While I have enjoyed getting introduced to my courses at LBS and meeting the different faculties, one in particular caught my attention and that is Analysis of Business Problems (ABP). This is because of many reasons but the most important to me is the vast application to various needs.
ABP is about analyzing real-life business problems, user’s need and proposing adequate solutions to these needs. It involves a lot of critical thinking because whatever decisions you make in a business can either grow it or destroy it. Although this is my first time of taking a proper lecture on problem analysis, I have been in various situations I had to make crucial decisions in my business and personal life. With the few classes I have had, I could reminisce on decisions I made in the past I would have done somewhat better if such situations come to play again.
Analysis of Business Problems (ABP) like some other courses is taught with the case method approach. This means real business cases are given to us before class to analyze and prepare a solution then we address the case in class with the faculty. It usually is a very interactive class as the students present what they have come up with and you have your colleagues either supporting or opposing your ideas. After a few back and forth the facilitator steps in and further explains the case annd this opens our minds to possibilities we possibly missed or did not put together well.
So far in the course, we reviewed about four cases but the last one titled “The future of BioPasteur” has made me more confident of my analytical skills. The case was about a top bio-tech pharmaceutical company that was about to launch a new product but was skeptical about when to do it because they had to decide between doing it at that moment or waiting a few years to further develop the drug. This decision had to be made because the test results carried out by the company during the development stage showed some patients suffered severe conditions from using but still the regulatory body still licensed the drug to be released. Another factor in play was the company had about 9 more years to operate before it would be donated to a research institute. The managers had to decide on maximizing profit in the short operating time left or keeping their good brand name by developing the drug to fix the side effect it was causing ( which would take about five years and cost a huge amount of money) and make smaller amount of profit.
After careful analysis, I was able to back up the logical decision which was to further develop the drug. Though it seemed like a pretty straight forward answer, I needed to use the case data to prove my decision which I successfully did. It took me a while to achieve this as I only submitted my case report 10 minutess to the deadline, I feel very good about successfully solving that particular case and I can say for certain I have learnt a lot from this course and I am ready to jump on the next case.
