Perhaps the best example of practical application was the ‘Discovery Project’ that teams undertook to come up with an innovative idea that addresses a pain point in the consumers lives and design and develop a business model to fill that market gap. Culminating weeks of market research and brainstorming was a Tradeshow presentation at London Business School where entrepreneurs from the LBS Incubator program judged the ideas.

Winning ideas included a student discount app for establishments near universities, self defence mobile accessory for women and a website to help people undertake courses for personal development.

What I most enjoyed through this whole experience was actually going through the processes that are required before beginning a business and being able to understand what are my strengths and weaknesses throughout the journey. Since we worked in a team, we were able to balance the skills required to design the product, undertake market research, and produce a financial forecast and business model.

This is just one example to showcase why I feel the MiM is a great degree in management because it does not only cover the theory and frameworks for business but also equips you with the practical information required to apply this knowledge.

Nalisha’s warm smile and Barbara’s friendly welcome drew all the MiFs to P123. Nalisha being the Program Manager was of immense help and she never got tired of addressing my programme related concerns. I will always fondly look back to many conversations that I’ve had with her regarding running and marathons! She is so incredibly empathetic with the students and super smooth in handling their requests and queries that it didn’t come as a surprise to me when she was promoted to become Senior Programme Manager after the AutumnTerm. Subsequently Nazila (we fondly call her Naz) and Bryony joined in as Programme Managers and they continued the precedence set by Nalisha.

Jane Charlton is the MiF Programme Director. She moves closely with all the students.  She could identify every one of her students right from the first day, a fact which astounded me. The sweet smile that spread across her face whenever she bumped into her students on campus stands testimony to this. She is always available for her students, constantly seeking feedback and striving for ways to improve the programme for her students.

Overall, my experience with the Programme Office (PO) has been amazing. I have pleasant memories (which I will certainly carry with me forever) of the MiF Programme Office’s support, guidance and love for its students!!!

• Encrypted codes on GSK drugs in order to fight drug counterfeiting in China
• Gamified health education on cervical cancer for young women in India
• Vending machines with smaller packaging of drugs for easier access in India

The panel prodded students to think deeply about the viability of their proposals asking questions about the unique selling proposition, the size of the gaming market in India, and the feasibility of vending machines in India based on health cards when many in India do not have health cards.

The panel deliberated and 30 minutes later during a drinks session, they announced the winner of £2500, the vending machine idea! The top three groups also win a visit and daylong tour of the GSK offices in London.

GSK competition winners

I personally believe the industry collaboration on our strategy project was a wonderful experience. I think I, as well as my fellow Masters in Management students, took these innovation ideas more seriously when industry insiders were seriously considering what we were saying. It was informative to hear the questions they asked and the ideas that really impressed them.

I would like to contrast that competition with the competition seen on the front lawn of LBS on the following Sunday afternoon. The Women in Business Club hosted a fundraiser for their volunteer trip to Sierra Lione, which included a BBQ, flowing taps, and games like three-legged race, balloon toss, and mummy race (involving students hopping around the lawn covered in loo paper). Students of all levels: MBA, Masters in Finance, Masters in Management, and even the Dean were seen competing and watching the fierce competition and ensuing water fights unfold on the sunny afternoon.

Three-legged race line-up

What do these events have in common, you may ask? I think they show the unique selling proposition of London Business School, that is a harmonious mixture of serious and silly all while promoting healthy and friendly competition. Whoever wins, we all win, because we are sharing in knowledge, learning and laughs.

Then there were the individuals who appeared to have broken free of these shackles or just didn’t care about the consequences. It felt like they were speaking from the heart: they showed passion about the issues discussed – not just repetition of a company line – and as a result, not only were they engaging, but I trusted them. I wanted them as my advisors, my friends, my confidantes.

The final speaker of the day, Olafur Grimsson, President of Iceland, epitomised this more than anyone throughout the day. His statements, such as “Why are banks considered holy entities?” and “I don’t accept the notion that banks should not be allowed to fail” were spoken with conviction. Perhaps its because he had experienced those tough times in Iceland and seen the impact that enabled him to speak with passion. But haven’t many leaders also been faced with tough choices? Why can’t they speak with that same belief? He ended with the advice to “trust and respect the advice of ordinary people.” Perhaps it’s easy to be refreshing when you’re a contrarian. But in a room full of people with MBA’s and financial backgrounds whom I would expect to be very pro-banking, he clearly struck a cord. For this honesty, he received multiple rounds of applause and a standing ovation from the crowd.

This year’s London Business School Global Leadership Summit will be remembered by many people for many different things. For me personally, I will remember it as a lesson that honesty, especially coupled with passion, enables you to build trust. I hope I can embody that in all aspects of my life as I move forward from studying my MBA.

After about 2 years attending an Executive MBA program at London, I felt like I needed to end it on a high note. Having completed almost all my electives, I wanted to achieve a threefold final purpose: 1. working again with a faculty I did enjoy learning from, 2. bringing something practical from LBS to my company and 3. deepening into a subject useful for my career path.

Finishing my Executive MBA, one of my concerns has been to look back on these two years and show my company that the time spent away from the office was worthwhile. Moreover, at this stage, enjoying a very interesting job, I wanted to be sure about what would be my next job and be able to provide HR department an accurate image of my expectations.

After some realignments done on my project’s outline with David MYATT, I worked closely with my colleagues at the office in order to use Strategy and Managerial Economics academic frameworks in our professional context. It lead to a double production: a) a thorough assessment report on Energy Efficiency markets my company is targetting, and b) a practical approach to figure out how profitable it is to break into some submarkets.

At some point, I smoothly met my three objectives. And it turned out to even go beyond my expectations. Indeed, this work not only offered me the opportunity to base discussion on tangible content about my next job, but people who read it also invited me to share my thoughts more regularly. That’s why I decided to launch a professional blog on Smart Energy Efficiency, in order to help SMEs sell Energy Efficiency solutions (http://smartenergyefficiency.eu/).

I haven’t chosen yet what will be my next job. All I know is that Independent Project elective has been for me the highpoint of this Executive program. It has simultaneously made my Executive MBA’s payback more tangible for my company, and shown what I want to do next very explicitly.

What sparked me to write now was a fantastic day at London Business School. Some of my classmates may have called it hell but I found it as perfect as perfect can be. I spent nine hours cramped up in a room with my five-person study group, completing a project for our Strategic Analysis course in which we were required to come up with a commercial innovation for a given company and present all aspects to this company in a report and accompanying video. While nine hours is a long time to spend with four other people, there is inevitable bonding. There was also bonding with the rest of my fellow MiM students who were likewise cramped up with their study groups along the same corridor. We periodically took breaks and popped our heads into each others’ rooms or made a cameo in each others’ videos (whether the actors knew it or not…) to let off some steam.

After nine hours, I headed out to dinner with my previous study group from last term. Our late dinner turned into a really late dinner as we stepped out of the restaurant two and a half hours later. We had relaxed, chatted, and laughed so much that it felt like five minutes. As I sat there talking with them, I was struck by how beautiful my experience at London Business School has been. I sat eating dinner with five people from five countries other than my own native country, sharing and laughing. And what is so incredible is that this sort of event has defined my experience in the Masters in Management. I have spent a year learning from and spending time with people from countries all over the world and I could not feel luckier.

I am starting to learn Chinese (also at London Business School…how cool is this place, really?) and I find the concept of yin and yang really interesting. I think my day today was the epitome of yin and yang. I think it was one of the hardest days of work I have put in at LBS, but I think it has been one of the happiest. A good days work and a good laugh with friends is just what the doctor ordered.
While my posts have been few and far between, I hope this was enlightening. And there may be a few more posts to come.

Not everyone in my class was looking for an internship though. There are students who either come from family business or are sponsored by their companies and some of them choose to use this time to travel or go back to their old employer. However for the vast majority, this is the time to iron those suits, shine those shoes and remain caffeinated throughout the day.

For students looking for consulting or banking, recruitment starts early – with the campus presentations that began around second week of January on campus. The unique location advantage of central London, the alumni strength and the school’s reputation attracts the best of consulting firms and investment banks to campus. Most students are focused on either consulting or banking, though there are a few brave souls who take a shot at both.

The entire process from the campus presentations, networking to the shortlists and the interviews leads to huge successes and some disappointments. It is undoubtedly a crucial element of the overall MBA experience. You see students reading up the vault guides and finance guides to recruit for investment banks. On the other hand, the consulting hopefuls are busy huddled up in meeting rooms cracking cases way beyond midnight. While a huge part of the recruitment is London focused, given the international nature of the school; companies from all over the world come to recruit at LBS. This year we saw companies from Myanmar as well.

After consulting and banking, the next big focus is on industry firms. For people focused on industry, internship recruitment begins slightly later. This means balancing interview preparation with classes, interviews with assignments and exams. The school allows students to have up to 3 offers and choose one or two. The flexibility of the program means that a student can do more than one internship.

Term three is the most relaxed term and I will share my experiences on that in the next post.

It’s this last Big Idea that I would like to discuss today. I don’t know what angle the panel will take on this topic. But I want to focus on the practicalities of legislation and regulations. Prior to London Business School, I worked as a lawyer in Wellington, the home of the Government and State departments in New Zealand (and it’s the coolest little capital in the world). In my time there I saw a lot of bills in progress and passed legislation come across my desk. It never really surprised me if new legislation was over a ream of paper thick, though I admit I didn’t enjoy the subsequent period of trying to decipher the new legislation.

I looked at legislation covering a broad range of topics, from tax through to climate change. Inevitably, they all read like pick-a-path novels, where you would constantly flip back and forth between pages, referring to other sections cited. Often I would end up with multiple fingers in the pages holding open various parts of the Act.

This legislation created in New Zealand is nothing unique. All over the world, and here in Britain, policy makers are creating these Byzantine laws that are becoming more and more difficult to understand. As a result, it takes teams of expensive lawyers, accountants, and consultants to pore through these tomes deciphering what was intended. Even with these teams of experts, it’s often difficult to decide what is allowed and what is not.

But do the policy makers realise what they are creating? The politicians who stand up in parliament and spout media friendly sound bites make their policies sound so simple. And they are relatively straightforward propositions at that stage. Then reality sets in when these policies are handed to legislative writers to create and these sound bites are turned into thousand page epics. Do these politicians ever then pick up these Acts again to understand the monsters they’ve created? I suspect not.

There are often good reasons for these Acts to be so complex. Legislators want to avoid loopholes and cover off every eventuality. As businesses innovate and these new loopholes become apparent, even more additions to the legislation are required. This is how tax laws have become so frustratingly large. Or it may be that while a concept sounds relatively simple – carbon credits for example – the practicalities of setting out how it actually works are overly complex.

So is there a solution? Some law firms have moved towards ‘plain writing’. Perhaps legislators could adopt some of these writing principles. That would be a start but it certainly wouldn’t be the solution; it wouldn’t resolve the pick-a-path nature of these Acts.

Instead, I imagine a world in the future where legislators write executive summaries, draw diagrams, give examples, and include quotes from policy makers in the Act itself. Already this is happening in some jurisdictions where bulletins supplement the Act and are interpreted as law (for example, the Tax Information Bulletins issued by the NZ Inland Revenue Department).

Alternatively, legislators could make the principle of the Act clear – keeping the Act short and readable by the majority of the population (think something like an expanded upon version of the 10 commandments) – and then leave it for the Courts and people’s judgment to decide what is correct. Many lawyers and businessmen would be up in arms at the ambiguity created. And this is exactly the reaction that this approach should create – if you are falling into the grey area of the law, then chances are you shouldn’t be doing it (but the law won’t stop you immediately if you are prepared to take test the boundaries).

These two approaches would be a drastic change from convention – a word that that legislators romanticise over. But in the world we now live, the excuse that it has always been done that way should no longer be acceptable. Business people are used to reading executive summaries, not thousand page documents. And they say a picture is worth a thousand words; I certainly have found diagrams useful in understanding various concepts.

I don’t think either of these approaches are perfect. But they do start to deal with the practicalities of business. Something that seems to have been forgotten about by policy makers in Britain and many other places around the globe.

I look forward to the discussion of this Big Idea at the London Business School Global Leadership Summit.

Recent world events certainly demonstrate the backlash that can occur when companies appear to put profits ahead of people. Companies, such as Primark, who had their products manufactured at the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh came under the spotlight when the building collapsed, killing hundred of workers. BP also felt the heat after its Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and leaked millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. And Foxconn’s practices in China have dragged Apple’s name into discussions of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

CSR initiatives can act as a good publicity campaign and PR for a company. Many companies donate a percentage of profits to charities or offer employees a day to work for a charity. While these initiatives may send warm fuzzy feelings to employees and consumers, are they actually having much of an impact? No doubt the receiving charities very much appreciate the donations and the good publicity probably helps companies bottom line. But these types of CSR initiatives are not going to stop oil spills, factories falling down, and employees jumping from windows.

So what does it mean to be a good world citizen? I think it is taking into consideration all your immediate stakeholders: your shareholders, employees, contractors, suppliers and customers. But the web of stakeholders doesn’t end there; it should include anyone and anything who is and could be impacted by your business. For example, BP should have been considering the families, the wildlife and the environment along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico who would be at risk from an oil spill.

As you can see, the list of stakeholders can quickly grow. And when you start thinking of possible worst-case scenarios, the list continues to multiply. A multinational company would need to take into consideration a vast number of people and possible outcomes, some who might actually never be affected by the company. Put simply, for a multinational company to be a good world citizen is a Herculean task.

Then, even when a company tries to get it all right, it can still go horribly wrong. Tesco supposedly had rigorous checks on its suppliers but that didn’t stop products being tainted with horse meat.

Perhaps then, CSR initiatives by a company are like an insurance policy – not just for the company, but for all the stakeholders involved. Ideally you would insure against every eventuality, but the premiums are too high and so you must be pragmatic in what you insure against. So too, a good corporate citizen can’t be expected to stop all risks, especially the most remote, from occurring. There will be some things that slip through the cracks. When you’re a multinational company with innumerable activities happening, it’s only a matter of time before something happens that your CSR initiatives haven’t covered.

The most difficult question then is, what level of insurance (or CSR initiatives) should a company take? Not all companies want to be world citizens. And who should decide that level – the company itself, an industry body, the regulators, or consumers?

I’m looking forward to hearing these questions being addressed by the CEOs of Unilever and Deloitte UK at the upcoming LBS Global Leadership Summit.

Perhaps if the banks had undertaken some more CSR activities, or the regulators had insisted upon them, the global financial crisis would have been prevented from happening.