And the Mystery Entrepreneurial Management professor is… envelope please… Professor Nancy Koehn. In addition, other classes this week seem to have a strange focus on Microsoft and alcoholic beverages, which are not necessarily related to each other. Please forward any good comments by email to quotes@mba2003.hbs.edu.
Professor Nancy Koehn (Entrepreneurial Management):
“Let’s go back to the case that was actually assigned for today, just to do something different.”
“Don’t you need profit to stay standing at the end of the musical chairs moment?”
“I’d like to double-click on that.”
“I’ve got too many files open right now.”
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[on Russia] Brian Kline (NH): “It’s like a large business. You’ve got three people at the top making all the decisions with no idea what’s going on down at the bottom.”
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Ali Motamed (NH): “What does LEAD stand for?”
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Lisa Jacobs (NH): “I’m not trying to discredit the classes we’re taking here.”
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Professor Josh Coval (Finance 2): “What are some of the costs of Loewen Group’s financial distress?”
Pat Brannelly (NH): “First of all, they’re hiring all these investment bankers. They get paid about $6.50 an hour, so that adds up.”
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Brannelly: “Guinness drinkers are fairly predictable, and handsome, and charming.”
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Robert Kimmel (NH): “Guinness drinkers will get drunk no matter what the overall state of the economy is.”
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Jenn Taylor (NH): “I like graphs.”
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During the Microsoft case:
Drew Robinson (NH): “Do you really care about air conditioning when your car is breaking down every two miles?”
Taylor: “The X-box is like the Trojan horse. Your whole life is running through the X-box.”
Taylor: “Part of the problem with Linux is that getting something developed there is like herding cats.”
John Berger (NH): “The government, historically, has always guessed wrong.”
Channels to Market Professor David Bell: “You can get together in the bar later and discuss these [franchising] issues.”
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Andrew Croshaw (OG), on his wife’s conceding more often than he in negotiations: “I wonder, if there were two of me, would we have such a good relationship?”
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Maxim Kolodkin (OH): “I think there are a lot of important differences between men and women.”
Corporate Diplomacy Professor Michael Watkins: “Which ones are those, exactly?”
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Professional Services Professor Ashish Nanda: “What’s the advantage of your plan?”
Phil Black (OA): “…, and there would be no need for this case.”
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Secil Baysal (OH), on making good tasting drinks out of bad tasting liquor: “Smirnoff Ice has no Smirnoff in it, and Bacardi Ice has no Bacardi. Why not make J&B Coke and not even put J&B in it?”
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Josh Clark (OE): “If you plug your assumptions into portfolio theory, and it comes out 70% pork bellies and 30% football bets, that doesn’t mean the prudent man believes it.”