Heading into the Lent Term, our course is starting to become much more applied. As part of our strategy course, we had a case study this week on Channel 4.

Michael Hodgson (Managing Director, 4Rights) and Jonathan Thompson (Director of Channel 4 Strategy & Research) came to the business school this afternoon to join the class discussion and present Channel 4's current strategy. The presentation focused on their efforts to position Channel 4 for the competition created by the digital switchover and how Channel 4 will continue to be financed as advertising revenue falls.

After the presentation, a few of us joined Michael and Jonathan for dinner at The Riverside Restaurant, where conversation turned to two current topics on Channel 4: the broadcast of racism on Celebrity Big Brother & Shipwrecked and Film4's three Oscar nominations.

The annual MBA rankings in the FT came out today. The Cambridge MBA is ranked 2 in UK, 5 in Europe and 15 globally. The FT labels Judge Business School as one of only two UK members of the "leading group of world class business schools." This followed the recent Economist Intelligence Unit ranking, which rated us 1 in UK, 3 in Europe, 11 globally.

I've spent the last two days in a creativity in business workshop, run by Richard Hytner, deputy chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi. This fits closely with the innovation focus of the Cambridge MBA, providing us with tools to develop creative product innovations. Bringing the concepts to life, a panel of business leaders:

• Malcolm Ritchie, formerly Chief Executive of United Biscuits
• Dawn Airey, formerly CEO of Channel Five and currently managing director of channels & services at BSkyB
• Andy Thrasyvoulou, CEO of Myhotels

This is a great explanation of Web 2.0 from Digital Ethnography @ Kansas State University.