DomoDomo@INSEAD

Can-Am Week 2006

This week marks the post-break re-opening week. Some people are tanned from 4 days surfing in Portugal, some are excited from 4 days in Barcelona, and some just got home or visited France with friends and family -everyone is so tired from the break.

So the Canadian American Week is a soft landing to get re-used to our good social habits. After all, we did not party for days before the exams. On programme: Halloweek pumpkin carving contest, Rodeo night, and Poker competition (real money).



One tradition is to prepare CanAm name tags for each MBA participant. It becomes funny when 1/ the new name is funny, and 2/ when Professors call us with our new names.
In example 1, the best I've encountered so far is "SungKyu very much" for a guy called SungKyu. In example 2, Vikram was renamed "Where Have I put my Viagra?", which becomes hilarious when Finance Professor candidly and unintentionnally asks him whether a buyer of underlying asset is short or long of this asset, and when the answer is, well, "long"...

This Saturday is also the Montmelian Ball, one of the famed parties. I'll post something on it later this week.

About more serious issues, P2 has started in earnest. We have 6 core courses this period, which is a lot.


So far, I have had the following classes.

Strategy, by Dominique Heau. Nothing revolutionary here. It's concepts based, with a solid framework to Strategic Analysis, but applied to real-life cases as usual. There seems to be interesting viewpoints as well, such as the implementation of strategy, often overlooked in my previous life, and the notion of strategic management, to adapt tactics from day-to-day changes. Professor Heau seems great. He is a long-time Professor of Executive Programme, so he should bring a lot of insights. However, in one class, he shocked us on a couple of occasions by being condescendent (if not downright rude) to some students' comments. We shall see as we progress in his class as I suspect it's just his tactics of fostering class excitement, so no fuss yet. If everything ticks this could be the great debate class of the period.

Managerial Accounting, by Igor Vaysman, a star class of INSEAD. The guy is really quick, fun, and intuitive. I can't wait to learn more on this. He does cold call though, from a random list of 10 students per class...

Corporate Finance Policy, by Pascal Maenhout. Here's another star Professor. I am very lucky to have had Finance core courses from the School's top faculty. The classe started well, it won't be easy, but interesting.

Foundations of Marketing, by Miguel Brendl. Hum. Difficult to say. Miguel being German will be very helpful and rigorous in providing a framework for devising Marketing Plans. Yet, or And, him being a psychologist will be interesting in tying the course to Consumer Behaviour, but 3 hours were tough to handle. I think this is the first time the Section has behaved this way: wildly, disordinately, distractingly. Because, as said, everybody is physically tired, and Miguel was a bit overwhelmed by us. Anyway we did laugh a lot (presumably not to fall asleep). And signs of tiredness are evidenced in how sexually oriented people were today. As when one candidly claimed that Marketing was a way to stimulate the customer... Or when someone else argued about the benefits of having same-sex experienced hairdresser when discussing Japan's QB House case (a major hairdresser company).

This is how wild we are at this moment.

The remaining classes will come soon. I'll keep you posted.

To end on a lighter note, the Pumpkin Carving Competition. A really nice idea!

Labels: National Weeks, P2 Courses

posted by DomoDomo@INSEAD @ 7:59 PM