The operative word for last week has to be “explore”. MBA program’s brilliant design encouraged us to explore many areas last week. We began by exploring the depths of our own cultures, and as we came together to share what we had learnt, we began to explore the cultural histories of others in the class. What a fantastic experience that was! It isn’t hard to predict that such exploration leads us to identify the various differences in our cultures and backgrounds but what wasn’t obvious, and was revealed along this journey, was not what differentiated us but that which united us. As someone said during these sessions – it truly was a melting pot – a melting pot that takes in “many” but produces “one”.
The exploration journey continued as we used the newly acquired strategic analysis tools to dig deeper into the companies and industries we have come from. Here again, unfolded a remarkable tapestry of experiences and outlooks.
And then came the sessions that every IMD aspirant eagerly looks forward to – Leadership. While the stream hasn’t begun yet, Prof. Narasimhan, took the opportunity in the introductory session to urge us to explore our drivers and motivations and gave us a sneak preview of the rich journey that we will be embarking on very shortly.
We got to know our working groups for the first time and we will soon be meeting the start-ups that we will be working with (yes we will keep you posted – we are just as excited!). All in all it was an incredibly full week.
We wound up the week gyrating on pop numbers and yes no one was exempt not even Ralf.
It was a fine week and taught us a lot about others but more importantly about ourselves!
I will be back with more tales shortly, in the meantime do not forget to check out the fantastic entries by:
- Rakesh: http://captainimd.tumblr.com/
- Jiaqing: http://forum.chasedream.com/thread-1163964-1-1.html
- and our Japanese classmates: https://imdjapanclub.wordpress.com/
As always we wait to hear from you and hope you enjoy reading these entries.
Kunal
