To the new EMBA VII Cohort, firstly I’d like to offer my congratulations to each of you, not only for getting through the very stringent admissions, but also for making a truly life-changing decision to pursue the EMBA at Oxford! The 21 months which lie ahead of you will soon prove to be equally extraordinary [...]

Wimbledon, The Royal Henley Regatta, a heat wave, Shakespeare in the amphitheatre, long English summer days and watching the sun set over the cricket field at Worcester College… With the awareness that we will only travel to Oxford together as a class one more time, these paint what I will remember as a romantic English [...]

I’d visited Oxford several times before. The first time, about 12 years earlier, I’d been part of a BBC course. As part of an organized tour we visited famous colleges like Christ Church and St John’s, and pretty much all of the touristy, pretty parts of the town. But to their credit, the tour organizers [...]

As 2008 draws to a close and EMBA V passes the half-way milestone in our Oxford education, it’s very difficult indeed to resist the temptation of reflecting on the year just gone…
So I give in.
What was 2008 all about? What themes emerged? What threads were knit together to weave the fabric of 2008?
With ever so [...]

It will have been a full three months by the time we return to Oxford next week, and indeed, it seems a long time ago since Module 7. This past September saw the departure of the EMBA IVs, and we were treated to a glimpse of what we can look forward to this time next [...]

Sadly, I haven’t any photos from this past week in Oxford, which is a pity because this time, I had a lovely sole-occupancy flat with a roof terrace on the river next to Oxford Castle. Unbelievable, but true. Claire and I had identical adjacent flats, sharing the expansive roof terrace, and were as such compelled [...]

With the London and Boston Marathons just gone, it’s easy to draw parallels between earning the Oxford Executive MBA degree and running the 26.2 mile/42.2 km course. I would know, having finished the London Marathon in 2006 as a bit of a one-hit-wonder (I’m not a runner by any stretch of the imagination).
The anticipation before [...]