STB – London – Day I

It’s a good morning when you see shiny smiles, but not the best when you hint those sleepyeyes. Our semi-jet-lagged Students gathered at the lobby at 8:30 am to attend the first day of King’s College customized entrepreneurship course. The weather was pretty cold and the students were energetic even with the cold weather and half-sleep. Together we went to the Waterloo tube station to catch a ride where the station was packed with professionals rushing to their daily monotonous jobs. Everyone managed to arrive at Tower Hill at approximately the same time, where they took a short walk to Dexter’s House, the training center where the program is taking place.

At the training center we finally metCordola, the program’s academic organizer that we havebeen dealing with through phone and email. It was really nice to meet her and the rest of the professors involved with the course. As everyone settled in with their name badge and binder, they professionally introduced themselves to the professors and fellow students and the course officially started.

Dr. Tazeeb Rajwani introduced himself as the major professor for the course with his extensive background. After the students introduced themselves, Dr. Rajwani askedthem to identify their individual course objectives and current struggles while identifying their current market positions.

After that, he engaged students with case studies from fashion retails like Zara to explain the implications of pursuing different competitive strategies, and to help participants appreciate the importance of sustaining advantage and what capabilities and resources might deliver this. He also used the case study to educate entrepreneurs on the latest marketing and PR techniques, such as social marketing • panels (social networks:Twitter, Facebook). Dr. Rajwani proved to be very interactive with his teaching methods as hekept the students engaged all throughout.

Pink Coffee has made previous dinner arrangements for the students and professors with Moti Mahal, one of the top Indian restaurants in town. Right after the course ended at 5:30 pm, we took the tube down to Holborn to get to Moti Mahal. As we arrived, we were escorted to our table where we were served with delicious Indian food of all types. What’s special about Moti Mahal is the diversity of the juices on the menu; a lot of us enjoyed the mango butter milk smoothie and the watermelon mixed juice to name a few.

After this delicious meal, everyoneenjoyed a little free time where a few of us went to the movies, some walked around the beautiful city, and others engaged in different activities.

Stay tuned for more to come from STB London 😉