Class Report: MBA Essentials

The first class for MBA students in the English track on the Weekend MBA program is MBA Essentials. Even though students can choose to enroll at the NUCB Business School in April or September, the traditional academic calendar in Japan favors an April, or Spring, enrollment. As a core course to earn their MBA degree, the students spend their weekend at the Nagoya Marunouchi Tower Campus in downtown Nagoya while the cherry blossoms await on the outside in Mejio Park and Tsuruma Park for Hanami viewing.

As a fundamental course to launch students into an MBA mind frame, Prof. Ted Katagi has designed the course to provide students with a broad background on the nature and scope of marketing concepts used in business. MBA Essentials is designed to give students a clear understanding of the marketing function, introduce students to the elements of the marketing mix (4P’s) and demonstrate how today’s managers employ these tools to gain a competitive edge in the global economy. The four cornerstones of the course are ‘Marketing Proposition Development’, ‘Leadership Development’, ‘Blue Ocean Proposition Development’ and ‘Strategic Leadership.’ Prof. Katagi introduces the cases of Yellow Tail Wine, Marvel, Amazon and Carlos Ghosn as the platform of discussion for these themes. Are you ready to take on MBA Essentials?

Prof. Ted Katagi is currently CEO of Kenja Corporation, a B2B Cloud Collaboration platform company selling to Enterprise Customers. He was also Head of Private Equity Asia for Fidelity Investments, Chief Marketing Officer of Vodafone Japan and Verizon Wireless (west), and Global Head of Commercial Strategy for Vodafone. Ted also worked at IBM and Bain and Company and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School as well as Computer Science and Economics degrees from UC Berkeley.