Now I can say that it is almost over

We had the final presentation of our thesis today at the Heraeus site in Hanau, and all went really, really well. Heraeus is an interesting German, family owned high-tech company and it is not everyday that you have the opportunity to present and discuss your findings to the two most senior managers of a company with 12 thousand employees in over 70 countries and a turnover of more than 11 billion Euro. Yeah, billion.

Our academic supervisor, our project sponsor (head of corporate development) and a great team!

The presentation went smoothly and was actually fun. I was very happy with the results of the team and so were the professor and the company, I had the impression. It was an intensive 2 months of work, getting ourselves into a very new subject for us, but the conclusion we got were solid and useful for the company. And we learned a lot, especially from the 10 or so interviews we conducted with senior managers from important corporations.
But not all is over, we still have 50% of our thesis to be written this week and, after that, we all will be MBAs, deservedly.

But tonitght we have decided to commemorate a bit. And I should go back to where the music is playing.

This is the great team I have been working since June. During this project, we have interviewed all 5 Business Units of Heraeus to establish the technology fields we would look at, I developed an online algorithm for skimming the internet, we identified over a hundred information providers, had interviews with high profile professionals in 3 international high-tech corporations and got in touch with at least 2 VC firms.
There is still a lot of work to be done (like preparing the final presentation and actually writing the thesis), but I am very happy with the results so far, considering all the other paralel activities that have taken place (like job search and rowing competition) during this period.

Project office

 

Thats us working on the master thesis at the new Mannheim Business School facilities at the Dalberg Platz, N2.

Heraeus

Yesterday we started the last leg of the MBA course: the company project and dissertation thesis. I am working with two colleagues or, better said, friedns. I am happy with the choice of project and, more importantly, the choice of teams.
It will be strange to take charge of the next two months after having had our schedules taken care of by our great program manager, Susann. But it is time. Classes were great (some not that great, unfortunately), but I was looking forward to the end of the MBA. I feel that I have already gotten all of what I expected to get in the course and want to move on. The project will be a nice extra bonus, for sure.
I will talk about Heraeus and a bit about the project later on, but I am excited to be able to get to know this company from the inside. The products they produce are all very technical, but I felt like a child in their exhibition yesterday in Hanau, so thrilled I was looking at precious metals, quarz glass, miniature and giant sensors, special lamps, dental implants and titanium pacemaker casings.
It is good to be starting once more.