded by the results. Earlier this week, I came across the news that Deutsche Bank had settled allegations from the Securities and Exchange Commission over an accounting scandal that the bank was involved in at the height of the 2008 financial crisis:

Prior to CORe I probably would not have understood the details of the scandal, but now, I completely understood how Deutsche Bank violated the accounting principles of conservatism, materiality and consistency by omitting a risk called gap risk from their financial statements, which led to their penalization.

Another relevant example is a recent viral article making the rounds on the Internet on how a German scientist fooled millions into thinking that eating chocolate helps weight loss. Among the myriad of techniques to produce the hoax was “p-hacking”, which thanks to the Business Analytics course on hypothesis testing and false positives, I completely understood.

It has been a really fun few weeks and I am enjoying every minute of my summer holiday. I will sign off for now with some pictures from my week. Enjoy!

The Roman Baths, Bath

Dover Castle (on the left) and The White Cliffs of Dover (on the right)

PhD Graduation, Cambridge University

About one month ago, I embarked on a new professional journey—I joined the April cohort of CORe. Even though it was a no-brainer decision for me to participate in the program once I was accepted, it has certainly been a sacrifice to participate in the program. In addition to the financial sacrifice to pay the $1,500 tuition, CORe is a serious time commitment. These two things are at the front of my mind every time I log in to the platform.

I am now about 20% through the program, according to my dashboard, and am amazed at how much I have learned in such a short time. Here are a few of my thoughts on the CORe program thus far:

1. One of a kind learning opportunity

CORe is the first online course I have ever taken. Since graduating college, I have considered registering for a few MOOCs but thought, “Can I really learn anything of value through a computer screen?” After completing the first two modules in all three sections, I can honestly say that I am loving the CORe platform! It has debunked everything I had previously thought about online learning. Of course, there is still room for improvement, but HBX has designed a truly interactive platform that facilitates teaching and learning on par with my previous academic experiences.

2. A unique community

Despite CORe and HBX being based entirely online, I have found the CORe program to foster a strong sense of community. With Peer Help, you are able to communicate and collaborate with your cohort members to support the understanding and application of concepts discussed in the course. The CORe staff also moderates a Facebook group that people use to engage in more light hearted conversations and organize meetups.

3. Time management is key

If you’ve read other posts by the CORe student bloggers, you probably have noticed that time management is a recurring theme. I’d like to reiterate everyone’s sentiments—CORe is a serious time commitment. It is definitely a challenge to balance taking CORe with a full time job, but blocking off time on my Google calendar, and sticking to my schedule, has helped me manage the time commitment.

Last Saturday, I celebrated my 25th birthday. As I enter the second quarter of my life (that is, if I’m lucky enough to live to be 100), I strongly believe that my participation in CORe is helping me to build the foundations for the rest of my academic and professional career. Every time I log in to my course dashboard, begin a new module, complete a knowledge check, or answer a question on Peer Help, I know the sacrifice is worth it.  

I enrolled in CORe having high expectations for a course that Harvard Business School was willing to put its reputation at stake for. Three weeks in and I can honestly say that it has surpassed all my expectations. Below are three things that I have found most impressive about CORe so far:

Inductive Learning 

Prior to CORe, I had mostly been exposed to a passive style of learning, whereby knowledge is transferred through consumption. So it was quite a surprise when I was made to explore intuitions and to think rationally about concepts before even being introduced to them. CORe calls this an inductive style of learning and I absolutely love it. We are made to think and to make mistakes, which although can be a little unsettling at first, definitely makes for a healthier and more effective learning experience.

Cohort Camaraderie

The online nature of CORe collapses geographies and enables the assembly of a truly diverse cohort. The home page of CORe captures this notion perfectly. It is a world map with pulsating dots that indicate who else in your cohort is online with you. It is through features like this that CORe begins to feel like a real classroom, and your cohort, real classmates.

There is plenty of “classroom interaction” whether it is through Peer Help, where you pose questions to your peers and help them with their queries, or Shared Reflections, where you get to examine how every one else answered the same question.

Naturally, collaboration is another important aspect of learning in CORe as concepts are reinforced through your interactions with your peers. There is a real sense of camaraderie between everyone, and as you can probably imagine, camaraderie and diversity make for a very powerful combination.

Quality Content

I had taken Economics courses at school before and as an engineer by training, I am pretty comfortable with numbers and analytics. However, growing up as a science geek, I had limited exposure to accounting. Therefore, of the three modules covered by CORe – Business Analytics, Economics for Managers and Financial Accounting – I was most excited about the third.

What surprised me most was that whilst it is true that everything I have learnt from the Financial Accounting module so far has been entirely new, I am also learning quite a bit from the other two modules as well, despite thinking that they would merely serve as refresher courses. From learning how to use Excel functions to build a confidence interval around sample means, to fully understanding the origins of the demand curve, I feel like I underestimated the value of the Business Analytics and Economics for Manager courses coming into CORe.

I also love the case-based learning method employed by CORe. It really gives you an appreciation for the concepts being taught. For instance, hypothesis testing and A/B testing were taught in the context of Amazon’s efforts to improve the customer experience. Conjoint analysis was introduced through the lens of The New York Times when in 2010 they had to decide how to package their digital offerings with the launch of the iPad.

CORe is to me what I would think the future of education looks like. It is an amazing resource that integrates education and all the benefits of technology effectively. I cannot wait to see the revolution in traditional education that CORe will surely shake up in the wake of its launching.  

Nisha Patel

This week we introduce our newest HBX CORe bloggers from our April Cohort: Nisha, Jocelyn, and Julian. They will be blogging for us during their 11 week CORe cohort, detailing their experiences and helping shed some light on their learnings and takeaways from the program.  Stay tuned for their latest blog posts!

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This week, our HBX CORe student bloggers, Elizabeth, Chelsea, Dan, and Sam, offer advice to incoming CORe participants - and to those thinking of applying to CORe. 

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I have had several people reach out to me and ask some questions about CORe.  They are wondering about the learning experience, the material, the other participants, etc., but really what they are asking is, “is CORe worth it?”.

I have jumped on the phone with several of these people and hope that I have been able to offer some insight into CORe:

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My main advice for incoming students would be to get involved and focus on your time management.

By get involved, I mean participate in the Facebook group that HBX sets up for your cohort, and more importantly, make sure to participate in the “Peer Help” section on the platform (this bit impacts your grade!).

I’ve found that actively participating has helped me engage with the course in a different way by enhancing my understanding of the material through answering questions and reading through others’ questions and answers, which often have real life applications.

The other important thing I would focus on is keeping on top of the deadlines and working ahead if you possibly can. I have managed to be far enough ahead that I finish what is due a bit ahead of the deadlines, whilst still completing the modules set around the time that many other people in my cohort are completing the module, so there have been lots of opportunities for me to ask and answer questions.

Also, as some modules take more time than others, it’s good to be a bit ahead so that if you are, then completing the lengthier modules won’t be problematic for you

I have really enjoyed the course thus far and feel like I’ve learned a lot… I hope you make the most of your CORe experience! 

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 My three tips for incoming students:

 1.  Organization

HBX CORe is an intensive program of limited duration. Therefore, you should organize your time appropriately and seriously during the eleven weeks of the course as well as for the preparation of the final exam.

Personally, I suggest setting aside three hours a day in order to go through the modules and an extra hour per day later in the day to review what you have learned until now in a specific module.

Regarding the exam preparation, use these three hours per day to go through the material again and the extra hour to analyze questions and answers from the quizzes and the peer help. Be rigorous and stick with your schedule because if you miss one or two days of work, you will encounter difficulties to catch up the delay.

2. Write

Managing your time is one thing. Nevertheless, you should also be highly focused, especially if you do not have a business background. The concepts you learn at CORe will help you to gain basic fluency in essential business concepts and thinking.

I highly encourage taking notes. Get three notebooks (one for each course), make drawings, conceptualize things, and rewrite the notions you have learned with your words. Writing down the material with your own language will force you to understand and increase the odds to remember things you learn in the long run.

3. Commitment

There are two approaches of commitment in CORe, and you should use both.

The first way is to be engaged in the peer help. Do not hesitate to strike up conversations. Discussions with others will always provide great insights on the concepts you are currently learning.

Using the intelligence of the crowd with help your learning process too. Answering questions from your peers will force you to write the things you have learned with your words, and this is best way to memorize things in a natural way.

The second method is more passive active but very useful too. Try to apply constantly your understanding of the CORe material to real-world articles and events. It is an exercise that will eventually test your ability to use the concepts you have learned but it is also a good way to realize quickly the benefits you can get from CORe!

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Greetings from Spain!  This week my sister, who is studying in Paris, is on spring break, and I met her in Lisbon for a weeklong Iberian road trip. It's been a great trip so far, and after traveling across Portugal and Spain, I'll fly out of Barcelona on Sunday.  

Before coming here I considered ways to keep up with CORe work while traveling, but ultimately decided that it would be too difficult to bring my laptop, notebooks, and find time (and wifi!) to do coursework each day.

Instead I faced the daunting task of doing four modules in ten days to front load my work for the trip.  

I took advantage of a one week break in coursework to do future modules in advance. Modules are released several weeks before they are due, so I had no problem accessing the things I needed to work on.

Im very glad that I was essentially able to push my CORe break back by a week, and I can travel without having to work on modules. I was able to upload my weekly assignment from a cyber cafe in Seville, and I'm all up to date!

Tonight I take a high speed train to Barcelona for a weekend with friends. It's very refreshing to take a week off from CORe, and I'm particularly excited to work on the Economics for Managers module on Markets when I return to Boston. Updates to follow, hasta lluego! 

Target's release of the Lilly Pulitzer fashion line has been at the forefront of the retail news this week. We asked our CORe bloggers what they might have done differently if they were in Target's shoes prior to the launch. 

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This past week, Target planned on introducing a limited supply of the popular brand Lilly Pulitzer at discount prices online and in stores. What they didn’t plan on was the circus that would follow, as Black Friday-like lines started forming outside of stores the night before and their site nearly crashed before the items became available, delaying the start time. 

#LillyforTarget West Coast Head for home stuff not the clothes, racks were empty in 5 min. #LillyforTargetForHyenas pic.twitter.com/kI1eefciqR

— Loren Boyce (@amzbls) April 19, 2015

Based on my learnings of these concepts in CORe, if I were in Target’s shoes I would have tried to estimate demand better. Target should have known that when you lower the price of items, the quantity demanded increases because more people are willing to pay for the items at those prices.

When you lower the price of a $200 dress to $30, this is akin to adding lighter fluid to an already growing fire, with this collaboration. Now you include many more people whose (WTP was between $30-200), that now want to purchase the product.

Target wielded many classic strategies used to increase demand, such as advertising and decreasing prices of complements (clothing accessories) while increasing their availability. Because the alternatives (like the actual Lilly Pulitzer line) were more expensive, there was an increased demand for Target’s lower cost line of Lilly Pulitzer.

If I was Target, I would have done more than monitor social media to estimate demand. I would have sent an email survey to Target customers, Lilly Pulitzer customers, and other general consumers. This would have been a cost-effective way to gather a large scale data of consumer preferences. In Target’s defense, it’s difficult to assess demand since those items have never been sold before. In addition to the surveys, Target could have run a very small pre-promotion to the offering, to get some sort of sense of demand.

Target also could have raised the prices of the line, trying to find the revenue maximizing price, although this would be inconsistent with their brand of bringing shoppers “national-brand (or better!) quality for less (usually a lot less!)”.  

On a graph it would look like a low price, high quantity demanded, and low quantity supplied. Thus, producer surplus would be low and consumer surplus would be high. 

Further exacerbating the issue, some customers who bought items later put them for sale on Ebay.

Ebay auctions are a cross between an open outcry auction format and a Vickrey auction format, and by introducing competition among buyers this effectively reveals customer’s true willingness to pay for the items.

On Ebay, the items ended up selling for 3x the amount Target originally sold them for. This not only infuriates customers who just want to buy the items at the prices Target set, but also makes Target look bad as some customers take advantage of the situation and profit off Target’s low-priced offering. Surely this was not Target’s intent.

While many say the promotion was still successful for Target because so many people were talking about the brand, if Target had simply put more thought and time into assessing demand, they could have avoided the backlash by adding a few more items to the line to ensure items were available for a bit longer.

That way, people like my girlfriend who waited up until 2 AM ET and then went to bed and got up at 6 AM ET to looking to shop wouldn’t have been disappointed, met with only the dreaded “out of stock” sign on every page and no one to answer the customer service line, inundated with many other callers.

 

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There has been a lot of buzz in both the business world, and the general world, about Target’s new Lilly Pulitzer summer wear collection that sold out in minutes – if you want some entertainment watch videos of it on YouTube, people were going nuts cramming clothing into shopping carts as they pushed others out of the way.  

To me, it looked kind of like a scene from the Lion King…Circle of Life anyone?  (Pun intended).

      (source: http://a.dilcdn.com/bl/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/06/SCAR-GIF.gif)

For those of you who haven't seen the movie, this is Scar singing his famous ditty, “Be Prepared”.

One of the most interesting things to me about this whole debacle is that there are so many concepts that I have learnt from all of the modules in CORe that are directly applicable to this Target scenario. 

I can now think through the post-fiasco reactions and the pre-“success” thinking and have insight, suggestions and understanding and that is cool!

Supply and Demand.  This is the underlying driver in the Economics for Managers course. CORe dives into additional concepts like consumer Willingness To Pay, supplier Willingness To Sell, optimised pricing and more, but the tenant that all of these rest on is supply and demand. 

Target claims to have been very closely tracking social media for interest surrounding their Lilly Pulitzer launch; they did their research, they ran the numbers, and they got it seriously wrong. 

What didn’t they take into account during this initial sizing of the demand market that could have made a difference for them?  Did they look at historical examples of other specialty line launches that Target had run?  Did they look at competitor scenarios?  Did they take into account what competitors were or were not launching in a similar time window?  Did they research Lilly Pulitzer’s sales and the market affinity towards Lilly Pultizer?  

The interesting thing is, I bet that Target did research all of those things, they just didn’t end up with the right conclusion. 

One of the things that CORe will teach you is that each discipline has a great deal that needs to be accounted for and that a lot goes into it.  There are so many factors and relationships between these factors that play into every outcome and it is hard to get it right. That being said, it is possible to get it right if the correct mix of people, education and work is put together.

There are many other CORe teachings that factor in this story, secondary markets, optimised pricing, focus groups, the demand curve, elasticity of price, I could go on, but I will spare you. My real point is, if the Target team had just gone through CORe would they have made the same choices?  I like to think maybe not.

We often get questions about the concepts taught in CORe and what a sample assignment looks like, so we thought it would be fun to share some of our bloggers' weekly assignment submissions to give additional insight into the program. 

These assignments seek to find real-world examples of the concepts taught in the course. This week, we asked students to share an example of an important "fixed cost" incurred by businesses and tell us whether this type of fixed cost would scale well as the business grows.  Elizabeth, Conor, Dan, Michael, Sam, and Chelsea share their examples below!

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A boat manufacturing business has high fixed costs as it not only needs a large factory in which to produce the boats and to store them until they are shipped out, but it also needs several $1M+ pieces of equipment to make the boats and casings, etc.

Many factories like this will tend to run triple shifts because if the facility has purchased the expensive machinery it can't afford to not have it running. Due to these high fixed costs, the barrier to entry is higher and so there are fewer competitors in the space.

As a result, if a company can get to a point where they are manufacturing above the costs of operating and owning/renting their plants the boat manufacturing business can prove to be a very lucrative one.

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The company that I work for is a private English language school in Vilnius, Lithuania. While the main building containing classrooms is owned by the company, there are additional classrooms across the street which are rented. This is a local fixed cost, incurred regardless of whether or not they are currently being used.

In the summer months when people are usually on vacation or taking a break, rent is still paid even though they remain empty. It is worth it to pay the rent as the company knows there will be plenty of use once the school year resumes in September. Were the business to expand, this would be an important fixed cost to consider.

That is, the question of renting or buying classroom space would have large implications.

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Novartis is a Swiss multinational pharmaceutical company with approximately $60 billion in sales annually. In the 2014 Annual Report, the Swiss company indicated $9.94 billion dedicated to research and development (R&D). Moreover, the pharmaceutical company spent $14.19 billion in marketing and sales in 2014.

R&D and marketing expenses represent a large portion of their total fixed costs with more than $24 billion! With this amount injected, Novartis creates a barrier to entry for other firms that are considering whether to enter the pharmaceutical market or not.

It is only by going global through a large distribution network will Novartis be able to benefit from economies of scale. By going global, Novartis will target more customers and spread theirs fixed costs better. This also explains why the multinational company has such high marketing costs.

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Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company that applies science and resources to discover, develops and manufactures healthcare products like Advil and Centrum. Pfizer is a giant in the pharmaceutical industry and one important fixed cost incurred by their business is research and development.

When producing a drug, the investment in research and development is incurred upfront. The cost remains the same whether Pfizer sells the drug to 1 person or 1 million people.

This fixed cost resides on a global scale, and it scales very well as a pharmaceutical company expands: as a pharmaceutical continues to grow, it doesn't incur more research and development costs on the original drug, and thus it can easily spread these fixed costs across a global scale. 

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Zipcar maintains a fleet of over 10,000 vehicles in 27 different metropolitan areas worldwide. Car sharing has become an increasingly popular way for urbanites to access a car when they need one without having to deal with the headaches of parking, maintenance, and insurance/ registration fees.

Each individual Zipcar has a "home" parking spot that it must be returned to after every use, and these parking stations are broadly distributed so that no Zipcar member is ever too far from a car. Zipcar's fixed costs reside at the local level: for every new parking station they open, they need to pay the up front fixed cost to buy a car and rent a parking spot in that neighborhood.

Zipcar members benefit from network effects, because as Zipcar expands there are more and more cities and campuses where Zipcar members can access vehicles.

However, Zipcar's fixed costs will expand proportionally to the number of rental locations that they offer. Zipcar can expand effectively, but their fixed costs are not easy to scale. 

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Elizabeth, Conor, Dan, Michael, and Sam share their favorite locations to work on CORe and explain a little about they've chosen that spot as their "classroom." 

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I have found that so far I have an ebbing and flowing relationship with the CORe material.  There are times where I feel confident and like I am making good headway, and at those times I like to go study at my favourite local bookshop that doubles as a café, Trident (for anyone in the Boston area Trident is a gem that should be used for all studying, working or thinking activities). Weeknights and weekends at Trident tend to look something like this:

There are also times where I find myself using the peer help tool repeatedly as I connect with my fellow CORe members around the world to try to unearth some of the more complex and detailed learning points in the different modules.  

During these times, I tend to study from a more quiet and secluded location, i.e. my living room table, so that I can not lose an ounce of my focus to anything other than CORe – this also allows for more creative study breaks, think dance party of one to, “I’m Walking on Sunshine”. Days and nights at home tend to look a little more like this:

 

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This is the interior of a French bakery in the city center of Vilnius, Lithuania.  Every Tuesday and Thursday morning from 8:30 to 10:00 I teach at a public relations company nearby.  

I usually duck in here right after to work on CORe for about an hour or so.  I grab a coffee and croissant and get to it.  At this mid morning time there aren't a lot of people so I'm able to concentrate.  While I do most of my work at home I find this place to be my favorite location to work on CORe.

 

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Sunday 12:26 AM.

Here is the view from my apartment. What you see is probably the last tramway for tonight. I have just finished the module 3 called "Suppliers and Cost" in Economics for Managers, and in the morning I will take the quiz for this Econ module.  

I have learned many things throughout this module: fixed versus variable costs, relative costs analysis, supply curves, and scale economies. Unfortunately, at 2:00 AM, it will be 3:00 AM. Tonight we switch to daylight saving time. Time to go to bed.

 

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Typically you can find me working on coursework from my desk at home, but my personal favorite place to work on CORe is at Starbucks, just down the street from my place.

Starbucks, with its familiar aroma of coffee and warm atmosphere, allows me to get a cup of coffee to enjoy while studying, to get out of the distractions of the house, to take a walk to clear my mind of anything else going on, and then plug in my headphones and go to work!

 

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I do some sections of CORe work from coffee shops, but I primarily work on modules in my basement. It's a quiet part of the house with a nice view out the window, and I feel more productive when I have one spot where I focus on learning.  

My study buddy is Marley the cat.