Are you liable for your tweets?

Are you liable for your tweets? That is what the headline on cnn.com currently is asking. In the article the paper goes on to ask 'Can the law keep up with technology?' It describes how a number of people have faced law suits because of the statements they have written on their twitter accounts. The article goes on to philosophize that the laws governing free speech online generally are five years behind the technology. The technology needs to develop first before you can design laws to govern it, the argument seems to be. Sounds reasonable to me.

Interesting article, I thought. Even more interesting, I thought, that I actually read it. And took the time to let it sink in. Something have changed. It is not like I haven't gotten my share of news. Particularly after Jean-Pierre Lehmann's class on Global Political Economy I made sure that I subscribed to some RSS feeds on the different part of the world news. A very efficient way of keeping up with the high-level news. I barely made it further than the headlines, though. Until now.

I feel that I am in the process of resurfacing after a very long dive and I am starting to rediscovered things that I used to enjoy. Such as reading the news. Only three weeks ago I discovered that the information center at the school actually keeps the main Danish business newspaper 'Børsen'. There is nothing better than grabbing a cup of coffee and a Bounty chocolate bar and then spend half an hour after class reading the news. Not because I have to, but because I can.

It was mostly Danish news and business news used to read, but the Global Political Economy class (and probably the IMD environment) has changed that. Right now I enjoy following Obama on his trip around Asia and the talks about the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen. The International Herald Tribune delivers 90 papers to the school every day in attempt to get us to become so accustomed to the paper that we will buy it afterward. I probably will from time to time.

Jellybrain and a jolly-good ride

'Jellybrain' one of my classmates just wrote in his Facebook status field. I know exactly what he means. A six and a half hour Finance Exam marathon just gets the best of you. Particularly when you already have done twelve hours of exams in the preceding two days plus whatever studying you could fit in. Just to add insult to injury there was 50 pages of pre-reading for tomorrows Strategy exam waiting in our mail boxes. At least it will be the last one.

Already yesterday I had had it with exams, so I decided - against all logic - to take my motorbike out for spin. It had been more than a month and half since I last took it out, so I was surprised when it started. Inspired by Kelley's Diary entry on Monday I went out East along the lake, past the Lavaux vineyards, through Vevey and Montreux before stopping for an Ice Cream in Villeneuve.

While eating my ice cream I decided to head up into the nearest mountain, which happened to be this one. There is nothing better than motorbiking in the mountains. You just feel that you are flying up the small winding roads. Before long I caught myself humming the song 'Country road, take me home, to the place...'. I think you know which one I talking about. It is an old classic that both John Denver and Olivia Newton-John have had success with.


As I went up the road became smaller and steeper and the temperature quickly dropped. I did not expect to meet anyone up there, but to my surprise there was a typical small Swiss Inn at the top. This is the view from their terrasse. I am definitely going there again, even if only for an ice cream! The picture is taken with my phone so it does not do the view justice, but you can sense the curvature of the lake. Lausanne is in the right-hand side of the picture although you cannot see it.


Coming from little 'flat' Danmark I cannot help being amazed how people like the Swiss adjust to living in such a vertical world where everything is either up or down. I passed this little mountain railway station next to a tunnel through a cliff under a house! All of it of course at a significant incline!

It was a great and really reenergizing ride albeit it only lasted a few hours. I have promised myself to do it again soon. Then again, that is what I have been doing for the past three months......


Thorsten


Hanging out on the lawn during yesterdays lunch break between the Marketing and Global Political Economy exams.

Henry Low [Singapore] and Rasmus Figenschou [Norway] talking while Lisa Bridgett is watching from the back.

Exam preparation!
Fadi Sbaiti [Lebanon/US], Wouter Naessens [Belgium] and Jodie Roussel [US].

Brad Moldin [US] and Oliver Freiland [Germany] enjoying a cup of coffee before diving into the Finance exam.

The Finance exam was a killer. Here we are around four hours into it.



The reward was a cheeseburger at the harbour front.
On the left: Olivia Assereto [Italy], Marco Simons [The Netherlands] and Carsten Bremer [Germany].
On the right: Ope Adejoro [Nigeria], Yury Vasilkov [Russia], Valeria Pavlyukovskaya [Russia] and Thorsten Boeck [Denmark].

Back to work!

I just got back to Lausanne a couple of hours ago. My suitcase was packed with liver pate and marinated herring, the good ol' traditional Danish dishes that any good Dane craves for when abroad. In Denmark we prefer to eat these delicaies with dark ryebread for lunch. The only places I have found the ryebread outside of Denmark is in Germany and - to my great surprise - here in Switzerland. I then only need to get the aforementioned toppings from home, which my girlfriend sofar has supplied on her frequent visits. So with the IMD restaurant for lunch and my native food for dinner it is understandably a serious challenge to keep the extra unwanted kilos away.

I feel better than I have done for three months. I need to say that while I can. Tomorrow we dive in again and soon we will have forgotten how strong and confident we feel when we are completely rested. I have slept a lot over the past four days, but it feels like we have been off for much longer than that. Most of all because the week of exams is much less stressfull than the normal IMD schedule. Nevertheless, I managed no less than three naps on Thursday: I slept half the flight to Copenhagen, took a nap in the afternoon and another one after dinner. Still I had no problem at sleeping from 11pm to 9am. I think I had some catching up to do.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of Building Block II. That means a goodbye to Operations with Professor Nikos Tsikriktsis and a half goodbye to Economics and Professor Ralf Boscheck who dominated Building Block I, but who only will be back for a few 'guest appearances' in the next Building Block.

The new Building Block also means new study groups. The new groups will effectively start on Wednesday, but we should already be informed about the new groups tomorrow. I believe it is fair to say that everybody is excited to learn about their new groups as they will be the center for many hours of work on assignments, projects and integrative exercises until the summer break.

Thorsten



This is what an MBA exam look like in 2009. Here it is Finance.



Same exam, different angle.

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

An MBA Sunday

I am back in the foyer at the school again. We have just finished a good meeting in my ICA group; ICA meaning 'Industry Competition Analysis'.

I am part of the 'Transports & Logistics' group together with Alexandre Rubio [Brazilian], who has been working for the Brazilian railways, with José Luiz Mesquita [Brazilian], who has been making logistics services in the port of Santos in Brazil, with Myriam Vacher [French], who has been doing distribution and logistics services for the global paper industry and with Simon Sundboell [Danish], who - like myself - is from the container shipping industry. We agreed to scope our ICA project to the Brazilian container shipping market as this will allow us to leverage the knowledge of all five group members to the maximum extent. We also agreed on how we would move forward with the project.

I think most of us still are trying to keep up with all the good advice we got from Jogi Rippel during Wednesdays lecture on how to sustain high performance: Drink a lot of water, exercise, quit the coffee, get some sleep, do powernaps and so forth. Needless to say that this is much harder said than done. I am now on my second cup of coffee since I started writing this entry.

One of the things that Jogi also mentioned was that 'professional athletes get up the same time every day, including saturday and sunday, as the body works best with set routines'. So I set the alarm to buzz at 7.00 this morning. I heard it, turned it off and got up at 10.00 instead. I guess I still need some practise....

This morning was another round of football in Parc Milan. A group of people has gone skiing for the day, so we were only 11 players, but it was still good fun and even greater exercise. I have set myself a goal of exercising twice a week: Football on Sunday and either some running or fitness during the week. Just to keep a minimum level of physical well being. More than that is probably not realistic as things look right now.

Other than that we have the usual pile of assignments and readings to do, so I know where I will spend the rest of the day.

Thorsten

Lunch with Stuart

The career services team let us out early, so I am enjoying the view of the lake from the MBA foyer just before the sun sets. Although the only visible movement are the cars passing by it reminds me that there actually is a world outside.

I spent most of the night pulling Economics professor Ralf Boscheck's model for 'Industry & Competition Analysis' (ICA) down over the container shipping industry. I am not sure that I really got it, but at least we will get some feedback so we can start covering the gaps. It is my impression that most of the class had spent the evening and a good part of the night doing the very same thing.

With only a few hours of sleep I was not feeling too fresh this morning. At lunch I managed to get 45 minutes of sleep in the dungeons. What a difference that made! I was completely reenergized. I guess there is something about that old saying that one hour of sleep during the day equals three hours of sleep at night. I have never seen the scientific evidence of that, but I don't really need to. It definitely feels as if it is true.

13 of the students in the class had lunch with Professor Stuart Read today. The 13 of us had that in common that Stuart was facilitating the case discussion on the day we interviewed on campus. For my part that was back in May. There was no particular agenda for the lunch, just a chit-chat on how we had liked the start of the program and living in Lausanne. As we parted Stuart told us that his door and email always was open if we ever needed help or good advise. That has been the general attitude for all faculty members I have met so far. I know Stuart has done several start-ups in Silicon Valley, which I find fascinating, so I might go and poke him a bit more on that one day.

Thorsten

Getting the balance right

The great thing about Switzerland is that the sun gets up a bit earlier and sets a bit later than in Denmark. The bad thing is that it doesn't matter because you are anyway in a classroom from 8 to 17.30 every day. Today was a bit different as we were released an hour early. I used the opportunity to dig out my running shoes and go for a jog for the first time since I arrived two weeks ago. The mountains around Lausanne are absolutely no fun for a Dane, so I ran the only flat stretch in the city, which is along the lake. I am by no means a natural runner, but I have been running for many years now as I always have found it the easiest sport to fit in with a busy schedule. You are to a large degree independent of time, space and other people. All you need is a pair of running shoes and you are good to go. As a bonus you get to know the area that you are in. Today I discovered that I live 300m from the Olympic Museum. The museum is in Lausanne as the International Olympic Committee has its headquarters here.

It was so rejuvenating to get some fresh air in the lungs and let the body work, while the head for once could take a rest. It is amazing what a difference it does to your mental health. The time spent getting some regular exercise come back plentiful in terms of increased motivation and efficiency. The same goes for sleep, if you ask me. The more we cut back on sleep to get things done the more inefficient we come, and the less we sleep..... and so goes the vicious circle. I don't think I am giving away any secrets when I say that most major MBA programs are built around the notion that the students must be loaded up with more material and tasks than they ever can handle unless they develop smart and efficient ways of getting things done. The IMD MBA is no different. So why is exercise and sleep the first two things we cut away when we get busy. It is definitely not efficient. The funny thing with time is that when we have it, we use it, but when we don't have it we get things done anyway. With that in mind I have promised myself to keep a proper balance this year and to keep exercise and sleep in the equation, when I do my priorities. It is much easier said than done, though, and so far I haven't done very good on this point. I guess this is one (of many) reasons that an MBA is something you need to LIVE and not just read about.