Visit to LBS. Part 3. Lectures and other useful information

The lecture theater, where I was, is on -1 floor, so there are no windows there. I like rooms with windows, that is why I mention it. But in all other aspects the classroom is very nice. The professor is well heard, though, if you sit at the backseat, you may not hear what people in front of you say during the discussion (and you'll have to tell every speaker 'Speak up, please!').

The first lecture that I attended was in Managerial Economics.
All lectures are three hours long with a break of twenty or so minutes in the middle (during which you can queue for coffee in 'The Bite').
The first part of ME was not very clear to me ;). I think I should have done some pre-reading (or should have visited the previous lecture) to follow. Professor was talking about two types of customers: rich and mass (they don’t have so much money, but they are numerous), and their willingness to pay for the product during the first hour, second hour (the demand dropped) and on the whole. The task was to propose the pricing scheme, which will give the biggest revenue. All this reminded me of a game set theory: min-max and all that. And maybe it was :)
The second part was devoted to monopolies, and two groups presented a case 'Microsoft vs U.S. Government'. 'Government' presentation was like all governments presentations: long, full of tied together facts and inevitability. On the other hand, 'MS' was funny and nice. They won the sympathy of the audience, of course ;)
Cases are not like real life, where you can find additional information in the Google. You are kept in the frame of the case and cannot mention future or give other suppositions. For instance, Firefox&Mozilla are eating some of IE market share right now and eating fast: 10% a year (that's the statistics which I got myself from a number of website counters, so take it with salt).
A remark: since the school has wireless network, a lot of students open their computers during the lecture to blog, or send an e-mail... Be careful, guys, because sometimes professor is sitting behind you (those who sit in the right wing).
After the case and the discussion whether the monopolies are good or bad (this depends on a sector), professor told us how do antimonopoly committee count if there is a monopoly in the market. And in the end he took out some bottles... and asked if Company X, which has these three products, will buy Product Y, will it be considered as a monopolist or will it diversify the portfolio of its products. And the cleverest guy asked to try Product Y and those products from Company X to see if they are alike. After drinking he concluded that Company X would be buying a part of different market (drinks for ladies), so no monopoly. And after that I was asked numerous times if there was some other B-school where people could drink alcohol during lectures :)

The second lecture was Strategy and professor was talking how you can make your product distinct and add value to it.
The first question was: should you make it the cheapest or add some value into it and make it different. Everyone agreed that you should add value, and only if your business processes are the best so that you can lower price - you can be the cheapest. This will be just your additional distinction.
When professor asked what distinctions you could add, I said to myself 'quality', but none of the student mentioned it in their answers. And having been at London shops I know why. If you have been in some Turkey shops (or Russian shops), just like me, then 'quality' would probably come first to your mind.
We've been shown some very good videos about hotel chains and how they make themselves different. Some cut off everything that will make their price higher, some focus on clients very much. And in the end students discussed the case of refocusing some hotel. I haven't read the case, so it was difficult for me to take part in the discussion, but it was interesting to observe who spoke and who listened. After group discussion, some people were asked to present their answers and, funnily enough, nearly all answers had nothing to do with the real life one, which professor announced after the discussion.
To sum up, the subject of the lecture was not new (it is widely mentioned in the books and articles), but examples were great.
A remark: no cold calls during these two lectures. Professors asked only those (but not all, of course) who raised their hands.

This is a photo of the same stone, Miss N posted. Just upholding the tradition ;)

What else I found out
LBS asks for two languages upon graduation. INSEAD is the only school, which asks for three. Admission officer told me that I must have mixed them up, but I got that impression from reading information on the site and in the catalogue. And I read that before I even thought about INSEAD.