Love, Money, Life...

Since last Friday, the 7 Chinese in our class initiated a fund-raising on campus for the people suffering in earthquake in Sinchuan. We received many warm supports from many friends and strangers until this Tuesday. All the funds will be proceeded to China Education Development Foundation to rebuild the schools in Sichuan for the thousands of students there. A big thanks to the love from IMD community!

There is money out of love, and there is also passion for wealth - a little surprise for our second last week before the building block final exams, we met Warren Buffet in the MBA auditorium yesterday afternoon. Organized by family business research centre, our Organizational Leadership Prof. Ben Bryant and Entrepreneurship Prof. Benoit Leleux gave us this opportunity to interact with Mr. Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway and Mr. Eitan Wertheimer of ISCAR group. For the richest man in world, success simply means how many people would hide you in case of danger. At the age of 77, he still goes to his office at Omaha every morning because he enjoys it as part of his life...

Summer is coming soon, just before 3 papers, 4 exams, 2 weeks preparation and 1 discovery expedition in Kenya!

Humility & Humanity

We've had the "International Political Economy" course for a few sessions where Prof. Jean-Pierre Lehman always started with a "Literacy Test" about the regions we were going to discuss in the following four hours. The topics range from history, politics, economy, literature, etc. It is during such session I realized how ignorant I am of the "Globalized world in 21st century". While most of the class think we are the most international MBA, these literacy tests revealed the truth. There are 7 or 8 colleagues who are ahead of the class in terms of global knowledge.

As Prof. Lehman said, "How often in your lives have you found yourselves or are you likely to find yourselves in an environment of 90 persons from 44 nationalities, with no one dominant, for almost an entire year?"

With such diversity, there is certainly different viewpoints & conflicts. What Prof. Lehman has been trying to facilitate is an open and free environment for discussion. It is a challenging & rewarding experience at the same time! I hope in the end, we would be able to settle in a common ground, which is probably the evolving humanity in a historical context.

Design, Debate & Deliberate

The three new courses we had in Building Block II is about Design - Innovation & Product Design, Debate - International Political Economy, and Deliberate - Strategy. All of them are highly interactive and engaging that we almost forgot 2 weeks ago we were still struggling with the exams. Today, we got the results! Overall performance is better than previous classes, according to faculty feedback. Thank God, i survived through it...

Looking forward, we will have our last team formed by next Sunday - International Consulting Project and more details will be shared then. At the mean time, our program coordinator Celine is busy preparing our discovery expedition in Kenya this summer and many colleagues are sweating for the MBA Tournament preparation.

Exciting April...

Spring in Lausanne

Survived after the whole week of exams, some ran as long as 6.5 hours (Finance interim exam). Thanks to our Program Coordinator Celine who kindly organized (or planned as part of the learning experience in IMD) our first-exam party, it was MAD (the famous clubbing compound)...

No much time to take a break, we had a meeting with entrepreneurs for start-up project today when the 2nd pit-stop is just two week away. Over the weekend, we also had to finish some group work for the NEWly assigned study group. And from Monday, three brand new courses will kick off plus the existing finance, accounting, etc.

The good news is, spring is coming! I didn't have time to take a beautiful picture of the blooming city but I will do it soon.

Rushing for a Chinese-speaking dinner now. Bon weekend!

Saving Hearts - Where Hope Comes to Life

"Baby Heart - International Children's Heart Foundation (ICHF) & Dr. William Novick", this fresh marketing case published before last Christmas by Prof. Domonique is definitely one of my favorite cases in Building Block I. Dr. Novick flew from Tennesse to share with our class of his 15 year's journey at ICFH which is very touching. Being one of the 500 plus children heart surgeons in the world, he had the burden for young patients around the world.

As a class, we've tried our best to contribute ideas of how to sustain this NGO in the long run and how to marketing it creatively. In the end, a CHF 1,500 was also presented to Dr. Novick as a small contribution.

We have one more week before exams and I will update soon after.

Good night!