Friday, March 12, 2004

At the start of every period, it has become customary to draw some quick conclusions about the courses offered in the previous one. I will make it brief this time.

Information Technology: this class was newly introduced in the curriculum. It lacked a purpose, a thread. No one knew what the professor really meant by IT. Most of the class was like an OB class about bringing change in an organization. We suggested the following format for the next class
- Introduction of what IT is and overview of the main systems out there
- What IT can do for your company in terms of competitive advantage, management and decision making tool, effectiveness of processes and support of your strategic intents (Cemex in Mexico and Banco Commercial do Portugal are good examples of companies who have used IT to differentiate themselves)
- What should you automate and incorporate in your IT system and what shouldn't you? What criteria can you use to make such a decision?
- How do you turn your company into an IT-enabled organization (or into a more modern one...)

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Macroeconomics: the professor was excellent, extremely knowledgeable, funny and using real-life examples to illustrate his theory. I can now magine how boring life can be over at a country's Central Bank. We talked about the IS/LM model, labor laws, savings and investment, current and capital accounts, growth, GDP and its inputs in general, exchange rates and what drives them, interest rates, monetary and fiscal policies, etc...In short, all the basic tools that one should understand in order to read the newspaper. It is very important to be able to talk about the World News columns when you are invited to an interview. If you start off with a bit of small talk, you sound much more intelligent if you kick off your conversation by indicating that you wonder why the Head of the European Central Bank took so long before stating that a strong Euro was a "problem", or that lack of investment in the primary school system in Brazil crippled the growth prospects of the Latin American giant. If you can quote the date of the article and the name of the author, you're in.
I am particularly sensitive to this issue since my savings are in US$ and my major expenses this year are in Euros. This has made this class VERY expensive for me.

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International Political Analysis - I did not like the class. The professor was extremely knowledgeable - and his experience was SO useful in class. I mean, when he talks about the US Secretary of State, he does not talk to a name on CNN. He knows the guy. When he talks about problems to implement policies in Russia, he knows what he is talking about: he spent months in a small town in Siberia. I did well (our little role play with General D. of Petrolia granted us the top mark in group work and my general knowledge of international affairs and geopolitics helped me a lot) but the class covered too much in too little time and I found the overall experience extremely frustrated - although at times particularly enjoyable given the differences in opinion in the class.
INSEAD wants to spit out internationally-aware graduates, people who are ready to take positions in the world. Few business schools offer this kind of class as a core course. There are drawbacks to this of course in that it is so difficult to cover the "world" in 16 sessions. The professor proposed lunchtime debates. I heard that they were well-attended but so poorly advertised that I missed all of them. I am now taking a geopolitics elective which is much more satisfying.

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Power and Politics: this is a 'soft skill' class. It was very effective at teaching methods, techniques and strategy to bring change into an organization, to develop positional and personal power, to assess the task at hands, to identify allies, opponents, fence sitters and adversaries, to negotiate in critical and crisis situations, etc...I felt that it lacked a lot of hands on experience. Simulation and power games, in the same vein as the one that we tried in our Leading Organization class in P2, would have been welcome. Perhaps a note for the future.

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OB: this was an extremely good class - but the amount of work was just incredible. Each class required a long preparation, the Personal Project was manageable but the first 25-page long paper felt like a never-ending story. Strangely enough the second paper (about 35-pages long) was a lot easier to write. It could be that most of the content came more naturally after so many class discussions.
Most participants have commented that this class transformed them "from inside". Some have indicated that it was their "best class at INSEAD".

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Strategies for Asia Pacific. This was a very good class, very structured, offering useful framework for market entry decisions, and strategic expansions into the regions. It covered aspects of basic strategy and competitive analysis, JVs, M&A, operations, HR, Financing, etc...It successfully highlighted the main political risks, the main cultural aspects, what drove the Asian mentality and behavior and gave very practical examples on everything. Two speakers came to talk about their experience in class. We visited a Singapore-based cookie company to take a look at a real-life situation. Overall, it was fantastic. The introduction as Jeopardy on Asia was a FANTASTIC idea.
If you are already an expert on Asia, do not take the class. You are likely to be bored as it is difficult to pitch the subject at multiple levels of initial understanding. It is clearly geared toward entry to mid-level Asian knowledge.
Mine was subterranean.

I did not take the class as it clashed with one of my electives but I heard that VOBM (something to do with Ventures, Opportunities and Business Models or how to assess a new opportunity and its potential if I understand correctly) was absolutely fantastic.

P3 does not represent less work than P2. It was pretty much the same. Supposedly, INSEAD frees up some time in P4 (we have no more core courses, one less class and no more exams) and in P5 (only 3 classes and no exams) for job hunting. Right now, I must say that the change is not so tangible though.

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