Interview with Bertrand Guillotin of the Fuqua School of Management, Duke University

It was a great pleasure to welcome Bertrand Guillotin, International Programs Director at the Fuqua School of Management, Duke University to Grenoble EM in November. During his time at the school we were able to make a short video in which Bertrand talked about life at Duke. Having studied and worked in both France and the USA, he was also able to share his insights into and the differences between French and American styles of teaching and learning.

BOOK REVIEW: “The Halo Effect” by Phil Rosenzweig (2009)

The Halo Effect gives an excellent insight in to how we make judgments about people, organizations and strategy. It is a must read for any manager or strategy student.

 

The Shanghai Jiaotong Academic Ranking of World Universities 2012…and the winners are….

Last week a group of young researchers at the Shanghai Jiaotong university were busy compiling the 9^th version of the Academic Ranking of World Universities. This was first compiled in 2003 and was greeted like a bombshell in France as well as in several other countries.  (More in a later post.)

The 2012 once again confirmed the supremacy of American universities where more than half of the top 100 being from the USA.  9 years on the winners are….the USA (though with warning signs), China, Australia, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia. And the losers? Japan, Germany and perhaps India.

Top 500  2003-2012 Ups and Downs

Silver medals and the benefits of being second

A disappointing silver medal

This week an American athlete twittered that getting coming second just meant that you were the best of the losers. It is easy to understand his disappointment. Most silver medalists will have begun their completion thinking that they had a realistic chance of walking away with gold. Their emotions will have no doubt been mixed as they stood listening to the national anthem of another nation.  

From Victoria Komova of Russia (Gymnastics) to India’s Vijay Kumar (Shooting) to Ryosuke Irie of Japan (Swimming), there was a certain air of sadness as they received their silver reward for all those years of work. Even Michael Phelps had a glum look after he received his silver medal in Men’s 200m Butterfly (despite being the Olympic’s most successful competitor). The Australian press is currently lamenting the poor performance of the nation despite having won 12 silver medals (but only two gold).

The 2012 Olympic Games: Managing your own talent…or trying not to give it away

  

The 2012 Olympic Games begin today in London and there will be much talk over the coming weeks of the dedication and talent of the winners. Though none of us as yet know the names of the gold medalists of each event, one thing is certain, a lot of extremely gifted and hardworking individuals will return to their countries with nothing more to show than their participation in the games. Does this make them losers? Of course not.

“The opposite of ‘success’ is not ‘failure’, but ‘mediocrity’”

I am very grateful to one of my international students for sharing this wonderful quote from a New Zealand business woman. It was during a class a fortnight ago and we were discussing entrepreneurship and why only 1% of European business school graduates create their own company immediately upon graduating. One of the reasons, said some of the class members, was the obsession with competitive exams and rankings and thus the overall fear of failing. The quote makes you reassess what exactly “success” and “failure” really are.

French Management Schools: Stop apologizing!

Over the past 20 years, management schools in France have led the way in providing young internationally minded graduates fit to work in modern business. They should recognize this and stop apologizing for what they have achieved. 

“Do any French people actually work in your school, Mark?”

My international visitor was looking incredulously around in the vast entrance of my school. This school lies in a medium-sized French city at the bottom of the French Alps. I had just taken him for coffee with my Austrian colleague, had introduced to two programme directors (one Irish and one English), and had bumped into our Academic Director (Scottish) and one of our most senior professors in HRM (American).