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Stop planning and just go
by J.L.H.D | ATLANTA
ONE of the paradoxes of business school is that it is a low-stakes introduction to a high-stakes world. Perform badly on a project, and your biggest risk is a bad mark on your transcript. Perform equally badly a month after graduation and find yourself unemployed. Yet students, with thousands of dollars invested in their MBA programmes, are not exactly clamouring to take on more risk while there.
Brent Goldfarb and David Kirsch, two professors at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, felt most handicapped by this when teaching entrepreneurship. They could always ask students to write business plans; yet their own research found that venture capitalists tended to pay little attention to such plans. Besides, Mr Goldfarb complained, “More commonly, I'm stuck reading plans for businesses that are unambitious, dull, and something someone with an MBA education should never pursue.” He and Mr Kirsch decided to make students start their own firms, with real profit-and-loss statements, instead.
Students competed for the right to run a business. They could lose that right if their idea was not judged strong enough, or if they were too slow to complete assignments later on. Those whose businesses were eliminated could work for surviving companies. The more money they earned, either through their own startups or by joining competitors, the better the grade. But students could also earn “karma points” by completing tasks, and thus keep their grade up even if their business idea tanked.
The result seems to have been some lively work on the students’ part, in ventures both successful (a catering firm) and failed (a handyman service). Mr Goldfarb, for his part, tracked the course’s development on his Storify account. After the final pitches, he admitted on Twitter that, while he felt the new approach to teaching entrepreneurship had been successful, he wasn’t entirely sure why. The success may be hard to replicate if future students have more trouble finding businesses to start near campus. But those students might well be grateful to be spared writing boring business plans.
MBA diary: Risky talk
Esha Chhabara reports from the St Gallen Symposium
WE ARE termed the “Leaders of Tomorrow”, which sounds a bit silly, given that many of us are still struggling to pay rent. The 42nd St Gallen Symposium, held at the Swiss business school each year, brings together corporate executives, leading academics and heads of state. But it also draws a crowd of under 30s, a hodgepodge of students, entrepreneurs, writers, scientists and activists, all aspiring to leave a positive footprint.
It’s the “mini-Davos”, I kept hearing, because of its stature in the German-speaking world of economics and political science. No shortage of smart suits, high-powered heels and corporate jargon here. The event, which ran last week, is something of a treasured tradition for this town, something that locals celebrate, and get frustrated by, thanks to the flurry of visitors that swamp their historic and obscenely charming town once a year.
This year’s big theme was “Facing Risk”, a rather vague and abstract topic. But that was the intention: translate as you see fit. There were many types of risk to spread around the sessions: corporate, environmental, political, nuclear, social and developmental. But the emphasis was clearly on finance and economics, given the climate that we met in.
New president for ESMT
ESMT European School of Management and Technology has appointed Jörg Rocholl as its new president. Mr Rocholl has been the interim president of the Berlin-based school since July, during which time it received accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).
Olympian Madmen
by M.S. | PARIS
“CITIUS, Altius, Fortius.” When Dominican priest Henri Didon came up with these three words as the motto for the modern Olympic Games in 1894, he got little more than a polite thank you for his trouble. Which is a lot less than the 2012 London Olympic Committee paid the Mad Men of Charlotte Street, London's advertising equivalent of New York's Madison Avenue, to come up with "Inspire a generation".
Sebastian Coe (pictured), the organising committee chairman, might say the recently unveiled motto reflects the promise he made seven years ago to capture the "heartbeat" and "the very DNA" of the organisation. But how many of his fellow citizens would agree? In the current economic climate, more and more people in Britain are questioning the cost to the taxpayer of hosting the summer games, and have responded to the new slogan with an underwhelming "is that it?"
Manhattanville transfer
by B.R.
COLUMBIA business school has announced the latest donation to its fund to build a new campus. Leon Cooperman, a Columbia alumnus and boss of Omega Advisors, a hedge fund, has pledged $25m to the project in Manhattanville, which is north of the school’s current campus. The school is looking to raise $400m towards the construction of the new facilities. In 2010 Henry Kravis, founder of KKR, a private-equity firm, donated $100m, the largest gift in the school’s history.
MBA diary: Senses working overtime
In the second of her diaries from the campus of IMD in Switzerland, Joan Beets reflects on having so little time for reflection
EASTER weekend has come and gone. It is a pivotal point of the IMD curriculum, marking the end of our first block and the start of the second. The four days off, so laughingly referred to as “a holiday”, gave the whole class time to reflect briefly. Stepping out of the campus life for a moment, I ran many movies of the MBA experience through my head. It felt like an MTV overload of sounds and sights flashing by.
The first part of the MBA programme here focuses on building business fundamentals in areas such as accounting, finance, marketing and operations. Given the diversity of backgrounds in the class, as I mentioned in my first blog, this start helps to get everyone onto a level playing field. But don’t be fooled; that’s about the first two weeks, and after that it’s full speed ahead.
A prime example is our finance course, where we have covered fixed-income markets, capital markets, portfolio management and evaluation, multifactor models, and capital budgeting in the first three months. We have studied, discussed, practised and done casework on all these topics. If you had asked me back in January whether I thought I would be able to tackle such a mass of material, and whether I would come out the other end actually understanding it, I would have asked you which hallucinogen you were on.
Indian and Pakistani business schools: Thawing relations
Apr 17th 2012, 11:39 by B.R.
CROSS-BORDER collaboration between business schools is a common occurrence. Some top institutions can have partnerships with counterparts in as many as 40 different countries. It is seen as a way of increasing their internationalism, without having to run programmes overseas, which can be expensive. It gives faculty and students a chance to expose themselves to a foreign business culture through exchanges, and for schools to boast about their global footprint on their websites.
Still, the announcement this week that the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad has signed a memorandum of understanding with Pakistan’s Institute of Business Administration (IBA), based in Karachi, is important.
MBA diary: Where's my BHAG?
In her fourth diary from Stanford Graduate School of Business, MBA student Temi Olatunde, goes searching for her purpose
I AM now coming to the end of my second quarter at Stanford. This term has felt very different from the last. The exuberance of being a toddler set free to rough-and-tumble in the Silicon Valley playground, waned. Across the school, MBAs spent their time applying and interviewing for summer internship positions. As the quarter draws to an end, while some have locked down their summer plans, many more continue to explore.
We have split into various camps. There are those who have chosen the traditional paths of consulting, investment banking, industry or to return to their old employers. A second group are exploring non-traditional paths such as NGOs, public bodies and investing niches. The final and growing contingent are either working on their own start-up or looking for a job at someone else’s.
The emotionally charged environment on campus has resulted in a great deal of introspection. During one session, called “Career and Life Visioning”, I was introduced to the notion of a personal BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). The term was popularised by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, two management gurus, and refers to a highly focused, tangible and energising longer-term vision. It is also supposed to connect with one’s core values. I have always believed in the power of private enterprise to transform lives and drive sustainable change. How this belief translates into a well-defined BHAG I am yet to fully determine.
Newcastle united
Mar 13th 2012, 15:08 by B.R.
Newcastle University opened its new business-school campus his week. The facility cost £50m and means that the school's 2,800 business students are no longer spread across three different sites in the city.
Poets and quants of the world unite
Mar 19th 2012, 17:47 by B.R.
ART and business students are usually to be found at each end of the political pole. But as most students in Quebec begin a strike in protest at increased tuition fees, two sets of students are still diligently attending lectures: McGill university’s art undergraduates and Concordia’s business students. Although Concordia's student union had called everyone out, following a university-wide vote, those at the business school decided on their own poll—with 84% voting against taking action. While MBAs tend not be natural industrial activists, there may be another reason for their strike-breaking. The majority of Concordia’s MBA students are from outside of Canada, and thus pay considerably more for their programme than Quebec residents, whose fees are currently heavily subsidised. According to the school’s online calculator, the total tution fee for non-Canadian MBAs is C$41,370, compared with just C$6,821 for in-state residents.
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