Jargon
MBA :
Air Hogs: students
who monopolize classroom discussion and love to hear themselves speak.
Air Time: a
precious opportunity-speaking or making comments in class. Analysis Paralysis:
not being able to make a decision because you've gotten lost in the thicket of
your own analysis.
Back of the Envelope: an
abbreviated analysis of the numbers.
Barriers to Entry: conditions
that prevent entry into a particular market. Beta of a Stock: the inherent
volatility of a stock. Bottleneck: the point in a plant or process that
determines or blocks the pace.
Burn Rate: amount
of cash a company consumes each day.
Case Cracker: a
comment in class that gets to the essence of case.
Case Study Method: popular
teaching method that uses real-life business cases for analysis.
Chip Shots: unenlightening
comments made during class discussion for the sole purpose of getting credit.
Cold Call: unexpected,
often dreaded request by the professor to open a case.
Core Courses: courses
in the basic disciplines of business, usually mandatory.
Corner Office: office
location that all MBAs aspire to and the exclusive province of partners,
managing directors and senior executives.
Cost Benefit Analysis: calculating
whether something is worth doing on the basis of the real dollar cost versus
real dollar benefit. This is often used as a shortcut in analyzing the numbers.
Cycle Time: how
fast you can turn something around.
Deliverable: what
your end product is.
Finheads: finance
heads. See also sharks. Four P's: elements of a marketing strategy-Price, Promotion,
Place, Product. Fume Date: date the company will run out of cash reserves.
Functional Areas: the
basic disciplines of business.
Globalization: trend
of the '80s and '90s; expanding the definition of your market to include the
challenges of operating in a multicountry, multiconsumer market.
Hard Courses: anything
with numbers.
HP12-C: the
calculator of choice for number crunching.
I-Bankers: investment
banking analysts coming out of the two-year training programs and into
B-school.
Incentivize: a
bastardized version of the word incentive, used as a verb.
MBA Weenies: students
who believe that once they get their MBAs they'll be masters of the universe.
Net Net: End
result.
OOC: out of
cash.
Opportunity Costs: the
cost of pursuing an opportunity, i.e., for B-school, tuition and loss of income
for two years.
Poets: students
with little quantitative skills or experience (numerically challenged).
Power Naps: quick,
intense in-class recharge for the continually sleep deprived.
Power Tool: someone
who does all the work and sits in the front row of the class with his hand up.
Pre-enrollment Courses: commonly
known as MBA summer camp-quantitative courses, generally offered in the summer
before the first year to get the numerically challenged up to speed.
Pro Forma: financial
presentation of hypothetical events; for example, how much new debt would a
company require if it grows ten percent a year?
Quant Jock: a
numerical athlete who is happiest crunching numbers.
Quick and Dirty: an
abbreviated analysis, often involving numbers.
Run the Numbers: analyze
quantitatively.
Sharks: aggressive
students who smell blood and move in for the kill.
Shark Comment: comment
meant to gore a fellow student in class discussion.
Soft Courses: touchy-feely
courses such as human resources and organizational behavior.
Soft Skills: conflict
resolution, teamwork, negotiation, oral and written communication.
Slice and Dice: running
all kinds of quantitative analysis on a set of numbers.
The Five Forces: Michael
Porter's model for analyzing the strategic attractiveness of an industry.
Three C's: the
primary forces-Customer, Competition, Company.
Total Quality Management: the
Edward Demming method of management that caught on with the Japanese and is now
"hot" in American business-managing the quality of products, service,
work, process, people and objectives.
Valuation: adds
up projected future cash flows into current dollars. Value-Based Decision
Making: values and ethics as part of the practice of business.v