...Pursuit of an MBA Pursuit of an MBA Today’s job market seems to be a free for all. There seems to be fewer jobs and millions of people applying. That being said, it seems very important in times like this individuals do all that they can to try and set themselves a part from the next person. Experience is an important factor to do this, but when that is not enough they must turn to school. An associate degree and a bachelor’s degree is sure to set individuals apart from someone with just a high school diploma, but what about those off us that need to be set apart from the others with college degrees. With this my pursuit of an MBA comes to play. In 2003 roughly 1.2 million college students competing with roughly nine million people who are unemployed. Seven years later I am sure these numbers have changed since then, this is a huge reason to why we need to pursue graduate degrees. In my case, I am very lucky to have a job; however it is not what I am looking for. I constantly apply for other jobs and never even receive a call back on anything. I knew if I wanted to change things and eventually provide for my family I was going to need to stand out. I feel going back for my MBA will instantly separate me from the millions of others who have Bachelor’s degrees. I feel with my MBA and with my experience I am sure to catch the attention of employers. Once their attention is caught, I am able to have the chance to sell myself to them and why I am the guy...
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...The Stress-free Pursuit of an MBA Anonymous Student MGT/521 March 27, 2011 Phoenix Instructor The Stress-free Pursuit of an MBA The decision to pursue a postgraduate degree can turn into a decade-long odyssey. In my case the competing factors of time and finances always seemed to have the upper hand. In fact, it would be significantly easier to present all of the arguments against going back to school at this time. One could argue strongly that several significant life-changing events experienced recently would be reason enough to delay the initiation of the Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) program. Issues related to family loss and job change could be used as evidence in favor of postponement. Financial strains could also be presented as yet another reason that the time, effort, and expense required for an MBA would not be a necessary use of resources. However, despite all of the very valid arguments supporting a delay or abandonment of this goal, now is the time to begin my pursuit in earnest. In presenting the rationale for my decision, particularly related to all of the major life change I am going through, I am confident that the reader will concur that I am prepared to face the challenges of a postgraduate degree. According to The American Institute of Stress (n.d.), Dr. Hans Selye defined stress in 1936 as "the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change” (para. 2). Whereas the causes of stress and the responses to it...
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...Introduction: “The Pursuit of Happyness,” was released by Columbia Pictures in December 2006 and is inspired by the true story of a real-life leader, Chris Gardener. Chris Gardner is the owner and CEO of Gardner Rich LLC with offices in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Gardner Rich LLC is a FINRA registered broker-dealer specializing in servicing public pension funds and Taft-Hartley plans for some of the nation’s largest institutions and unions. Conquering grave challenges to become a successful entrepreneur, Gardner is an avid motivational and inspirational speaker, addressing the keys to overcoming obstacles and breaking cycles. Gardner is also a passionate philanthropist whose work has been recognized by many esteemed organizations. Will Smith starred as Gardner and received Academy Award, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for his performance. Gardner was an associate producer on the film. In the early years of his life, Gardener was a scientific supply salesman. In the movie, he sells bone scanners which are hard to sell and no one needs. As a result he is shown to be financially distraught from the beginning. In 1981, as a new father to son Christopher Gardner Jr., he was determined to find a career that would be both lucrative and fulfilling. He was also determined to raise his child in the best way he could because he himself had spent his entire life not knowing who his father was. Fascinated by finance and in his pursuit of happiness, but without...
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...Show Me the Money “The Pursuit of Happiness” University of Phoenix Fis/200 Tonda Bolinger I chose the film The Pursuit of Happiness. This movie is a very good example of how money can either make you or break you. It is about the real life a guy named Chris Gardner. He is a well-known stockbroker in California. Chris had just moved in with his wife and young son Christopher when he decided to use his whole life savings to buy these bone density machines. The original thought was that this high profile device would eventually replace the X-Ray machine by providing better imaging. Chris would soon figure out that these bone density devices were luxury item and considered to be well over priced. This making it very hard to sell those to anyone much less make any money to live off of. This was the start of all the problems Chris would face in the upcoming months. Lack of money was a big factor in how the whole movie unraveled. All of the problems he encountered while trying to sell these machines made a huge impact on his income. This led to his wife having to work a whole lot of extra shifts to be able to cover all the bills, adding pressure and financial shortcomings which led to difficult struggles between Chris and his wife. On top of making sure all the bills were paid she also had the young son to take care of. One day Chris was on his way to a potential sale. As he was walking along he saw this guy pull up in this very nice car. When the man steps out he asks him...
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...Defining customers as those people and organizations for whom R&R creates value, R&R serves the following customers: 1. TV Guide; 2. American board game players, i.e. adults and children; 3. Retail outlets, which can be classified as mass merchandisers and department/gift stores; 4. The game developer, i.e. ‘a professional inventor’; 5. TV guide employees who develop the questions; 6. Sam Kaplan; 7. Sales representatives; 8. Kaplan’s supplier; 9. Swiss Colony; 10. Heller Factoring. Arguably, TV guide is a supplier/ marketing channel/ licensor, yet R&R creates value for TV Guide in the sense of creating a business opportunity. A similar argument holds for the other customers of R&R as well. If we look at the final consumers of the product, then according to the definition of Osterwalder and Pigneur, R&R serves a mass market. Taking into consideration the remarks of Mr. Reiss, who mentions that his customers are the manufacturers representatives and the buyers of major chains, we can argue that he distinguishes between input and output in his firm. Thus making the business model multi sided, the suppliers need many retail outlets to have their products for sale; and vice versa: the retail outlets require large production. The value proposition describes what value is delivered to the customer. Or, to be more precise, what are the bundles of products and services that create value for R&Rs customers. Given the limited space of 1 page, I will stick to the customers defined by Mr...
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...think that money can buy happiness and if we have money we are living the good life. Even Aristotle would agree that money can’t buy happiness. But what if you are poor and struggling and trying to reach success because you need to support your family. Can that success buy happiness? Because when you are struggling and trying to make ends meet it can be frustrating. We can definitely look at the movie Pursuit of Happyness and try to think what would Aristotle think of the story and would he agree on the main character, Chris’s, definition of happiness. In the movie Pursuit of Happyness there is a guy name Chris Gardner who is trying his best to support his family by selling portable bone density scanners. And for Chris to be able to pay rent and daycare fees, he has to at least sell 2 scanners each month. Throughout the movie he has a hard time selling them and it gets to the point where he can’t pay his bills. In result of him not being able to pay his bills, his wife ends up leaving and he also gets evicted from his home and the only person he has left is his son Christopher (Pursuit of Happyness). So his only option to not live on the streets and to give his son a good life is to find a good paying job. When I was watching the movie, one scene that stood out was the scene when Chris was walking through the Financial District in San Francisco after a long day of trying to sell his scanners. But as he is walking he sees a man in a suit and tie stepping out of a nice sports car...
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...BoReissROBERT REISS Robert “Bob” Reiss, HBS 1956, started out as a waiter at resorts in upstate New York. He moved on after HBS to run the personalized-pencil division of a small New York company. He saw that as an opportunity to learn about running a business while someone else “picked up the tab.” He then started a sales rep company and soon stumbled on opportunities in adult games like chess and magic. Eventually he sold his company to a needlecraft company. Bob then founded R&R to create and sell games, including the TV Guide Trivia game produced during the Trivial Pursuit craze in the 1980s. Bob described his entrepreneurial career in a video interview from his office in Boca Raton, Florida, in February 2001. Interviewer: Amy Blitz, HBS Director of Media Development for Entrepreneurial Management. The Early Years I grew up in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. Both my parents worked. They taught me a strong work ethic and a strong sense of morality. They also taught me to never, ever complain about anything in life. I had a brother who was three years younger than me. We grew up in a very competitive environment. We weren’t aware that it was competitive since that was just the way things were. Sports were everything in our world. We had millions of street games in front of the house. Basketball was the big sport, because in Brooklyn we didn’t have the big playing fields, so everybody played in the schoolyards. Three-man basketball was the game all weekend long. In the winter...
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...BACH NGUYEN ESL 302 MS. MUENCH 02, 25, 09 Out-class essay#1 Second draft A Good Father in the Pursuit of Happyness Every film more or less has impact to audience depending on which type of film and the awareness of each person. The Pursuit of Happyness is a nice movie which shows the regular social issues. It presented the good results that a man got by his great effort in his hard working. Love and trust between father and son is also the dynamics that lead to his motivation to succeed in his life. Through the content of this film, the interactions between Chris and his son impressed me so much. In my opinion, Chris Gardner was a good father through the ways that he acted with his son generally. After watching the movie, it was hard to ignore that he was a responsible father. He really cared about his son’s environment which Christopher communicated with because Chris did not want his son to get the information which did not fit with Christopher’s age. For example, when he saw some bad words on the wall next to the place where Christopher got day-care, he asked the street cleaner to erase them due to being afraid of his son’s seeing. In addition, he told his son to forget the bad words that Christopher had seen on the wall. He also complained the baby-sister after hearing his son retelling his watching a movie which was unsuitable with a child at her day-care home. Anther aspect shows Chris’ love with his son as a father’s obligation when his wife left her family. He...
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...The Quest for Happiness People's quest for happiness seems to be fueled by the 'pretty things' they surround themselves with. In D.H Lawrence's "The Rocking Horse Winner", this pursuit results in destruction. Paul's brutal death is the logical conclusion to the misguided values and beliefs his mother instills in him that are validated by the personified house. The whispering and screaming of the house represent that, in Paul's family, more money leads to more misery. A potent sense of paranoia spilts up the family with the unspoken phrase "There must be more money! There must be more money!" (255). The house begins to scream when Hester spends the five thousand dollars her son secretly wins for her. She spends this sum of money quickly without regret, and without putting any amount aside to save. This frightens Paul, and he becomes "wild-eyed and strange, as if something were going to explode in him" (264). The house begins to scream as the growing need of money becomes stronger. The change fo the house's whispering to screaming because of Hester's craving to spend money on worthless things shows that the pursuit of happiness through wealth is futile. Paul's mother often values the material things in life. However, what she values most in luck. Hester interjects inot her son that "If you're lucky, you have money. That's why it's better to be born lucky than rich"(256). After talking with his mother, Paul wants luck, only so...
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...is full of music; it is the rhythm of the street, and heartbeat of the earth itself. By unlocking these secrets, I can achieve that which is most revered to me; by sharing these secrets with those who seek them, I can help them achieve theirs as well; it is ever the musician’s quest to be heard much like the teachers’. Being accepted as an Emerald Eagle in the College of Music is, for me, a stepping stone. Every time I play a note, every time an audience cheers, every time I am allowed to share my experience with those who desire the same, I draw closer to the truth of my existence and I crave more. Taking what I love and giving it to others is a central theme to my story; it is a lifelong pursuit to enrich the lives of others. The pursuit of knowledge is, to me, as dear as the pursuit of happiness. With every new experience, we gain a bit of valuable insight that may help another along the way. With every obstacle we overcome, we draw nearer to the destiny we work to inherit. Every time an eager student asks a question, the answer may have lifelong ramifications. Profound tutelage has been a deciding factor for so many, as it has been for me. Progression is the only choice worth making; we either get better or we give up. I wish to pass on what I have to everyone who desires to attain it. I, like my family before me, seek to inspire with actions and words. By learning, I learn for the betterment of my culture, not just myself. This is the calling...
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...products were on the upswing, and had yet to reach the U.S. 2. Success of Trivial Pursuit in Canada was crucial 3. Reiss’s experience in the logistics and lead time concerns of manufacturing in the toy industry 4. Reiss’s personal connections: • Kaplan (Equity) • Helen Factoring (Billing & Accounts Receivables) • Swiss Colony (production and shipping) • Suppliers for books, boards and boxes Q.2. What risks and obstacles had to be overcome to pursue the opportunity successfully? 1. Advertising (Did not possess the Advertising budget of larger companies, i.e. Parker Bros.) 2. Public’s interest in Trivia Games declining (Over saturation can/will occur rapidly) 3. Manufacturing with little lead time 4. Cash Flow 5. Sales 6. Competition (mainly Trivial Pursuit) How did Bob Reiss accomplish this? 1. Advertising Strategy 2. Offering incentive(5% ad allowance) to dept. stores for placing ad in print 3. Free media publicity 4. Ensured product would be available for sale before “fad” of Toy/Game had occurred 5. Utilized personal experience and intelligence to create an efficient product design (booklet, instead of cards) 6. Business Partner Kaplan 7. Sales Strategy 8. Price Point was set significantly lower than Trivial Pursuit 9. Targeted major Dept. Stores and mass merchandisers, yet distinguished them...
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...recognition to the endorsement. Another reason to launch Whoozit is the low cost of the endeavor. If analogous estimation holds true, Trivia Inc. could produce these units for about $5/unit and stand to make profits of about $2.00 per unit on 500,000 units. The total cost to launch The TV trivia game was $50K, but profits were over $2M net for Trivia Inc. If Whoozit could be executed as successfully as TV Guide TV game, it would be money well spent. Finally, the lessons that Reiss had gleaned from Trivial Pursuit’s US launch are incorporated into the design of Whoozit. Whoozit’s design creates easy play appealing to customers that wanted a simple and fun game. Also Reiss suggested a version that was interoperable with the trivial pursuit setup, absolutely brilliant. A product designed with the customer in mind will end up in a shopping cart. In conclusion Reiss’ dilemma is going to be how to spend all the money he...
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...Many people have thought for many years about the question of what happiness is. So far, no one can give an exact answer to the question because everyone has his or her own idea of happiness. The only question is how far we can go in pursuit of happiness. In “We Have No Right to Happiness,” C.S. Lewis argues that pursuing happiness cannot conflict either with state nor natural laws. We only have the right to happiness within the limits of those laws. He asserts that to have lasting happiness, we have to control our impulses, especially sexual impulses, because if we all give into our impulses, society will be morally degraded which will lead to its destruction. I agree with Lewis because I believe that to build our happiness, we need obey both...
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...The Pursuit of Happiness Jun Xi Zhou DeVry University The Pursuit of Happiness I would like to comment on a movie called “The Pursuit of Happiness”. It is based on a true story of the famous self-made millionaire Chris Gardner. When I saw this movie, I thought it might be another old story of inspiring people to stick to their dreams, nothing new. But I decided to watch it for the reason that it stars Will Smith who was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Actor because of his performance in this movie. I believe that a good movie must have a good plot, wonderful acting, and the most important thing is the audience’s feeling when they have finished watching the movie. I expect the movie to give me the strength and let me feel happiness. Protagonist of the story is the American black’s investment expert Chris Gardner. Film tells a bankrupt salesman through their unremitting efforts, finally become famous financier of the inspirational story. The most important thing is that what people will know and what are people’s feelings after they have watched the movie. When watching the film I was considering whether to continue to go to college, and I don't know direction. I considered whether I should continue to pursue my dream. After I finished watching, I found that unlike a usual success story, this movie is realistic because there are many failures, defeats and missed opportunities before success happens. An important clue in the film is the change...
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...The year is 1981, and Chris Gardener (Will Smith) is trying to make a living by selling bone scanner machines in San Francisco to doctors and medical centers. It's a bother to lug around the clunky machines but he enjoys making connections with people. Although he is a natural born salesman, this African-American believes that he is destined for a better career path. His wife Linda (Thandie Newton) is working at two jobs to help pay the bills, and they are behind on their rent. Their five-year old son, Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith), goes to a day carecenter, and it bugs his dad that on the outside of the building, the term "the pursuit of happyness" is misspelled. He is convinced that these little details make all the difference in life. The constant strain of financial pressure is too much for Linda to handle so she decides to take a job with a relative in a restaurant in New York. Although her husband is a disappointment to her, she does have confidence that he will find a way to take care of their son, and so she leaves Christopher with him. Chris's persistence pays off when he is chosen for an internship program at a prestigious stock brokerage firm. The determining factor seems to be that he impresses one of the top officers by solving a Rubiks Cube in record time. It is obvious that he has a special gift for numbers in addition to his flair for sales. The only hitches to his new lease on life are that the program does not pay any salary and only one of the...
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