Tag Archives: uwa business degree
The first half of 2016 has been a wild ride for the MBA Full Time Intensive cohort at the University of Western Australia (UWA). We had to get through the forming, storming and norming process very quickly as it was apparent that we would be spending A LOT of time together and needed to be a high-performing team if we were to succeed. Over the last six months we have formed a tight-knit cohort and I can proudly say that no person has been left behind, despite the incredibly fast pace of our curriculum.
As I pass the half-way point in the MBA program at the UWA Business School I have found this an excellent time to reflect on the year so far. We have been educated in several vital business disciplines such as accounting, statistics, finance, economics, organisational behaviour and marketing. However, while I have read many textbooks, some of my biggest takeaways from the course so far have been above and beyond traditional MBA coursework.
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My name is Laurent Barrere, and I am currently half-way through the UWA MBA Full Time Intensive program at the University of Western Australia (UWA). I am also the recipient of the Dean’s Scholarship for which I am very grateful. I was expecting to learn a lot this year, in finance, economics, and organisational behaviour. And I did. But I couldn’t possibly anticipate the learnings I gotten so far about myself, my strengths, my weaknesses, and my potential. Over the past six months I have interacted with great leaders of Australia; close encounters with greatness that would humble me and excite my aspirations for the future. I recently came to realise more broadly what those learnings about leadership were and how they lay critically at the core of Corporate Australia’s attitude towards change.
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As a young business professional in Perth, you come to the realisation that there aren’t many opportunities available to network with your peers. This is a shame, especially in a ‘small town’ like Perth where we should all know each other by now. Naturally, when I received the invite to attend the very first Young Alumni Network (YAN) event, I jumped at the opportunity. What I saw at that first event was a group of dedicated young UWA Business School alumni, who were working to better connect and inform their peers through genuinely interesting and engaging events. I got in touch with Kelvin Mahuka, one of the then co-chairs of YAN and told him that I’d be interested in helping out.
Fast forward a year later and I’ve been fortunate enough to lead the organisation of two high profile events.
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There’s currently extensive media coverage of an “ideas boom” now underway in Australia. This “boom” is being strongly supported by the Federal government, who have recently introduced a range of measures to promote and foster the boom in the form of special tax incentives and direct government funding. Increasingly venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are looking for the next winning idea.
What is the relevance of an MBA to this ideas boom? Naive thinking has it that an MBA is incompatible with the new environment of innovation and disruption, however nothing could be further from reality.
While it’s a popular myth, disruptive, innovative ideas don’t spring from nothing. Rather, developing and articulating a new idea or concept requires a careful and structured consideration of a wide range of factors – the size and dimensions of the marketplace, the “problems” being faced by consumers, the competitor environment, and proposing a solution that addresses these competing considerations, that is viable and executable. The skills required to perform this kind of analysis are broad based and an ability to work effectively across business disciplines is required.
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Finishing high school and with WACE exams sufficiently far behind me, I remember being daunted by the prospect of university – the next phase of my life. And, with it, a whole number of questions, not the least of which being the issue of choosing a degree.
Not having realised that such an issue would present itself so early on (I was still reeling from my Christmas-induced calorie coma) I hadn’t taken any time to so much as consider what a major even was. I quickly turned to my dependable source of all things ‘UWA’ – my older brother. He immediately told me to choose a major in Commerce. I asked why.
He told me that (aside from the fact he had done an Economics degree, which didn’t influence his advice in any way, shape or form) a Commerce degree was valuable. It would give me productive, real-world skills that were specific enough to be interesting and yet broad enough to be applicable in any field, any sector, any country. I followed his advice and, with my mind set on the Juris Doctor (law degree) after my undergraduate, chose Business Law as my first major. I’m in my third year now and looking back, I can say that he was right.
