William Ramon Pacheco
Since this is the first of possibly a few posts, I should take a moment to introduce myself. My name is William Pacheco and I am a part of the April 2011 intake for the IE’s IMBA program. I am originally from the United States, but more specifically, from the state of Florida. I graduated from the University of Florida and worked for 6 years with Accenture then for another 5 years with Pfizer before coming to IE to begin the MBA program and also my fellowship with the International Development team. I cannot say enough about my time here; much has been learned, many friendships have been made and much fun has been had.
The reason for this post however, is to highlight one of the key offerings that I feel has made my time here at IE especially enlightening. While most business schools these days offer case based learning techniques, several courses I have taken during the year have featured simulations that give a student such as me a better feel for what “a day in the life” of a specific career is really like.
One such course is Marketing Strategy for Decision Making, an intense 5-day, 20-session and team-based simulation. While most marketing courses follow a standard case format, this class allows you to make all the relevant marketing decisions for two fictional markets, and in both cases you do not compete against the software, but rather, you compete against your colleagues. Each teams strategy and tactics affect the other teams and create a situation similar to the real world where there is no set mix of decisions that will guarantee you a win. The team dynamics are great and the daily recap by the professor provides great guidance, ensuring that you learn from the decisions you made regardless of the outcome. This was a truly rewarding class.
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