Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Day 16. June 21, 2008


Day 16. June 21, 2008

It’s Saturday – our first casual day in a while - with everyone well rested from the previous night’s early closure along with the relaxed dress code, Day 16 started off with chipper attitudes and smiling faces. The students had the opportunity to sleep in, or exercise this morning and were not required to arrive until 8:00 AM.

After breakfast, Professor Cherrie Clark shared feedback from the Bridgestone and Caterpillar Financial executives with the Accelerator teams. Using the new Livescribe pen, she had done complete audio recordings of the company’s discussions as they ranked the teams. She also shared video of the company’s feedback.

Following this session, the teams met to complete their data analysis of the Nashville real estate market and outline their top 3 recommendations for the Gresham Smith executives. This project provides a wonderful opportunity for the students to learn about real estate development and the process to create new buildings and city infrastructure.

Abby Smith, one of our Owen MBA students, is helping the Accelerator program this summer by providing assistance with research and proofing the team’s bibliographies. For the past 2 rounds of competition, the teams with the best bibliography / research presented are as follows: For Bridgestone: 1st Place is Team 2, 2nd Pace is Team 1, and 3rd Place is Team 8
For Caterpillar: 1st Place is Team 1, 2nd Place is Team 7, 3rd Place is Team 6

Each team also creates a visual – a 4’ x 4’ storyboard that describes the process the team used to address the issue and determine their recommendation. For the past 2 rounds of competition, the teams with the best storyboards are as follows: For Bridgestone: 1st Place is Team 8, 2nd Place is Team 6, 3rd Place is Team 1. For Caterpillar: 1st Place is Team 2, 2nd Place is Team 6, 3rd Place is Team 8.

Following lunch, we then had a pretty amazing surprise – Accelerator teams were treated to a working studio with the founder of Arista Records - Tim Dubois. He worked with many artists such as Brooks and Dunn, Alan Jackson, and Diamond Rio. As an “industry insider”, Tim’s information aided the students with their William Morris Agency project immeasurably. Tim spoke for about 90 minutes – then the teams had an opportunity to meet to apply some of the tools he shared. While the teams were meeting, Tim visited with each team – spending about 20 minutes with each to coverer Q&A. The Accelerator teams then met again with Tim as a group for a final round of Q&A.

Sometimes, even coaches have a hard time staying awake – right Scott?

At 5:00 PM, the teams then changed the pace to work on the American Airlines project. Today was a really good day for the teams because they were able to tie up loose ends on several projects, finish research, and any other logistical needs. We ended the day around 8:30 for an off-campus dinner – an opportunity for many of these students to enjoy visiting a Nashville restaurant on a Saturday night. Teams will get to sleep in a bit in the AM – and will arrive about 11:00 AM.

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