пятница, 30 июля 2010 г.

One day in Moscow that will change your life OR how it was!

It was an Admission Day for an MBA programme at the SKOLKOVO Campus on July 29.

All day long, from morning till evening 11 potential students from Russia, Belarus and Germany took tests and were interviewed by representatives and founding partners of SKOLKOVO, took part in group discussions, communicated and, of course, looked around SKOLKOVO Campus.

In the evening the applicants shared their impressions with us. Watch the video - their emotions are obvious!

We wish the participants of the admission would become students of MBA programme of SKOLKOVO soon! We will have an eye on changes in their life that will result from it!



Kane Cuenant on Top MBA

Kane Cuenant (Canada), Full-Time MBA SKOLKOVO student, told TopMBA.com about his choice of the Business School and his impressions of education.

“Skolkovo encompassed all the good qualities of the other schools, plus a few other factors not typically seen... That is, the ability to spend most of the time working with real projects in emerging markets, personal mentoring by successful people, and a very personalized MBA development path.”

“In Canada, a great number of businessmen and other types of managers have, or plan on eventually having an MBA.... Some of the best things about business school life are the opportunities, the ability to work with emerging markets, practical experience, and the network.”

Please read a full article here

четверг, 29 июля 2010 г.

Adventure to start in one month

It is one month before EMBA students learn what Davis's drive and a mooring bollard are, learn to distinguish a middle jib stay from a fore-topgallant-topmast-stay and know what hard to starboard and hard to port actually mean, try to manage a wheel and orient by a boat compass and finally turn into sea dogs!

Have you seized what we are talking about? In one month sharp Executive MBA alumni and a new group of SKOLKOVO EMBA students will go on one of the most unusual trips – a sea voyage aboard a legendary sailboat Kruzenshtern!

We’ve already covered this event in the blog, and spoke with Dmitry Repin about details of the trip.


From August 29 - till September 5, 2010 SKOLKOVO students together with the crew will sail from Bremerhaven (Germany), where Kruzenshtern was first launched in 1926, to Klaipeda (Lithuania). After the journey all SKOLKOVO trainees will be proud to have a title of the trainee of a training sailing vessel "Kruzenshtern".

вторник, 27 июля 2010 г.

Advice on business literature from Helen Edwards

Every day the market of business literature is extended by new useful books. SKOLKOVO School will help you make right choice! Today we are presenting a new column - advice from Helen Edwards, SKOLKOVO Library project manager.

Every month you'll be able to know about the most interesting and useful business books. You can find Helen's first selection below.

Before coming to SKOLKOVO Helen was Head of Information Services at London Business School where she worked with business students for over 20 years. She was President of the European Business Schools' Librarians' Group from 2005 to 2008 and has written and lectured widely about business school libraries in USA and Europe. In October 2009 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals for her services to international business librarianship.

1. The India way: how India's top business leaders are revolutionizing management
Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh, Jitendra Singh and Michael Useem
Harvard Business Press, 2010. 336p
ISBN 978-1422147597

Employees first, customers second; improvise to find new ways of creating customer value and getting around bureaucrasy; focus on the good of society. The India way is an approach to business which the authors describe as underlying the growth of the Indian economy and the rapid expansion of its largest companies. It is a culture where big business leaders are emblematic of national achievement. The book explores how this philosophy of management and its support for innovation and growth can be exported to global contexts.

2. Enterprise 2.0: new collaborative tools for your organisation's toughest challenges
Andrew McAfee
Harvard Business Press, 2009. xi, 231p
ISBN 978-1422125878

Does IT ever bring a return on investment? The first half of this book describes the key features of Web 2.0 collaborative tools, their potential to transform business, with case studies describing how they have been used by organisations to solve business problems. But what is really interesting is the description of the realities of establishing the use of the tools in the business context; the largely groundless fears that inhibit adoption and the actuality of the long haul involved in getting to real benefit.

понедельник, 26 июля 2010 г.

Andrey Volkov about contemporary education

A week ago saw a summer fest of the future – Rucamp - that was held in the centre of Moscow on the base of the Institute “Strelka”. There were five thematic areas operating simultaneously.

The guest of “Education Tomorrow” area was Andrey Volkov, Dean of the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, who drew attention of the audience to the education as a world market of services with an inherent competitive environment and analyzed a status of the Russian education in this light.

Below are some extracts from his speech:

“What do I consider as the most important thing in the current situation in Russia? Neither quality, nor quantitative ratios, nor salaries of teachers, but competitiveness. 10-15 years ago we were placed in a global market without asking if we were prepared for such changes. And a majority of participants haven’t noticed it yet”.

Then Mr. Volkov explained what exactly competitiveness implies in the market of education.

“When we speak of a world competition of universities, three types of markets, for which one should compete, are usually singled out. A university acts as a provider of services in this case.

четверг, 22 июля 2010 г.

"Accounting for Recent Economic Growth Among the BRICs" is a new research of SKOLKOVO

Everyone heard about emerging market economies. Nevertheless, it was not until the beginning of the current millennium that such classification appeared. Earlier, at the end of the last century such economies collectively grew at approximately the same pace as the rich economies of the developed world but then broke free in dramatic fashion last decade, enjoying a growth advantage of 6 percent.

The graph shows an economic growth dynamics of developed and developing countries.


In their most recent white paper, “The Productivity Prize - Accounting for Recent Economic Growth Among the BRICs: Miracle or Mirage?”, the SKOLKOVO Institute for Emerging Market Studies (SIEMS) examines the sources for this acceleration in economic growth among the larger emerging market economies last decade. We will share with you the key conclusions the authors came to.

The rapid pace of real GDP growth set by the world’s two largest emerging economies last decade was not a mirage. A large share was powered by efficiency gains. China’s rapid growth, for instance, was not just due to heavy investment and labor leaving the farm, but also to the world’s fastest productivity gains.

The research emphasizes that productivity growth is the most important gauge of an economy’s long-run health. Nothing is more critical in determining living standards over the long run than improvements in the efficiency with which an economy combines its inputs of capital and labor. Therefore, a better gauge of an economy’s use of resources is “total factor productivity” (TFP) which assesses the efficiency with which both capital and labor are used.

The authors examined a TFP growth for the last two decades for each member of BRIC and made the following interesting conclusions.

Meet SKOLKOVO business school and its Dean in LONDON.

Those who are in London and interested in business education, are invited to our Information session that will be held July, 26!

Dr. Wilfried Vanhonacker, the Dean, will tell you about the School, and then you’ll be able to ask questions at a Q&A session. Take your chance to know at first hand all information about a new Russian business school focused on work in emerging markets and aimed at preparing business leaders!

The information session will be held at Kaplan London Center on July 26, from 7 p.m. till 9 p.m. (London time)
Pre-registration is required. Sign up at our website

Looking forward to meeting you in person!

Chinese HR Secrets

We continue publishing impressions of education at the School. Now we are offering you an interview with Sultanbek Khunkayev, a Full-Time MBA student.

- In what country and what project did you participate?
- I was in China and in one team with Dmitry Yurchenko and Yuri Kovalev. We worked with one of the largest computer equipment manufacturer in the world. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you the name of the company, because the projects are confidential. We studied how different multicultural national aspects influence on business. Simply said, relations between the head office and subsidiaries.

- Were they a sort of marketing aspects?
- They were not marketing but a research of a strategic influence of Human Recourses. Now HR is widely said to be a strategic area and so forth. In fact, HR performs an incredibly strong managering function that increases even more if a head office of the company is located in one country and its subsidiaries are located in another. HR should spot cultural differences, their influence on business processes and reduce these gaps. It should work as a strategic department rather than process documents, make resumes and so on.


- Do HR departments work like this only at big corporations?
-I don’t quite agree here. I would say that even in Russia this aspect has been poorly researched. What’s the reason? Let’s take as an example those companies that must have here in Russia a subsidiary in almost every region, e.g. Sberbank. There is a perception that the USSR was a united country with a united culture. That’s not true: every region has its cultural peculiarities, and in their turn those peculiarities influence on entire business performance, on how the business should be governed, on how to communicate tasks with its employees. This aspect has not been studied even in Russia. Let alone big corporations.

- Was this work completely new or already familiar to you?
- There are several methods. In fact, this was studied by Professor Hofstede (Geert Hofstede – comment) in 1980s on the basis of IBM. He was the first to introduce an idea of social and cultural influence on business. What did people do before? Let’s look at a Korean company. They open an office, employ other Korean people and make nearly everybody learn their terminology. It seems that in Poland, for instance, at Hyundai they serve Korean food, and all teams there learn Korean. But there is another way too. To impose a foreign culture on everyone is one thing. But one can take a synergy from a foreign culture, inject their DNA in a so-called global culture of the company. It may sound as nonsense, but it’s a well-built idea actually. That’s what we did.

четверг, 15 июля 2010 г.

SKOLKOVO GO Inside - the journal for our friends!

All top business schools are known to issue corporate newspapers and journals as a rule, because it is an excellent method to provide a feedback to current and potential students. Now the SKOLKOVO business school is also glad to present you a pilot issue of SKOLKOVO GO Inside, a journal for our friends!

On the pages of the first issue you will find a lot of information about the past events at SKOLKOVO, about projects of our students, about lecturers as well as researches and trends related to the developing markets. We tried to show the school on various sides - on the side of those who study, teach and work - and told about a new home of SKOLKOVO - a marvelous Campus where we have recently moved to.

And finally here is the most important thing! Since you are our first readers, it depends on you what the next issue will be like! The journal format will undergo some changes, so we are looking forward to your feedbacks and wishes. We wish you a nice reading!

среда, 14 июля 2010 г.

Lunar stories

Recently the participants of the program “The best cooperation practices” for strategic personnel reserves “Euras Group” played a business game based on the Soviet Lunar project. Alexey Leonov, space pilot of the USSR, double Hero of the Soviet Union, who was invited to the program, told about that project and a lot of other things.

“My experience has shown that if I relied on automation, I would not meet you today. I should be smarter than automatic equipment and always ready to substitute it”, Alexey Leonov said.

“The best type of training is just running! There is nothing like it to train endurance and cardiovascular system”.

We can offer you a video, but it is in Russian… Sorry=)



Strategists and Strategy

We're happy to introduce Professor Paul Verdin (SOLVEY BUSINESS AND ENGINEERINGSCHOOL), who has visited The Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO recently.We managed to speak to him on the completion of a regular module of the program “Business leaders” organized by SKOLKOVO for Gazprom Neft.

- How do you like Russia, Moscow, What is your impression of the capital?
- Well, I’ve not seen much more than the airport and the hotel. So I cannot say much about that.
But I can say precisely – Moscow makes an impression of a very busy city with a lot of traffic jams. (laughs)

- You worked in a lot of famous business schools, and now you are at SKOLKOVO. What
can you say about the school, the program, maybe, the students?
- Well, I think it’s very professionally run. I think the students are certainly comparable to what
I would train in other business schools. The only difference perhaps is, of course, that here
almost all of the participants are Russian, whereas in most business schools we have a more
international mix of participants. On the other hand, it’s explicable of course because the
program was developed for a Russian company.

- You are Professor of Strategy? Why did you choose this direction?
- Well, I think it’s the most interesting field that brings together all the other areas. There are no
ready-made answers in this area. I like to be creative. Moreover, you have to be creative in
Strategy to question things. You have to be able to link different fields or different areas of
management, where they all come together. I think I’ve chosen Strategy because I don’t like to
be limited by one technicality or by one discipline.

- And why did you start teaching?
- I’ve been asking myself that question. Sometimes I think I started teaching by default. Because
there was a job I liked, but not enough to be doing it all the time. I’ve done consulting, I’ve
worked in organizations, and I’ve done many projects in big companies. But I’m always looking
to develop new ideas, and I think that’s what I can do when I’m teaching. It forces me to think
originally. I’m not very interested in routine.

- Do you learn anything from your students?
- I certainly learn something all the time from the students: from the questions they ask, from
new knowledge I get from the companies they are in. And in fact another reason why I’d like to
work with companies is that they are very specific, because there you really get to see the
differences, the nuances, they are rich in details. I’d like to be involved in the process, to be
much more case-oriented and customer-oriented than to be discussing various theories.

- Can you give some practical advice and recommend some specific journals or books to
read?
- First of all it’s highly important to stay in touch with what’s happening. I recommend
international financial press. I could not do without the Financial Times or without
CNBC TV, business news. There are a very few books or journals that I can say “Well,
that’s the only one you should read”. But it’s not enough. Try and pick up things from different
areas. Personally I like Fortune magazine which is not very academic. There are very interesting
case stories. I see my role as a teacher to put things into context. So when a student asks me
what book to read, this one or that one, I say I do not know of one book that says it all. I think we
have to help people find what they are looking for. And in these cases I would recommend 2 or 3
or 5 books rather than one.

- Are you planning to visit SKOLKOVO again?
- I’d be happy to come back.

-Thank you for finding time for us! Hope to see you again.
-Thank you!

четверг, 1 июля 2010 г.

First SKOLKOVO Webinar

Today SKOLKOVO is launching a new project – webinars!

The first webinar will take place today at 12 p.m. Toronto/New York time and at 8 p.m. Moscow time. You will meet the SKOLKOVO Dean Dr. Wilfried Vanhonacker and our Full-Time MBA students (Kane Cuenant, Canada and Julia Davis, USA) to learn more about the MBA program.

Preliminary registration is required. Please, register here

We are waiting for you!

UPD: Dear friends, we thank everyone who has taken interest in SKOLKOVO webinar!
The registration to the 1st webinar is closed. Please check updates on Facebook and skolkovo.ru. We will hold some other online conferences soon!