RIP Prahalad

It would be an understatement to say that Prof. Prahalad is famous just among people who are into corporate strategy. Its sad to hear about the untimely demise of such a great person. Coincidentally, I recently had this discussion about Prof. Prahalad's ideas with one of my friends on how the poor in emerging markets have a huge untapped potential and how it can be harnessed by the big corporates of the world for profitability and how this can indirectly have an effect on improving the lives of the poor. The context of this discussion was me trying to borrow the book 'fortune at the bottom of the pyramid' from my friend.

I am having a tough time in borrowing books these days due to my recently gained reputation of being too sloppy and occasionally foolhardy, when it comes to returning them. Be it to the library, be it to my friends. Since my friend happens to be an ardent fan of Prof. Prahalad, him having attended one of the professors' acclaimed talks, I felt that I could talk him though lending me the book by utilizing my uncanny ability of throwing out a few excerpts from the book and gain his approval as a fan-peer of prahalad :). Hence, I did my research on the book but felt all the more fascinated and intrigued in due course by some of the ideas that prof. Prahalad has put forward like how more than 2.5 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day and how new models of business can be developed using technology to successfully target the demographic. I can't wait to borrow/steal the book from my friend and finish it asap thereby paying my tribute to the esteemed professor ( somehow neither renting the book from the library nor buying in online doesn't sound soo.. challenging ! :)  )

Preparation, hithertho

My preparation has been going on and off for a few weeks now. I used to work in Maryland up until November '08. I changed jobs and moved to Chicago area back then. I should say the winter here kind of motivated me to get back to reading, since there wasn't really a lot to do in my free time during early days of my stay here. Howerver, I procrastinated for a couple of months and finally decided to buy material and jumpstart my GMAT prep. This happened in early January.( not exactly one of my primary new year resolutions ! ). To cut the matter short, here are the books I bought.

1. Princeton review

2. The Official Guide for GMAT, 11th edition ( OG from here on )

3. The Official Guide for GMAT - Verbal Review

4. Kaplan GMAT Premier Progam - 2009 edition

5. Manhattan GMAT ( CR, RC, SC ) - Need to purchase.

6. Flash cards - Need to make yet.

I have been working on Princeton review for the past month in a very hapazard fashion. By now, I finished the verbal and quant sections of the book. I got good scores ( 3 out of 26 wrong, 4 out of 26 wrong ) on the math 1 ( easiest ), math 2 ( easier ) bins resp. . I also took the diagnostic test in the book and scored a 550. I still need lots of work to do!

After going through the forum at beat the gmat ( an excellent resouce for gmatters, btw ) and a few othe blogs, I decided to design my schedule in as below and stick to it.

1. Weekdays - 8 hrs ( 4 days a week - 2hrs each day )

2. Weekends - 10 hrs ( 5 hrs each on sat, sun )

That sums up to 18 hrs each week, for the next 8 weeks.For now, my plans falls somewhere in between the 100hr and 300hr gameplans. I am currently working on my gamplane and I will update you all with that very shortly.