Resemblance of the late '90s Bulls in the Lakers this year

I have been watching the NBA Finals this year between Lakers and Celtics. And I cant help myself thinking back to the Jordan era back in the 90's.

My first resemblance is when I look at Ron Artest. His playing style and his eccentric behavior and appearance reminds me a lot of Dennis Rodman.

Second, Lakers' sixth man: Lamar Odom. Odom contributes a lot to the Lakers from the bench, and has become one of Lakers' key factors. This is so much alike Bulls' Toni Kukoc. Not to forget, they wear the same jersey number ;)

Third, Kobe's wingman: Pau Gasol. Gasol has become one of the stars of the NBA, and he is working together in a team with one of the league's leaders, Kobe Bryant. His presence in the Lakers' lineup complements the greatness of Bryant, and they have great connection on the court. This resembles Scottie Pippen and Jordan in the good old days.

Fourth, obviously Phil Jackson, who was coaching the Bulls throughout their six NBA titles. Together with MJ, Pippen, Rodman, Kukoc and the rest of the team, they won three straight NBA titles ('96 - '98). He certainly has been the man behind the scene in the Bulls' golden time and the Lakers' of today.

Lastly, without any intentions of comparing, Kobe Bryant. Despite LeBron James being this year's season MVP, Kobe sits on the 3rd in the league's point per game list. Kobe has always been compared with MJ since his career started in the NBA. Although my personal opinion says MJ is still the best there ever was, but the fact is that Kobe has proven to be one of the best players in the NBA and has brought the Lakers the NBA title four times (2000,2001,2002 and 2009). Is it just me, or am I seeing a similar pattern here? I mean Michael brought the Bulls winning the championship in 1991, 1992, 1993 before his first retirement. And when he came back, he won three more NBA titles in 1996, 1997 and 1998.

Kobe won three before he had his personal issues and injuries. He won the title back in 2009. The question is..Will Kobe repeat MJ's history and win 2 more championships? Or will he be even better? Very interesting..... But first, we shall see if they win this year's finals.

......see what i mean?

Interning at ABN AMRO's Dialogues Incubator

Been a while since I last posted something up.
So I started to follow a Masters study at the Delft University of Technology in fall 2008. It is a 2-year course of Management of Technology. I see this study as a facilitator for me to bridge between my technical knowledge in the software engineering realm and the managerial aspects of technology. I decided I need to do this because of my personal experiences looking at the clash between technical and business people. I figured I'd have the best of both worlds.

As the study nearing its end, I am to write a Master's thesis based on a research study. I opted to perform the research at a company of my own search. The search led me to a couple of interesting companies with interesting projects. At the end I had chosen to go on with ABN AMRO. The department I am interning at is ABN's Incubator, the Dialogues House. It is a business incubator that captures ideas within ABN AMRO and assesses them for their feasibility to be turned into new ventures.

My role here is to investigate the decision criteria for the decision makers, when they make the decision of whether a new idea should go on to the next stage or not. In parallel, I am also developing a decision support tool for the decision makers. This tool will give an overview of the on going projects and their position in the portfolio funnel (a funnel adopted based on the New Product Development Stage-Gate model of Robert G. Cooper). The decision support tool will also give project's information such as the resources it needs vs the overall resources available for all projects. Most importantly, this tool will require innovation managers to post answers to the criteria (my research focus) they are confronted when inputing a new project, which will be a decision support for the decision makers when making their go/kill decisions.

This project is really interesting from an academic point of view as I have to try to generalize all kinds of different ideas, which might or might not be strategically fit with ABN AMRO's strategy as a financial services institution, and formulate a generic decision criteria for these ideas. There have been some research in the past on this area, but my research will be specific to a business incubator environment, more specifically ones that are like the Dialogues House ;P. Whats more interesting for the business is the Decision Support tool that I'm developing. If this is a success, we might be looking into scaling the application to fit all business incubators ;) (ambitious)

This might all seem a bit blurry but I intend to label this topic on this blog to document the progress of this project. I hope a lot of people can benefit from this. Especially those who are dealing with portfolio selection complications or similar issues ;)

I'll keep you posted!

Police Academy Stunt Show

Today I went to Ancol, Jakarta's largest recreation park, located in the North of Jakarta to see the Police Academy Stunt Show, featuring 18 stuntmen and women from Italy. According to the event's coordinator, some of the group's members were involved in the stunts of the latest James Bond movie. The show was quite entertaining as I saw a man jumping off a building, cars drifting and motorcycles flying. Although the sound effects, the set, and the fireworks were not as spectacular as you would expect to have at similar shows in the US or Australia. Here's the most disappointing things:
1. Besides that it's ugly, the sound effects do not match the stunts' actions
2. Fake helicopter :(
3. All the explosions were replaced by tiny, unattractive fireworks.

All in all it was an entertaining 45 minutes of show, and the stuntmen and women are highly experienced - the car stunts were amazing!

One thing that got me amazed, though, is how dedicated these people are to doing their jobs, doing the same stunts every day for nearly 3 months (3-4 times a day!) as the show has been going on since the 18th of May, and will be over on the 20th of August. I had a little chat with the event's coordinator, who explained to me how these people have shown their dedication and discipline throughout the 3 months period. They even have curfew! :)