The first one..

I am a graduate student at MIT Sloan. I love all things digital - but would like to be in the business of organizing and getting them work together so as to fit the larger scale of human intention. No, this is not digital philosophy 101, but a more system dynamics view of things. I like to think about the value chain dynamics existing within the communication and information industries in general.

After a few years in product design, program management, and technology strategy consulting, I decided to step back to reasses my perspectives and realized that there was much missing. With my engineering undergraduate degree and couple years spent managing teams, I sure knew the best project management processes and product design lifecycles and principles. But most of what you learn while at work can be stuck into compartments of restricted practical experience. I wanted to understand what drives innovation, how can I make it a part of a constant learning organization. How are dominant designs affected by the industry and what are the factors of new product adoption. How to be constantly focussed on the customer and not the technology itself? How does a firm operate in the constantly evolving capital markets and regulatory landscape to create value through collaborative decision making across partners and complementers?

All this drove me to join the MIT System Design and Management program, administered jointly by the MIT School of Engineering and Sloan School of Management. The program instills a 'systems' view of things, explaining through concrete cases and business problems, how every system exists within a larger system and is co-existing with other systems. The cumulative value of these systems is more than the sum its individual parts. My cohort, which comprises of some of the most brilliant minds I have met, is using these concepts to become better problem solvers, product managers, entrepreneurs, change management champions whithin their organizations and shrewd technology/ business strategists. More about this program can be found at http://sdm.mit.edu/.