Please hear me out before answering… In my first post, I explained that my main motivation for attending Anderson’s MBA program is corporate finance in healthcare. While I am still interested in corporate finance, I must say that attending business school has been a real eye-opening experience so far. The reason is very simple: mostly everything I am studying is new to me. For example, one of my epiphanies occurred during Accounting, when I finally made the connection between the last line on the income statement and the (until-then) mysterious “bottom line” expression I’ve heard so many times before. I also enjoy the theoretical aspects of Economics, although I question how feasible it is to collect data to test these theories. But my greatest surprise so far has been Marketing.
Like most people, my marketing experience until now has been limited to ads, so I thought that marketing was just another word for advertising. I now realize that there is a significant strategic component behind marketing, and I’ve discovered that functions like brand or product management for a biotech company are also an excellent way to leverage my scientific background. How? The obvious example is sales: you must understand your product in order to sell it, and I have an edge in that area because understanding the science behind the product will come easily to me. The less obvious example has to do with interacting with the research and development team; it helps to understand the language of scientists and engineers, and to already think the way they think.
Last week, Abbott came to Anderson to talk about their marketing MBA summer internship program, and it was an excellent presentation. Abbott is a large, global healthcare company with pharmaceutical, nutritional, and medical products. Now that I understand accounting a little better, it is very impressive to see how its sales and operating income have been increasing since 2004 to reach $30 billion and $6 billion respectively in 2008. According to Abbott, its marketing interns are directly linked to a domestic or international business unit. Interns work on projects that impact the business, and provide them with a broad perspective of the healthcare industry. And so I’m left considering marketing as well as corporate finance, which really doesn’t help since I am widening my options. But then, only fools never change their minds, right?
–Simon
