The week in photos

MONDAY - The Mövenpick ice cream stand has arrived in the IMD restaurant! Eric Vergara [Thailand] and Alex Rubio [Brazil] gets the first two ice creams that are served this year.



MONDAY - Tough negotiations in the Finance exercise. Clarkson Lumber (Group 10) and Northrup National Bank (group 9) are working on an agreement for refinansing of Clarkson Lumber.



MONDAY - After several hours the chief negotiatiors from the two sides can shake hands and proceed with the paperwork. Alex Rubio [Brazil] (left) and Oren Yehudai [Israel].



TUESDAY - The intergrative exercise is on. Sylvain Cabalery [France] and Olivia Assereto [Italy] discussing early designs of the bag.



TUESDAY - Midnight pizza is required to keep the engines running.
From the left:Eric Vergara [Thailand], Yury Vasilkov [Russia], Chuks Onunkwo [Nigeria], Sebastien Guery [France], Albert Schultz [Germany].



WEDNESDAY - My group, now known as the 'Zen Army', presents our bag in a shadow play. We relied heavily on an agressive marketing strategy under the assumption that good marketing sells anything. That proved not to be true.....



WEDNESDAY - 12 bags oozing with innovation!



THURSDAY - Enjoying the sun in a break.



THURSDAY - On 30 April every year the Dutch celebrate the Queens birthday. It is a big event in the Netherlands and therefore also in Lausanne this year. The Dutch had invited the whole class. The only requirement was that you dressed in Orange.
Here it is the entire Dutch representation in this year's class: Back row from left: Liesbeth Bakker, Joost Mackor, Paul De Hek, Marco Simons and Joe Nai. In the front it is Paul's girlfriend Leonie Stolk.
After midnight we could also celebrate Paul's birthday.



THURSDAY - Happy campers. Slava Raykov [Russia] and Joost Mackor [The Netherlands]



FRIDAY - Outdoor coffee after lunch. From left, Alex Rubio [Brazil], Yury Vasilkov [Russia] and Sebastien Guery [France].



FRIDAY - The month of May arrived, which means changing of the seating plan. I am happy to be back on the backrow, better known as 'The Skydeck'. Moreover, I am back on the North Wing of the Skydeck where I also spent the month of February.
Skydeck from left: Albert Schultz [Germany], Thorsten Boeck [Denmark], Bruno Portnoi [Brazil], Liesbeth Bakker [The Netherlands], Stefano Cazzulani [Italy], Oren Yehudai [Israel] and Christian Cuenot [France].
Front row from left: Young-Ha Kim [Korea], Vladimir Korobkin [Russia], Eric Vergara [Thailand] and José Luiz Mesquita [Brazil].

The Dream Bag Marketing campaign - 3 videos

Here are the three videos we used in our marketing campaign for bag in the innovation challenge. Enjoy!


The Dream Bag - Part 1



The Dream Bag - Part 2


The Dream Bag - Part 3

The innovation challenge

It is well after midnight and the dungeons are buzzing with activity. The second integrative exercise have been underway since 15.00 this afternoon. The task: Design, build and sell a bag using only Tyvek, Velcro and duct tape. Delivery: Tomorrow morning 9.00 AM.

Each of the 12 study groups must come up with their own design. The buyers will be the 40 people that currently are attending the Program for Executive Development (PED) on the school. They will vote for the bag that they like best. Likewise the PEDs will produce a number of bags of which the MBAs will choose a winner.

It is all part of the Innovation stream taught and headed by Professor David Robertson. We have spent the past couple of weeks investigating customer behavior and needs and have used different idea generation techniques to translate the needs into solutions. You don't really have to be that creative to come up with new ideas as long as you have the right tools and processes in place. At the same time, it is actually good fun.

Most groups have covered the glas in the door to the rooms in an attempt to keep designs and prototypes secret, but industrial espionage has still proven difficult to avoid for some. Like any other product bags do not sell without a proper marketing campaign. The opposite is also true: With the proper campaign anything sells! I assume that is why I see so much creative effort being used on the 6 minute sales pitch that each group has available tomorrow.



Sato Konagai has started the construction of the bag with a roll of Tyvek.
As you can tell it is a quite strong material.


Group 3, also known as 'The Roos' are showing off their 'Roo bag' with a group phoon . From the left it is Adrian Smaranda [Romania], Prashant Biwal [India], Rasmus Figenschou [Norway] (with the Roo bag) , Carsten Bremer [Germany], Andres Akamine [Peru].


Group 5, now known as 'Catch me if you can!'. From left it is Valeria Pavlyukovskaya [Russia], Joe Nai [The Netherlands/Hong Kong], Lisa Bridgett [South Africa/UK], Kornelius Thimm [Germany], Stone Gao [China], Nader Ashoor [Saudi Arabia], Stefano Cazzulani [Italy].

Friday in Pictures

The day started with Innovation professor David Robertson demonstrating a technique for idea generation. Here he is 'Decomposing the problem' as it is called; the problem being a vegetable/fruit peeler.


The problem was decomposed into 'Apply pressure', 'Remove peel' and 'Manipulate/rotate fruit' and the class was asked to create solutions for each part.


Engineers on home turf! Paolo Guglielmini [Italy] (in front) and Karim El-Koury [Austria] creating solutions for how to 'Apply pressure'.

David demonstrating a machine (lower right) that peels, slices and cuts out the core of an apple in one go. He got it on eBay.


A cup of coffee in the IMD café after lunch has become a daily ritual for many of us. Here it is Eva Hubsman [Israel], Kornelius Thimm [Germany], Johan Jansén-Storbacka [Sweden/Finland], Stefano Cazzulani [Italy] and Sebastian Guery [France]. The latter three surprised me by speaking Italian to each other despite only one of them being Italian.

Modern mom keeping in touch with her off-spring. Lisa Bridgett skyping with her two boys Julian (4 years old) and Aurelien (9 months). I am so impressed by Lisa and the other MBA parents. On top of all the work the rest of us are struggling with they manage to find time for their families.

We had Finance Professor Jim Ellert most of the day on the subject of 'Capital Structure and Dividend Policy Guidelines'. It is known stuff for the bankers and accountants in class, but most of it is a new world for me.

Looking sharp!! The period of company presentations has started. A number of companies will come and present themselves and answer questions from the MBAs. The companies will likely be the ones coming back to hire MBAs in September. Here it is (left-to-right) Cedric Jusseaume [France], Shibu James [Indian], Oren Yehudai [Israel] and Suchir Swarup [Canada/India] dressing up for their potential future employers.

An inspiring day

Jogi Rippel from Tignum, the man who taught us the fine art of powernapping was back today. Back with his message on how to maintain a 'Sustainable high performance'. The keywords were still Movement, Nutrition, Recovery, Energy levels, hydration, etc, but this time with less focus on the individual and much higher emphasis on how to work with these things in a team or an organization. We were amongst others given the task to build a model that could calculate the ROI (Return on Investment) on initiatives that create 'Sustainable high performance'. The accounting definition was pretty straight forward as the accounting exam still is fresh in our memories, but defining the value of such subjective items as 'Improved innovation' and 'Better working enviroment' was no easy task.

We had lunch together with some of the participants from the school's Program for Executive Development (PED). This was arranged by our 'new' Innovation professor David Robertson and the aim was both for us to get to know some of the other participants at the school and for us to probe the customers of our 'Innovation Challenge'. The Innovation Challenge will run in late April and is about designing a bag. Each MBA team will design a bag and the PED participants will choose the winner. Similarly, the PED teams will design a bag for the MBA class who will decide on a winner. Sounds like a lot of fun!

Most of the afternoon was spent in the company of the Career Services team. Katty Ooms-Suter gave an update on the current job market. It is tough times 'out there', but there are still plenty of companies signing up for on-campus recruiting, so we should be in fairly good shape as a whole. Céline Beaurain-Casemi followed up with instructions on how to write a good cover letter when applying for jobs and asked us to have the first draft ready next week.

Then followed a quick meeting in my 'old' study group. As we enter into the month of April the group officially ceases to exist. As its very last assignment the group is preparing a presentation that compares and contrasts Brazilian president Lula and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. This is for Thursdays class on Global Political Economy with Professor Jean-Pierre Lehman.

After that classmates Alejandro Salcedo [Mexican] and Gerrit Sinderman [German] held an interesting presentation on 'Search Funds' for the self-established Entrepreneurship Club. This was followed up by a live video conference with Alejandro's cousin Gustavo Fernandez and his partner Eduardo Clave. They are MBA students at Harvard Business School and are currently setting up a Search Fund together. A Search Fund is basically a fund that is set up to give an entrepreneur time and money to search for a company to acquire. You will normally get two years to find the company plus a bit of money to keep you going while searching. Once you have found the company to acquire the investor then submits the bulk of the committed capital. The concept, which was completely new to all of us, is relatively unknown in the US and is non-existing in Europe. It was nevertheless a thought provoking presentation.

Thorsten

Releasing tension by massaging yourself with something as simple as a tennis ball. Part of today's session on 'Sustaining high performance', which also included breathing techniques.

Video conference on 'Search Funds' directly from Harvard Business School.
Cool technology by the way. It was a first for me.

Study group no 9, better known as 'Cloud #9', as it looked in 2009 on Building Block 1.
Left-to-right: Kornelius Thimm (standing) [German], Thorsten Boeck [Danish], Misayo Matsumoto [Japanese], Fadi Sbaiti [Lebanese/American], Eva Hubsman [Israeli], Juan Benitez [Colombian], Liesbeth Bakker [Dutch] and Eric Vergara [Thai].