Time goes by quite fast in ISB. Term 2 (and DMOP) is done and over with as of last week and we are officially 25% MBAs! Not even 3 days into Term 3 and I am still up at 5 in the morning… No, no late night parties right now to keep us up. Instead, its assignments as Term 3 hits with a vengeance. Looking at whats to come, I am beginning to understand why alums say that this term was the hardest in the one year they spent at ISB.

What am I up to? I just dropped off a Management Accounting assignment an hour back and then hit an entrepreneurship case so that I can finish the online quiz on time. Both due in the morning of course. Thank god for afternoon classes this term!

Coming back to the reason for this post, I had a class today where I realized that around 50% of all the management related stuff that we have learnt over the last three months (has it already been that long?) can be explained by two simple graphs.

Graph – I

The ubiquitous supply-demand curve. Apparently, you can explain 75% of all economic theory and what not using this figure. There are of course some slight variations, differences in variables along the axis etc, but the basic curves stay the same over multiple topics.

Graph – II

This ‘frontier’ graph has been verified as being the essence of multiple subjects, from Economics (the remaining 25%) to Marketing to Competitive Strategy to Operations Management. No wonder people can by now just walk to the board when cold called and draw this in their sleep, and be correct. Well, most of the time anyway.

The lesson? Remember these two figures and thats a major part of MBA teaching distilled right into your brain. I might just write a book (or a pamphlet?) about it. Title suggestions/comments welcome, though I am currently partial to: ‘The 2 minute MBA’.