Today, I had the first two lectures of the P2 core courses and my first elective.

- Corporate Finance: teacher's got an English accent and talked about some forward and future contracts. Short introduction of the course which will focus on some additional financial tools and on how finance directors can add value to a company, what we should focus on as future managers, especially when deciding about capital structure. To be honest, I do not like Finance. I recognize the importance of Financial markets (worth trillions of $$$$$), the thrill that some people can get at the sheer idea of trading in such sizeable environment and I am very conscious of the importance and relevance of capital choices within an organization. However, I am much more of an operational person myself and the most relevant item of this course are related to capital structure, the price of risk, stock options and incentives and valuations of projects, of companies. The rest would force me to navigate in stormy waters.

- Process and Operation Management or PoM for the people in-the-know. Teacher's American, from Detroit and with a background in the Auto Industry (funny that). The case today was about a hospital in Canada, in the suburb of Toronto. They specialize in hernia operation and got bloody good at it. Turnaround times is 72 hours, as opposed to 1 week for general hospital, people have yearly "reunions" after their operations, setting is that of a country club. They can achieve this because they accept only the easy cases, they have developed a very low cost solution, their infrastructure is focused on this type of operation and their overhead is limited. I found the comparision between this "lean" organization and the "fat" general hospital comparision a little simplistic. General Hospitals do need to accept the hard cases, the complications, cannot specialize in one type of operations and definitely cannot afford to run reunion and dinner with every free check up. Obviously, there might be some improvements possible within a General Hospital to cut cost, for example within each unit and instead of organizing itself around radiology, surgery, etc...focus around cases such as Fractures, Cancer, Maternity...which is - according to the professor - what most business choose today.
The terminology, although useful to compare processes and to analyse each case, is offending. I cannot bring myself to think of patients as "inventory" or as input or output to a process...

This reminded me of an experience in the Seychelles. I got bitten by some sort of fish. It was so insignificant that I did not even realize it but it got somewhat infected so I went to see a doctor on the main island. Well, well, well...There was a pre-diagnostic room where a nurse would come by, ask you some detail, take a look at what's going on and dispatch you through the right process. Then the diagnostic room, which then passes you onto the treatment room, which then passes on onto the pharmacy to pick up your medicine. Final stop was the check out counter. Total time for a visit, about 10 min...

- The highlight of the day was the Strategies for Latin America electives. The class is very small so very interactive. Population of the class is 50% of people from Latin American countries and 50% of people from outside. One person worked for the World Bank and is a data encyclopedia. The teacher is Spanish.
This course presents the region globally, some key characteristics and figures, offers some elements of comparision between Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia, picks a few countries and offers a short introduction of their economies, political environment, sectors, currency problems, etc...Finally, it focuses our minds on possible strategies to succeeed in this market, estimated to be about $2 tr. Most of what we read about the region has a very negative conotation and getting to know a lot better this continent in such a varied environment, for me, is part of the INSEAD value proposition.

I travelled around Latin America for a few months and was truly dazzled by the continent. Despite its reputation of being laid back, most people over there are hard workers. With a strong interest in politics, social, cultural and economic developments in international blocks, as well as a desire to learn more about the "other part of the world" which was very distorted from my Western view, I really welcome this course. How much can I learn about this fun loving continent, plagued by inflation, corruption, political unrest, inequalities, lack of infrastructure, education and trust in 6 weeks with 4 classes per week is another question.
What I liked about the elective is that the small class size makes it a lot more interactive. Each assignment is pretty much something that we choose: we can decide which case we want to lead, we can pick our final project to better fit our areas of interest. Everyone's participation makes it a lot more "real life" than most of the large class case studies, or lecture.