“On the 22nd of September 2011, 2 teams from HEC Paris joined the annual Rolex MBA Regatta in Portofino. Inspired by the example of Marquis de Maintenon, french noble man who has sold his castle and title to become a pirate in the Caribbean, the teams were determined to add some spice to the still life of the Italian resort. Division A boat, lead by Mattias Wildeman, was fighting the curse of the boat’s name “Pisolo” (“Sleepy”), but still represented a real threat to other boats, with the best result of 3rd place in one of the races. The second boat from Division B with a fancy name “Malilu” has proved its party name, becoming the party boat of the port during the 3rd evening, staying afloat all the night, while all the other boats sank in silence and darkness.”

Denis Kirillov, HEC MBA Participant

The HEC Paris representing team at the NRG Battle in the Netherlands - Team Grontmij / Alliander – won the International NRG Battle 2011 for their idea about using Biogas in different ways. HEC Paris MBA participants and members of the winning team, Divyajeevan Sahoo and Marcio Fleury-Ribeiro, explain all:

“With participants from Brazil, India and Netherlands, coming from various Schools in France (HEC Paris) and Netherlands (Hanze University, Technical University Eindhoven), it was a truly diverse but coordinated effort for team Gronmitj-Alliander 2! For us, participating in the NRG Battle was not only a challenge but also a real learning experience. When two of the members decided to come from Paris to Groningen, they expected to meet new people, new companies and have the opportunity to put in practice what they are learning in the MBA in a sector that they are really interested in. The outcome was above the expectations for the whole team: we discover that, more than what we expected, when you meet people with the same spirit (even if you never met them before), you can deliver amazing results, and no less important, have a lot of fun!
An environment of free communication and collaboration aligned with different backgrounds and complementary skills of the team were essential to reach the result.

For the finals, we visited the customers, went into the field and worked on improving the innovations we proposed in the last round, making them feasible technically and economically and also discussing new ideas to improve the usage of biogas in a balanced and sustainable way. We reached out to the actual people involved in the village, with the key stakeholders, and optimizing uniqueness of solution vis a vis its implementation constraints.
The finals were a part of the European Energy Delta Convention 2011. Being in the leadership of the HEC MBA Energy Club, it was a great networking opportunity for the club and ourselves. It was a great experience to be the European Champions. In addition, we are looking forward to patent the idea we pitched in the finals we won!”

To find out more about the NRG Battle, visited their website: www.nrgbattle.nl

Compilation NRG Battle – Finals, November 23 2011

“Continuing the tradition, the Asia Pacific Business Club organized a very successful ten day trek to the Asia Pacific region this year. Seventeen participants visited nineteen companies in Singapore and Hong Kong. The trek was not limited to a particular industry sector; the companies visited were from very diverse industry sectors such as Finance, Consulting, Healthcare, Luxury, Energy etc. Visiting the companies confirmed the notion that there is significant growth potential in Asia. All the companies visited were hiring. In general, Singapore companies cater to the South East Asian market whereas the Hong Kong companies are focused on the Chinese market. Though knowledge of local language is advantageous, it is not required to find a suitable opportunity. The trek highlighted that strategy for searching a job in Asia is different than in other parts of the world. The most effective way to search for job opportunities is by being on the ground and by in-person networking.

Apart from the company visits, the other highlights of the trek were the networking events. Five separate events were organized to facilitate networking with alumni in Singapore and Hong Kong, fellow MBA participants from NUS, HKUST, and CUHK. These events further helped build relationships with the local alumni and participants, and provided deeper insights into job-search strategies and target companies.

Many thanks to all the organizers of the trek who put in significant effort and devoted numerous hours in building relationships with the companies, organizing the company visits as well as the networking events, and taking care of the logistics of the trek. The trek greatly succeeded in strengthening existing relationships and building new relationships setting the stage for the 2012 trek.”

Praveen Prathy, Full-time MBA 2012

HIEP Exchange program, September 2011

“During the HEC Paris – IIMB Exchange Program (HIEP), from 5th to 11th September 2011, HEC MBA Part-Time participants had the opportunity to be immersed in the Indian business environment through a series of classroom lectures given by IIMB Professors, visit top Indian companies such as TATA ELXSI, Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital and attend a corporate conference with Rural Shores – a pioneer Indian company with  innovative business model and high social impact.

The week’s program was very demanding and well designed. Time slots allowed us to work on joint projects with our IIMB MBA counterparts on topics like “Equity investment in social businesses in India”, “Foreign investment in Indian agriculture” and “Luxury Industry challenges and opportunities in India”. These projects are a unique opportunity for cross-cultural learning of business and management in both France and India. It was truly inspiring to meet our colleagues after several months of remote work on these projects.

Through a series of classroom lectures given by IIMB Professors and professionals, we learnt about the challenges and opportunities in India and saw that regulation plays a major role in doing business in India.

During this amazing week we had also the opportunity to discover Bangalore: a growing metropolis with its Electronic City neighbourhood (named the Silicon Valley of India), its colourful markets, its beautiful gardens, its traffic jams and its awesome temples. We had the pleasure to visit ISKCON Temple, which is a finest fusion of modern and traditional elements of architecture. On the Sunday before the exchange week started, we visited Art of Living Center. It was a rare experience to be there during the visit of Spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

Bangalore is also nicknamed the Garden City. The IIMB campus contributes with its luxuriant vegetation to this image, standing like an oasis of calm in a lively neighbourhood. This environment helped us to multiply the exchanges and enhanced collaborative group work.

Jean-Paul EFANG-MBOME, Part-Time MBA 2012, said that he discovered an interesting application of Taylorism to surgery during the visit of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital:

“During our week in India we had the opportunity to visit the Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospitals, this health center very different from the one we come across in Europe. The first things that touched our minds when we arrived were the different of scale compared to a regular European hospital, the technological advance and the process put in place by the chain of management. These factors combined with the use of pioneer techniques like the tele-medecine and remote surgery guidance allow these hospitals not only to save lives by making medicine affordable but also by giving access to medicine to people in rural areas.”

Personally, the corporate conference with Mr. Murali Vullaganti, Co-Founder & CEO of Rural Shore was very inspiring. During two hours the guest speaker talked us about a very challenging subject: How to be competitive and profitable in India involving in the products or services value creation talents situated on the rural area. This subject joins another subject: How to be profitable selling your produces or services to the “Bottom of the pyramid”. Mr. Murali Vullaganti answered the question simply making a presentation about Rural Shores’s vision, mission, employees, clients, and partners. He showed us that yes it is possible for a company to be profitable and competitive and in the same time to create employment opportunities and social development for the “Bottom of the pyramid”. Rural Shores for sure has an innovative business model. I had also the opportunity to exchange with two Rural Shores’s employees and saw that they are very proud of what they do. Now, I’m wondering how this experience can help us to create similar social shaping approaches in other countries or other industries”.

The program’s next step will be in December 2011, when the IIMB participants selected for this program will visit HEC Paris.”

Bianca Roatis, Part-Time MBA, Class of 2013

About HIEP

HIEP is a participant exchange initiative between the Part-Time MBA Program at HEC Paris and the MBA Program at IIMB. As part of this initiative, up to 36 MBA participants from HEC Paris visit IIMB and an equal number of participants from IIMB visit HEC Paris every year. Part-Time HEC MBA participants work on joint projects with their counterparts from IIMB on topics of mutual interest. These projects are expected to lead to a deep appreciation of the business environment on both sides, in a short period of time.

About IIMB

The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore is a center of excellence in management, recognized as one of the leading management schools in the world, with international standards of post-graduate and doctoral level teaching, executive education for senior and middle management, research and consulting. In recent years IIMB has been consistently ranked number one or number two business school in India, with many major surveys ranking IIMB #1. IIMB’s alumni occupy important positions in industry and the public sector in India, as well as globally. Created in 1973, the sprawling 100-acre campus is a green oasis situated in south Bangalore

Monday, September 19th, 2011, 6:00 PM

At Women in Leadership club’s inaugural conference, the MBA HEC students were honoured to have Mrs. Sabine Dandiguian as guest speaker. Mrs. Dandiguian is Managing Director, Emerging Markets, Janssen EMEA, Johnson & Johnson group and former President of Janssen France and Janssen Belgium.

A noble topic: “LIFE”

Before the conference, we were excited about what we believed would be an opportunity to learn more about pharmaceutical industry economic model and the ongoing changes in markets.

Mrs. Dandiguian sent us a very inspiring message about how much Janssen enriches its employees and the communities around the world. She said that, despite of some rumours (that are circulating) about the pharmaceutical industry; the aim of the industry is a noble topic: “LIFE”.

Markets and Challenges: yesterday, today, tomorrow

Through clear examples, we learnt the importance of the change process that pharmaceutical companies are operating, from developed markets to the emerging markets.

Mrs. Dandiguian said that the changing structure of the pharmaceutical industry is driven by several factors: patent expiration for blockbuster drugs, healthcare budget deficit, cost and price evolution, increase demand in regulation & transparency, R&D productivity and accessibility.

On the innovation side, our speaker said that the “integrate information” will play a major role in a better diagnosis and an accelerate access to the treatments. Patients, hospitals, physicians and pharmacies will be more and more connected through Internet.

Nevertheless, Janssen wants to “reach the best of science” by building bridges between biotech, biomarkers and pharmaceutical companies, academic, patients associations.

We had also an interesting benchmark presentation on the economic business models of some important Johnson & Johnson competitors.

Leadership and Diversity at Johnson & Johnson

The empowerment of the local teams by decentralisation, the right people in the right country/market, the collaborative taking decision style, the self awareness and adaptability are some of the Johnson & Johnson corporate values and drivers for excellence that Mrs. Dandiguian shared with us.

The diversity of origins/culture, thoughts, gender exists at all the levels in the company, said Mrs. Dandiguian.

At the end of the conference, as a conclusion Mrs. Dandiguian accentuated how important is the credo at Johnson & Johnson and how the credo embraces all the values of the company and is anchored very deep in all the processes and interactions, either internally or externally.

Bianca Roatis, Part-Time MBA 2012

Audience feedback

“I spent a very good moment to this conference. The speaker was a charismatic person, who gave us a lot of key information helping us to understand better Janssen strategies in emerging markets. Despite some recent debates in France about this subject, we could put some open questions about the pharmaceutical sector, too. This was the first time that I attended a WiL conference and what is sure is that… I will attend as much as I can to those conferences, thanks!”

Linda Goumara, Part-Time MBA 2012

“What I really enjoyed during the conference was the finest analysis presented by Mrs. Dandiguian about the changes and challenges that the pharmaceutical industry faces and will faces during the next decade. I discover a very dynamic industry beside the constraints: regulatory, cost, social/cultural, etc. It was interesting to see how the business development strategy in emerging markets fits with the HR & Diversity strategy and with the Johnson & Johnson corporate values. Furthermore, the communication talent of our speaker contributed to facilitate the highly appreciated interaction with the audience. Thank you to the Johnson & Johnson team (Mrs. Muriel Malbezin – Vice president Medical Affairs and Mrs. Maryse Veysseyre-Smol – Executive Assistant to MD & HRD) for this opportunity to interact and learn from the unique experiences of Mrs. Dandiguian.

Bianca Roatis, Part-Time MBA 2012

Special thanks to the organizers for putting the events together:

• Bianca Roatis, President
• Blanca Edigo-De-Miguel, Vice-President
• Mariana DOMINGUEZ-SALAS, Corporate Relations Director

“India Week is a collection of great events where HEC students combine their talents with the goal of promoting Indian culture and bringing together various traditions from different parts of India. This year it was organized from 28th February to 3rd March. For four days HEC students enjoyed delicious Indian food, wore Indian outfits, had their hands painted with henna and performed spectacular dances, among many other events. The highlight of the week was the Gala night. The active participation of non-Indians made this night special. Participants from USA, Portugal, Venezuela, Russia, Japan,Romania etc joined their Indian peers to give scintillating dance performances on Bollywood numbers and Fashion show. Other highlights of the evening were Folk Dance Acts by professional troupe and scrumptious Indian Food. ”

Andrea Zugravu, MBA Participant from Romania adds “To say I liked India Week is an understatement. I loved learning Hindi dances, enjoyed the food tremendously and promised myself that the next dress I buy, will be a sari. However, the highlight of the week was seeing the teamwork and cooperation that went into making the various events a success. It was great to see how everyone came together and handled various tasks like crunching numbers, coordinating food delivery, dancing, and designing posters with such grace. I got to make a lot of friends and feel an integrated part of the HEC community and though it was a lot of work, I would happily do it all again.”

India Week Organizing Team

HEC MBA participant, Jeev Sahoo tells us about a a talk he gave at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Paris entitled “India: New Continent for Human Resources?”

“It all started from a networking with a classmate, when Prof Charles-Henri Besseyre des Horts was searching for someone who has spent substantial time in India, in the corporate world. The focus of the event was to introduce HEC Executive education students to knowing more about the recent changes in India, particularly from a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and HR perspective.

The best part of the interaction was the contradiction and changing image of India as a country struggling to come-up in the last few years, amongst western developed economies. The audience was very updated about the recent developments in culture, particularly in today’s globalized world with India coming up as a stable society powered by Information Technology, Foreign Direct Investments in products and services, and eradication of not just poverty, but also redundant/avoidable cultural practices, reduction in bribery and uplifting of women, and other underprivileged parts of the society.
The audience was awed by a video that showed the CEO of HCL Technologies repeating the company motto, ‘Employees first, Customer Second’!

To read the article in French please visit: http://www.andrh.fr/information/liste-des-actualites/l-inde-nouveau-continent-pour-les-ressources-humaines

Or Please click here to download the PDF translation of the article in English

You can reach Jeev SAHOO at jeev [AT] jeev [DOT] in.“

Jeev Sahoo, Full-time MBA, 2012

In Issue 2 of the HEC MBA Entrepreneurship Club Newsletter, the Innovator visits with Le Camping – a startup incubator in Paris where several HEC MBAs are currently hard at work! Also featured in this issue is a look at the best places to start a business, and the first of a multi-part series on becoming an entrepreneur.

The Innovator Volume 2

Along with a new leadership team, the Entrepreneurship Club has launched The Innovator, a newsletter for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. In the introductory issue The Innovator features an overview of the club’s vision for the year, insight on pitching an idea, and a feature on a team of HEC MBA Entrepreneurs hard at work launching their business – Zifiz.

Click here to check out The Innovator Volume 1

Don’t forget to check back at the beginning of March for the next issue of The Innovator!

Congratulations to Orsolya Szabo, from the January 2011 Part-time intake, on her outstanding achievement in the recent Ideas to Innovation (i2i) Challenge organized by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).

More than 650 people from 60 countries entered the competition, which called for ideas to creatively change management education. Orsolya, of Hungarian origin, submitted a proposal advocating the use of assessment centers and other novel procedures in the MBA admissions process and was third place winner, receiving US$10,000.

The i2i Challenge is a major component of the GMAC Management Education for Tomorrow
(MET) Fund, a US$10 million initiative to advance business education around the world. GMAC plans to invest a substantial portion of the MET Fund in the implementation of one or more of the winning ideas.

Orsolya tells us about her experience :

Summary of my idea

Business schools need to catch up with best-in-class corporations regarding their selection processes. Particularly, the assessment of social skills – including collaboration, influencing and leadership –business scenarios and group simulation exercises could add great value, as social competencies are overshadowed by test results in the current practice despite their essential role in business. Furthermore, the (partial) substitution of essays by other self-presentation formats, such as slide-shows, posters, films, cartoons, etc., would allow candidates to show multiple aspects of their talents providing business schools with a more comprehensive picture on candidates’ capabilities.

How and why I entered

In August 2010, I received an e-mail from mba.com inviting participants from all over the world to their Ideas to Innovation Challenge – an idea contest about “What one idea would improve graduate management education?” It happened just after I got admitted to the HEC Paris MBA program. I immediately decided that I would definitely enter the contest. First of all, it seemed to be an excellent opportunity to communicate my ideas and impressions for the enhancement of business education. Such occasions are rare! Secondly, the contest offered a possibility to help finance my MBA studies.

The background to my idea

Browsing through the major themes given by GMAC, I quickly recognized that my first-hand experience was very limited regarding the education itself, as I not started the program yet. At that point, however, I already had experience of the admissions process. Working for an executive search company also gave me the advantage of having relevant insight into the selection processes of best-in-class organizations including the favorite target companies of MBA graduates. Although originally I had three ideas in mind (and could enter only one idea), I decided to focus on the admission process, as I thought that the “extra” experience stemming from my professional background would make it sound more credible.

Connection to HEC Paris

On my first day at HEC Paris, Professor Bernard Ramanantsoa – HEC Paris Dean, and Professor Bernard Garrette – HEC MBA Associate Dean, welcomed us with an introduction about the HEC Paris MBA program and its key building blocks. They both emphasized the program’s major focus on building soft-skills besides acquiring knowledge about the most important business specialties. Exactly the same philosophy lies in the core of my winning idea. Social skills are highly important in business, thus business schools should devote considerable attention to them throughout the entire education process, from admission to graduation. It is very inspiring to be part of a community that shares these ideas and helps me master these skills.”

The Part-Time MBA option links participant’s academic curriculum and professional activity. Custom designed for managers between the ages of 25 to 35, the program allows participants to continue their Full-Time professional activities while developing skills to boost their career to an international management level.