term 1 ends and right on to term 2

And the marathon continues! I can’t believe I’m done with 1 term already of the 5 term program! It went by fast, I learned a lot, and I am exhausted! 

logo of my group’s solution

The day after my last final was due we started one of the Accelerate modules called “Change in Action.” The first Accelerate module, called “Launch" was at the beginning of the program and was about personal change. This second one was about global change, and the last will be about organization change. IE focused this year’s Change in Action program on the “bottom of the pyramid,” i.e. the roughly 4 billion people in the world that still live in relative poverty. IE partnered with French NGO blueEnergy and German energy product and service company Schneider to present the Nov. 2010 IMBA intake students a business case challenge focused on a poor community needing innovative technologies to generate revenue in order to pay for their energy usage in Nicaragua. My group had fun, but didn’t end up winning the challenge. Congrats to those who did, because your presentations today were truly great.

While I was glad we finally touched on the social responsibility side of business, I think most students were too tired to really be fully engaged. We finished today, and tomorrow we start the supposedly hardest term of the MBA. I’ll be getting up shortly to go get in line to get a seat in the front for the next three months. Our theme and strategy for the year is to encourage everyone to be his/her own “paradigm shifter.” We threw a strategy launch party to spread the word and promote this idea, and will be reviewing it at every meeting. Our Social Responsibility Forum in the fall will also focus on paradigm shifting by inviting speakers who we believe are paradigm shifters and by highlighting the many ways each of us, by identifying our own passions and the current paradigms in which they operate, can be paradigm shifters as well.


And tomorrow, myself, a lot of the Net Impact team and several other IE students are off to Barcelona for IESE Business School’s Doing Good, Doing Well social responsibly conference. I’m looking forward to a good roster of speakers, the career fair, another flavor of Spanish nightlife, and finally seeing the ocean again!