Wednesday, July 07, 2004

If the Dean was an entrepreneurship professor, the Director of the MBA program would be asked to make coffee and every manager would be called Vice President.

More seriously, there would be high innovation levels, as student projects, companies and faculties would often work together to improve the program, the visibility of the school in the financing and small enterprise business but also to act as a constant renewal engine in big businesses. This could be held as a huge flagship for banks, small businesses, consultancies (in need of ideas) and big businesses to come to INSEAD.

The Fontainebleau campus would be delocated to Sophia Antipolis and see its size reduced to the Singapore one. A third campus would have to be created on American soil.

INSEAD’s Motto would become: “petit mais costaud”

INSEAD would raise funds every year or so, and would maintain and develop relationships with the various VCs around the world. Members of top corporations and other educational institutions would sit on its board and provide valuable advice.

Every participant would be asked to come up with their own curriculum and be given a lot of autonomy in how they’d like to be graded. They would not pay a tuition fee but they’d have to get their own funding. They could raise new funds every period. In fact, the time you could spend at INSEAD would depend on the amount of funding you would raise. It might therefore take you several rounds before obtaining your degree. If you could also bring extra money for INSEAD, you could decrease by a couple of credits the minimum number required to graduate.
Each of the new curriculum and elective models and the past period grades would be carefully examined by the investment and faculty community to make sure that it made educational sense before granting the next round of funding. Every participant would be required to achieve inhuman rates of return in each class. Minimum passing grade would be risen from 1.8 to 2.5. Dean’s List would be given to the top three students to encourage more competition.

Admissions would be run through the famous 2 min elevator pitch. If a participant could sell its career goal and life in a nutshell in 2 min or less, he or she would be admitted into the program. They would be ask to accompany the admission officer from the ground floor to top floor of the building in an elevator and pitch their Career Model. On the way down, they’d have to answer “Why Me and Why INSEAD”.

There would be no class schedule as it would be considered a hindrance to high levels of creativity. Instead, everyone would have to constantly align their schedule with everyone else.

INSEAD would be very focused on growth and would have plans to open a 20 new programs every year. It would be able to deliver on only 2 of them but would keep advertising for 20. A third would actually just be late so half the promotion would have to delay its entry every now and then. It would also change its name to INSEAD.com.

Instead of maintaining contacts with recruiters, CMS (Career Management Services) would maintain contact with the workforce and provide the various core team members needed for the graduating entrepreneurs. They would schedule interviews for the various MBA participants, and have rooms reserved for the various functions. For instance, if an MBA participant was looking to hire a VP of Marketing, he or she would go to North Wing 4.

IPO would be a special finance course – and Finance 1 would be renamed Private Equity and Finance 2 would be renamed Venture Capital. Marketing Core Course would be renamed Bullshitting and there would be no requirement to take Process Courses to graduate. On the other hand, Legal Courses would become mandatory.

All doors would be destroyed at INSEAD. There would be no other services (drain of funds) such as cafeteria, travel agency, etc… on campus. MBAs would have to either do it themselves or not do it.

MBA would really not be cool funky fizzy enough for a product name. It would be renamed iGoBroke for the classic MBA edition and eHoliday for Executive Education and easyMoney for the Executive Program.

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