Statement of Purpose
I am Alireza Rakhsh, I hold a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree in Strategic Management
form University of Tehran and B.Sc. degree in IT Engineering from Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic
Sciences in Zanjan. I am writing this letter to introduce myself as an enthusiastic candidate to apply for
PhD Program at BI Business Shool.
In 1995, at the age of 11, I ranked 4th out of approximately 200,000 in scientific competition between
elementary schools nationwide. I was accepted in “Iranian National Organization for Development of
Exceptional Talents (NODET)” for junior and high school. I graduated from high school with a GPA of
19.21/20, and I was ranked the second among 60 students.
In September of 2002, I entered “The Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences” (IASBS) as an
undergraduate student in B.Sc. in Information Technology Engineering. The IASBS is a degree granting
institution with Master's and Doctoral programs only. Since September 2002, however, it has started a
new program in “Information Technology” for a nationally selected group of distinguished high school
graduates. IASBS is known as one of the most productive scientific centers in Iran, publishing more papers
per staff member than any other institute in Iran. IT was a new and wide-spreading field there were plenty
of different branches that I found them coincide with my abilities.
I had passed 70 courses in 220 credits including several mathematical courses, programming languages,
database, algorithms design, computer graphics, operations research, software engineering, and
computer network and IT management. Being enthusiastic about IT Management, I worked for two years
as an IT Systems Administrator in Zanjan Province General Governor, where I attempted to explore more
in Information Systems development approaches such as Oracle DBMS solution. While doing at Zanjan
Province General Governor, I developed a desktop application for Digital Library using Java and Oracle
11g, which helped me to become capable of doing real-world projects. I found that I need to explore more
in information systems at advance level. At that time, I succeeded to practically learn IT skill such as
Database Management and Administrative Automation System Management. This socio-technical view
to system development, helped me to find my way to the next step, which was trying to study more about
IT Management with the focus on Information Systems.
Beside my academic activities, I always have interest and ability in teamwork and group management. I
joined to “Exceptional Talents Graduates Center of Zanjan” that is the first and largest NGO in our
province. At first, I was choosing as a Public Relations Officer. Then I was selected as a Director and five
years as a chief legal officer. Collaboration with members of this center remains as my very favorite
memory. At that time, I noticed my talent and passion in "management and leadership" and there was a
powerful motivation about it in my mind. The experience of management in “Exceptional Talent Center”
and passing several relevant IT management courses during my B.Sc. made me keen to study more about
Business-IT and management. Therefore, I decided to continue my Master in this field.
I was accepted in MBA in Strategy at University of Tehran (UT). UT which is prevailed as the mother
University of Iran". It is almost always ranked as the best university in Iran in national and international
rankings. I have looked to "Strategy" as the best way to achieve the goals. I chose IT-Business relations
field because includes many fundamental issues such as Organizing, Planning, Finance, IT, Innovation,
Control and Leadership that needs to use variety source of data.
At end of my MBA program, I had noticed that my great interest in the field of IT Strategies and especially
role of data in data driven organizations. I found it very important in every all the elements in business.
My Master thesis was directly related to this topic: "Identifying Factors Affecting IT-Business Strategic
Alignment and Providing a New Aggregation Model by Using Meta-Synthesis Method". I have submitted
three papers related IT-Business Alignment Model. The first paper title is: "Providing a new aggregation
framework for IS/Business alignment using meta-synthesis method". The title of the Second Paper is "A
Survey of the strategic alignment of IT and business models and Frameworks: The literature review". And
the title of the third paper is: "Providing indexes and Sub-Indexes of Extracted Factors in the RakhshManian IT-Business Strategic Alignment Aggregation Model". I have done three other works in the field
of “Data analysis". The subject is "Innovation Based on Big Data: Case Studies: Iranian Top 6
Telecommunication Companies". I did this work for MIS1 Course assignment and the second work title is:
"Hadoop Performance Analysis in Big Data" that I worked for DSS2 Course assignment in MBA program.
Now, I work in Trita Pharma Company as a Business Director. Trita is an Iranian-based recently established
pharmaceutical company with the main focus on the implementation of technology-oriented (NanoBased) projects in the pharmaceutical field. I am responsible for Business Plan designing, Business Strategy
planning, implementation and control.
My main career goal is to work directly in the industrial environment so that I can directly implement and
test my technical knowledge experimentally. I am keen on joining this program because it provides a
unique opportunity of learning in the university and empirically working on projects from industry. I
believe that the research and usage of technical knowledge when working are the best method for
learning and training more. I think my desire for research and my diverse educational background in
Business and Strategic Management, IT Management, IT tools as Programming tools, Database, Data
Mining tools, Mathematical as well as Statistical software's and my personal work experiences have
provided me the suitable background to pursue a productive postgraduate program in PhD Program. I
have considerable experience identifying trends, usage, and growth patterns that have a high impact on
business decisions. I can successfully implement strategies by processing data, comfortable reporting
information to high-level management and answer analytic questions that are put to me. My
communication skills are good and I like expressing ideas and concepts both in oral and written form an
ideal platform for the dissemination of knowledge in my chosen field of specialization.
Sincerely
Alireza Rakhsh
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Management information system
Decision support system