I am obtaining my MBA
at the Marriott School of Management, Brigham
Young University (BYU). I chose BYU because it is one of the top business
school in the nation that offers
a concentration in Information
Systems and Electronic Commerce.
Businesses have been eager to help the
school's e-commerce research efforts, through sponsorships, affiliations,
and outright donations. For example, the Project 2000 think tank has received
cash donations from companies such as iVillage.com, Pitney Bowes, and Shop
at Home Online.
I obtained my B.S. in Psychology from
Belarusian State Pedagogical University
in 1998. While it may seem incongruous for an individual with a degree
in psychology to pursue a career in business,
just the opposite holds
true.
The emphasis in the Psychology program
at Belarusian State Pedagogical University was to draw inferences regarding
a people by analyzing business activities. The skill of being able to
synthesize coherent
conclusions through analysis of disparate data elements
has been invaluable when applied to business
problems. I often employ the skills acquired from my undergraduate degree
when performing
scenario planning exercises
designed to order one's perceptions about
alternative future environments in which today's decisions might be played
out. This "big picture" view has proved invaluable in a marketing capacity
where you often have to paint a picture for your potential client of how
your product or service will benefit them in the near future. The corollary
to this, however, is that the world of information technology is so tumultuous
that you must also seek to position your product or service so that it
does not appear to be obsolete in the same near future. Consequently,
the value of accurately
identifying trends
in public policy, consumer electronics,
national telecommunications infrastructure, and emerging software and hardware
technologies becomes inestimable; you start looking at the needs of a small
software company and realize that you have to care about what is happening
in the global economy.
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