From Enron to Biofuels in a day

It is past 2.00 AM and the lights are still on in most of the study rooms. No, it is not another Integrative Exercise although it feels like it. We are working on a presentation for Strategy with Professor James Henderson. The subject is Biofuels and we will presenting to a company in the industry in 6 hours. We are all at point where we mostly are thinking about our beds, but it will be a while before we can realize those thoughts. My group has nevertheless been kind enough to let me spend some time writing this diary entry.

It has been another one of those days. Marketing and Strategy in the morning, Accounting after lunch, a company presentation and then down in the dungeons to work on the Strategy presentation. Today's accounting class was about the fall of Enron back in 2001. Another fascinating story of just how bad things can go, even in big corporations. It is only a couple of weeks ago we learned how a single man in 1995 brought London's oldest bank, Berings Bank, to collapse.

What is on most of our minds now (apart from tomorrow's presentation) is the upcoming MBA Tournament (MBAT) in Paris. The first bus leaves late tomorrow evening and arrives in Paris Thursday morning. We will be a total of 70 students and 17 partners attending. The MBAT is a mini-Olympics between all the major European business schools. We will be competiting in a large number of sports from football and fencing to basketball and babyfoot (miniature football). I have the honor of being Captain of the Tug of War team.



Sylvain's dog, Kizomba [France], helps out with the Strategy presentation. Left it is Ruslana Zbagerska [Canada/Ukraine], right Alex Rubio [Brazil].



With a background in consulting Satoshi-San is amazing at setting up frameworks for our group discussions. Here we are discussing the potential consolidation of the biofuels industry.



Sunday in Parc De Milan. Joost Mackor, Captain of the football team, with the team strategy for the MBAT. We like to keep things simple at IMD!

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].

Spring, Sake and Fondue

The spring had chosen to come to Switzerland today with temperatures around 17C. Last time I wrote that the spring was coming it snowed three times the following week, but this time I really believe it is here. The doors and windows in my apartment have been open all day and the fresh outside air has replaced the air that has been trapped inside for too long. It is such a relief to be able to do that after a long winter where everything has been locked up.

My new group just left after we spent a great evening with Swiss fondue, Japanese Sake, a bottle of French red wine and stories from all over the world. It has struck me how different it is entering into this second study group compared to the first one. I cannot help thinking about how much of this difference that is due to the personalities in the group, how much that is due to the fact that we already know each other and how much that is due to what we have been through already. There is no doubt that we are much more cautious and aware this time. First time most of us just plunged in head first without thinking of much else than the task we had been given. That gave rise to many long discussions and - let's be honest - conflicts, that had to be solved. This time we are slowly feeling our way into it one small step at the time. That definitely has its advantages in terms of comfort, but if we are not careful we loose the positive energy of a 'constructive conflict'.

We set out to find a name for our new group. We came up with a large number of different suggestions ranging from 'The Zen Team' to 'Kizomba'. The latter is both the name of Sylvain's dog and the name of a type of Angolan music. We never did decide on a name, though. Perhaps we are still being 'too' nice. Nevertheless, I look very much forward to working with Group 10 over the next three months.


Group 10 around the dinner table. Notice the green bottle of Japanese sake. It is excellent with a Swiss fondue.
Left-to-right: Satoshi Konagai [Japanese], Sylvain Cabalery [French], Fabiana [in front, Brazilian and married to Alex], Olivia Assereto [Italian], Thorsten Boeck [Danish], Simon Brunner [Swiss], Ruslana Zbagerska [Canadian/Ukrainian], Alex Rubio [Brazilian].


The same group of people in their working environment.


Another Lake Geneva sunset picture. This time taken through the window in our study room.

Change the chip

While the snow was falling heavily this morning outside the auditorium we were presenting our Economics projects inside. Six of them in total, which means that we were nothing less than 15 in each group. The challenge with such a large group is to keep it running effectively and to get a coherent result. It requires a large amount of coordination to get it right, but all six groups pulled it off and gave very interesting presentations. It was big audacious subjects that were on the agenda: Environment, Poverty, Climate change, Intellectual Property and Food Supply. All of them presented in an Economic perspective and all of them with great complexities and dilemmas built in. As he has done many times the past two months Economics Professor Ralf Boscheck reminded us that it is time to 'Change the chip'. This is Ralf's code for saying that it is time for a change of mindset, time to realize that the one-eyed capitalist's relentless pursuit of 'growth, growth, growth' will not give us the world we dream about. Today, he added that if we cannot change the chip, then we can at least 'add a new one to balance the old one'. It is interesting to learn Economics from someone who studied Philosophy before studying Economics.

The 'Intellectual Property' group used the Music industry to demonstrate the importance of intellectual property rights and showed this video on the future of the internet, which I found very interesting.



The theme of 'Critical thinking' spans across all classes. We have had 'Critical thinking' in very broad terms with Phil Rosenzweig , in Marketing with Martin Koschat and in Operations with Nikos Tsikriktsis. Today Arturo Bris, whom we met for the first time, took us through the overarching philosophy and psychology of Finance. No easy task to complete in an hour and a half in a class where sleep deprivation is taking its toll. This has without a doubt been the toughest week so far and the number of red eyes in the class room are growing. And there is absolutely no signs of the pressure easing any time soon.

Thorsten

Who killed the baroness?

Today my studygroup - named 'Cloud #9' - had fondue together it my place. It was a great evening! We also wrote an MBA diary entry together as a group. It goes like this:

Todays voyage started with the most rational of all disciplines: Accounting! We went through the most basic elements of book keeping: posting revenues and expenses, creating a Profit and Loss statement and getting everything to add up to zero on the balance sheet! As rational as it may be, there were still many different outcomes.

After lunch things became more focused on the irrational as Professor Jack Wood took us on a journey to explore individual differences in our groups. This was done through a group discussions on a fairy tale about a baroness, a baron and a boatman. The question was the classic: Who killed the baroness? We discovered that individual differences on values and beliefs by far overweighed culture and nationality, when it comes to answering the question.

In the second half of the afternoon we were introduced to the Personal Development Initiative (PDI). This is the subject that made many people choose IMD. Basically you are as a student offered 20 hours of counseling with a professional therapist with the aim of getting to know yourself at a much deeper level. This in itself is not unique, but combined with the personal approach of the Leadership and Career Services streams it gives you the optimal conditions for finding the future that really is you.

As these words are written we are having a break between the Fondue and the sorbet ice cream in our first team dinner. The 8 group members just consumed 1.8kg of Swiss cheese and we could easily have eaten more. Yesterdays fitness test is still fresh in memory so we are taking it easy on the food, especially the ice cream. It was also interesting to see how many people that brought water bottles to class today after we yesterday were told how much dehydration reduces brain performance.

The most irrational event of the day is about to happen as we are now heading to the White Horse Pub, where we have four birthdays to celebrate.

Greetings,

Eva, Misayo, Liesbeth, Juan, Kornelius, Eric, Fadi and Thorsten
CLOUD #9!