GMAC MET Fund Challenges Schools to Implement New Ideas
I had the privilege of being on the GMAC board of directors in 2008 when we created the Management Education for Tomorrow Fund, or GMAC MET Fund. We started the fund with an investment of US$10 million over five years. At the time, we understood that we would not see immediate results, but we knew that we could effect a positive change in our industry if we made some strategic investments and had the persistence and patience to produce results.
We also understood that we needed to take different actions than we had previously done. We needed to find new ideas, in new places, and from new people who may not have had a voice in the past. Trying new things would involve some risks that not everyone might be comfortable with, but change often involves some discomfort. With a dream and the support of the GMAC board, management, MET Fund staff, and many others who have participated or told us that we are on the right track, we continue to move forward.
We solicited ideas to improve management education in the first phase of the Ideas to Innovation (i2i) Challenge last year. We invited faculty, staff, students─in fact, anyone with an idea─to participate. When the Ideas phase closed, we had received more than 650 ideas from 60 countries. Twenty rose to the top after three rounds of blind judging. Of these, 12 ideas came from students, four from faculty, and four from people outside academia. The winning ideas validated our first thought: that good ideas could come from anyone or anywhere. As Bloomberg BusinessWeek noted in announcing the winners this past January, “Now comes the hard part: implementing them.” And that’s why we need the support of the education industry to step forward now.
The MET Fund has US$8 million available to implement one or more of these ideas into your education program. You can take a single idea, or combine ideas into one that is suited for your school. Perhaps one or more of the ideas needs to be changed a bit to work. We understand, and we support your efforts. Proposals for the Innovation phase are being accepted through December 16, 2011, and we plan on awarding the first grants early next year.
Do you want to be seen as a leader in strategy, an innovator in curriculum, a pioneer in using technology, or perhaps an incubator of entrepreneurial endeavors? We have grouped the winning ideas into these four areas for your review and consideration.
The goal of the GMAC MET Fund is to support both new thinking and the testing of new ideas to make our industry better, and more important, to deliver relevant content to the next generation of business and world leaders. I hope that you’ll join us in this endeavor.
Lawrence P. Fisher, II
Chair, GMAC Board of Directors
Recent comments