GMAC MET Fund Blog

GMAC MET Fund i2i Challenge: Giving Back. Moving Management Education Forward.

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:12:03 -0400

What one idea would improve graduate management education?

When we asked this question in 2010, 650 people from 60 countries answered. After three rounds of blind judging, 20 ideas were chosen as best representing what many of you were thinking. Four of these winning ideas were submitted by faculty members, 12 by current and prospective students, and four by people from industry.

And when we asked organizations for proposals to implement one or more of these ideas, you confirmed our choices by offering concrete plans to turn 19 of the 20 ideas into management education innovations. Wow!

Today, we are announcing the GMAC MET Fund’s first round of grant recipients. http://gmac.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=29196&item=126938 More than US$7.1 million is being awarded to schools and programs large and small, for plans as short as one semester to as long as five years, in the US, Canada, Europe, Africa, and South Asia.

Going forward, you will be able to track the progress of each of the grant winners at gmac.com/metfund. We’ve asked the institutions to let us know as they complete each phase of their implementation, so you will see frequent updates from each of the 12 grant winners. One criterion for choosing the winning ideas was whether the idea could be scaled or replicated, so look for downloads and other materials from grant recipients that you might be able to use or adapt.

Have comments on the progress or ideas for new funding? We’d love to hear them. Leave your comment on the blog or send us an email at metfund@gmac.com, and we’ll keep you informed about the progress we are making and about other initiatives and programs supporting enhancement and innovation in graduate management education.

“The foundation of the MET Fund has been that GMAC—starting with the GMAT exam and culminating with these grants—should be investing in and giving back to management education and its institutions. And not just giving back, but giving back in order to move management education forward,” said David A. Wilson, president and CEO of GMAC, as he announced the Phase 2 winners. “The power of these grants is in the implementation of ideas that can reshape and revitalize management education worldwide, and that acknowledge the critical role that management education plays in training and developing business leaders who can have global impact.”

We are proud of the encouragement that we have received from faculty, staff, students, and industry, and we’re thrilled by your words of support for the unique role that we at GMAC and the MET Fund are playing to improve our industry. Thank you all.

Allen G. Brandt
Director, GMAC MET Fund

MET Fund i2i Challenge: Here Comes the Judging

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:45:08 -0500

Thank you to all schools that submitted proposals to turn a winning idea into a management education innovation. GMAC received 25 proposals from North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa: from schools large and small, public and private—all with exciting, well-thought-out plans to inspire the next generation of business and government leaders.

Over the next few weeks, teams of reviewers will take on the tough task of deciding which proposals to fund. We may reach out to you if the reviewers need clarification about your proposal. We hope to announce which schools will win funding in late March or early April 2012.

In the meantime, we thank you for your participation and salute you for the steps you have taken to bring innovation to management education. Good luck to everyone who submitted proposals.

Allen G. Brandt
Director, GMAC MET Fund

With Phase 2 Ending, the Innovation Is Just Beginning

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:05:00 -0500

This week marks the end of the second phase of the GMAC MET Fund’s Ideas to Innovation (i2i) Challenge. We have received interest from schools around the world, and after the submission deadline this Friday, December 16, we’ll begin reviewing the proposals to determine who will receive funding to turn one or more of the Phase 1 winning ideas into a management education innovation.

To inspire those still working on their submissions, see the passion from one of the Phase 1 idea winners who hopes to see his idea get implemented:

i2i Challenge Winner: Yousef Tamimi, “SME Partnership MBA Program”

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:00:00 -0500

About me
I’m Yousef Tamimi from Jordan, happily married, and proud son of my great parents. In 2007, I finished my BSc in Electrical Engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST). Then, I obtained my MBA degree from German Jordanian University, Talal Abu-Ghazaleh School of Business In 2009. I’m now in the Experienced Commercial Leadership Program (ECLP), GE’s premier development program for high potential individuals seeking a career in sales and marketing.

The early beginning of my idea
Even as a boy, I always thought about how to build my own business, and how people from different industries and educational backgrounds managed theirs. I wondered about what problems they faced, and how they succeed in their lives.

When I was only 15, I signed my first contract to convert a book into a web-based interactive site. During my undergraduate and MBA study, I worked in several jobs to support my studies and acquire new skills. I’ve worked as a freelance flash-based applications developer, instructor for AutoCAD courses in an IT academy, and in a business that imported diagnostic tools and electronic devices for car-repair services. These diversified experiences, working with many small and medium enterprises (SME), and people from different backgrounds, gave me a broad understanding of the challenges they face and the opportunities they are given to develop themselves.

Furthermore, joining ABB as a marketing and sales engineer, along with my MBA studies, developed my understanding of effective management practices, and how to optimize business processes to achieve high results.
I have always asked myself, “How can small businesses develop themselves?”, and “How can I utilize my MBA to achieve my dream and become a business leader?”

How I came to participate
On 24 August, 2010, I received an email from mba.com, encouraging me to participate in the Ideas to Innovation (i2i) Challenge competition. I had just returned from my honeymoon, and moved to my new home. When I reviewed the GMAC MET Fund i2i Challenge website and read all the details and requirements to participate, I felt that it was a great opportunity to share some of my ideas…to develop management education so that it has sustainable value for all stakeholders, by moving from academic-oriented programs to a comprehensive development framework – students, local firms, and business schools work to create a self-sustained value creation model.

Developing my idea
My long work hours, new lifestyle after marriage, and all related responsibilities gave me tight time to translate floating thoughts into a consistent model to be able to participate in this contest.

My past experiences working with small businesses, my thinking about how my MBA can support my ambitions to be a business leader in my region, and my career in marketing and sales at a Fortune 500 company came together to build the blocks of the model. I perceived how entrepreneurs have the potential to support small businesses to generate high profits and help them overcome serious obstacles. This partnership will create a win-win situation, where SME and entrepreneurs can mutually achieve their goals. Entrepreneurs can develop SME in certain functions where it suffers the most. In return, SME will give entrepreneurs the opportunity to become a partner and a true business leader. This will result in long-term benefits for both parties and drive the business toward success on a solid basis.

My main concerns were:

First, to have a self-sustained model, that can generate all needed funds, motivation, and resources within its structure.
Second, to have a model that is integrated within a local economy to support the country’s development.
Third, to have a model that is flexible enough to be implemented in every country, and that can be customized to a country’s needs and culture.
Finally, to have a model that is controlled by a legal framework through contractual setup to protect the rights of each party, and results that are measureable and time bounded to obtain a tangible outcome.

Submitting my idea
I wrote the details of my idea on pieces of paper, whenever and wherever I had the chance to think about it. I remember writing about how I can measure the results while I was waiting for my car to be fixed at the garage! I was afraid to miss the deadline, therefore I took the initiative when my wife encouraged me to sit and write my idea just one day before I had to submit it. The 1500-word restriction was very tough to meet, because I had a lot of information and details to elaborate about and no time to develop the supporting materials, such as algorithms, graphs, facts, and numbers. Thus, the three1500-word answers for the i2i Challenge questions were my only way to communicate my idea effectively.

My dream for the future
I’m strongly confident that my idea will make a deep change in management education models, if adequate resources, supporting organizations, and recognized academic and business leaders, who believe in it, are available. On a personal level, I look forward to continuing my education in parallel to my great career in GE, and in securing a PhD in strategic management at a top business school. I’m full of fresh ideas that I can share and develop, see implemented, and change the world.

My thanks and best wishes
I thank the GMAC MET Fund for giving me this great opportunity to share my idea with the world, and for allowing this competition to be open to all. I wish all the winners success, and I hope to see their ideas come true and change management education for a brighter future.

GMAC MET Fund Challenges Schools to Implement New Ideas

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:33:00 -0400

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

i2i Challenge Proposals Frequently Asked Questions

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:39:00 -0400

When we launched the GMAC Ideas to Innovation (i2i) Challenge last year, we hoped to spark creativity in schools that were considering new programs or curriculum. It’s an understatement to say that we succeeded. We were thrilled to receive more than 650 ideas – representing 60 countries – from faculty, students, and industry representatives around the world.

We’ve since called for proposals to implement the 20 top ideas among them, and I’ve had a number of conversations with schools working on submissions that have similar questions about the proposal process. Here are the most common questions along with answers. I hope you find them helpful in developing your own proposal. As always, if you have questions or thoughts not addressed here, please let us know at metfund@gmac.com.

When is the deadline to submit a proposal?
All materials must be received in our office by December 16, 2011. The original October deadline was changed in response to a number of requests to move the date further into the school semester.

Can I combine more than one (1) idea into a proposal?
Absolutely! We understand that a given idea might not work exactly as written for your school or program. In fact, we encourage you to combine multiple ideas and customize them to meet your specific needs. Make sure that your proposal identifies the original idea or ideas that you adapted.

You state that ‘overhead’ can be up to 15% of the amount requested. Can you define ‘overhead’?
Here’s what we are thinking. If something is not part of direct education to a student then it is likely overhead. For example, if you purchase computers for student or teaching-faculty use in the classroom, that would be direct. The same computers used outside the classroom for administrative purposes would likely be overhead. Note that I’m saying likely because what constitutes overhead may be subject to some interpretation. If you have questions about specific items in your proposal, let’s discuss.

Do we have to engage the person who submitted the idea?
No. It’s only a suggestion. The individual who submitted the idea might be able to offer additional thoughts or insights that can help you get past a sticky point, for instance. There’s no requirement, though.

Can we use people from outside our school to help deliver a course, for example?
Yes, you can engage other schools or nonprofit organizations, for-profits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or others to partner with you. You remain responsible for the work of anyone working on your proposal, whether they are inside or outside of your school.

Explain what you mean by ‘Quality Control’.
As you start on the path to implementation, what checks or procedures will you have in place to make needed adjustments or react if something isn’t going as planned? For example, if you are proposing a new course and part-way through the term you realize that the students are not learning or retaining the information as you thought they might, how will you alter the teaching or curriculum to improve learning or retention by the end of the first, or perhaps second, term?

That’s all for now. If this post triggers questions of your own, please send them to metfund@gmac.com, and I’ll be filing updates along the way.

Thanks for all of your time and enthusiasm for this project!

i2i Challenge Winner: Mariana Lebron, Syracuse University, “World Issues Focus on Integrity Innovation (WIFII)”

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:53:00 -0400

“Three paragraphs and $50,000?” I thought, “This has to be a joke!” Why would anyone be interested in my idea about management education reform, let alone give me $50,000 for it? After all, I’m just a student, so why would someone care about what I had to say?…But when I looked for details about the MET Fund Ideas to Innovation Challenge on the gmac.com website, I discovered two things: First, it was no joke – all you needed was one idea and the courage to believe in it. And second, anyone could enter — so, I qualified! I had an idea. I was willing to write three paragraphs on it. My friends had long become numb to my absolute belief that education reform is central to the innovation and value creation that this country not only craves, but desperately needs. So, here was my opportunity of a lifetime, my chance to not only transform education, but also the essence of business itself. One idea. One dream. And lives would change, all because of the capacity to believe … I couldn’t know that what I understood to be the essence of the GMAC MET Fund Ideas to Innovation Challenge, the capacity to believe, would challenge on a personal level, too.

I pondered an idea over and over for a couple of months. I wondered, “What main problem inhibits business today, and how can management education address it?” The answer slowly emerged as I flipped the channels on TV and saw image after image —of billions of gallons of oil seeping into the Gulf of Mexico because business leaders put profit ahead of investing in the safety of their workers and the environment, of politicians taking partisan views that keep citizens from benefiting from the services that our country has a responsibility to offer freely — and sad story after story of education funding cuts that rob youth the world over by slamming shut their doors to opportunity.

And the answer became clear – integrity. What if we could somehow explore how integrity and innovation work hand in hand to enhance corporate profitability within a global context for all people? Society needs businesses to profit so they can produce the innovations that make our lives a bit easier and more efficient. And businesses can actually increase their profitability by taking people into account, by focusing on what society needs in order to thrive and to sustain future generations. The only solution for success is to work together to explore business and society as being interdependent, and to understand that education is a wall-less laboratory of new ideas, processes, and technology, and that we need to share our intellectual capital with each other so that our successes increase exponentially.

So, rather than be part of the problem —someone who talks the talk but fails to walk the walk – I decided to write three paragraphs, to submit my idea to develop an interdisciplinary course that focused on critiquing strategic leadership decision making within an integrity framework. I added some facts to this dream template in my mind. All I had to do was write it up …Unfortunately, that’s when self doubt and time seemed to escalate simultaneously – until it all came down to the final day and final hours to enter. It was now or never.

“After all, you never know unless you try.” Those were my mother’s words. She constantly pushed me to follow my mind and heart, something she had done in her courageous battle against cancer, a battle she fought as long as she could until her body could go no more. So, I said to this special angel in the sky, “I’ll do it. If they like it, they like it. If they don’t, well, at least I tried to make the world a bit better in the process.” And I couldn’t help but remind myself that, as a student, the financial prize would help me and my family so much.

Well, surprise, surprise. A few months after submitting my idea, I received notice that I had made it to the next round. And truthfully, I thought, “That’s nice! I probably won’t make it further, though.” After all, so many people with far advanced experience and education probably submitted. But, at least, I had tried.

And time passed. Then another email arrived. I had made it to the next round. Well, at this point, I thought, “Hmmm … That’s nice. Too bad there is still so far to go, though, and I’m sure there are many better ideas than mine.” But when I received another email that I was a finalist, I thought, “Wow! I better start telling people I submitted an idea!”

And then a month or so later, I received the call from Allen Brandt, who told me my idea had come in third and that I had won $10,000 — $10,000 for three paragraphs! I sat there in shock. And after getting off the phone, with happy tears of gratitude flowing, I thanked all those special angels in the heavens who, in the end, helped me to keep believing. Most importantly, I thanked them for giving me hope – hope that others believe, as I do, that integrity can transform our world, and that a school out there somewhere will take a risk, and be the first to make this idea come true.

Taking the Best Ideas Forward

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 15:43:00 -0500

When we developed the concept of the i2i Challenge, we were looking to bring some fresh ideas to graduate management education without any limitations or pre-conceived notions or expectations.

We’ve all seen that the articles attributing our global financial challenges to business leaders and MBAs who lacked judgment, disregarded ethics, were too greedy, etc. It’s definitely not up to me to say whether one analysis or another is correct. Even so, every industry stakeholder can always be on the lookout for ways to improve or enhance the educational programs that will produce tomorrow’s industry leaders. Business schools work on this every year; with the i2i Challenge, they have GMAC’s full—and financial—support.

When the GMAC Board of Directors created the Management Education for Tomorrow (MET) Fund, they endowed it with US$10,000,000—the large majority of this amount is available to support implementation. We now have the top 20 ideas that made it through three rounds of blind judging. We drew upon the expertise of more than 25 academic and industry leaders to help score more than 600 idea submissions. Now, there’s an opportunity for you to take a leadership role, in your school and in graduate management education as a whole, and win the funding to implement one (or more!) of these ideas at a real institution.

Perhaps the idea of creating stackable knowledge units might work in your school or program, or maybe incorporating new admission tools would increase diversity. If you create a Hub Network in your area, connecting students from differing backgrounds to share ideas, which common goal might that serve for your programs?

Similar to the one-page idea submission, we’ve tried to minimize the paperwork for implementation proposals, allowing you to be brief and direct (and still have time for your day job!). The MET Fund is accepting your submissions through early December—you have time to read the winning ideas, think about what might work for your program, and submit a proposal. With the right proposal, you might change graduate management education for generations to come.

i2i Challenge, Second Place: Alex Howland & Ron Rembisz, “Collaboration in the Virtual World”

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:55:00 -0500

Alex Howland (pictured here) heard about the i2i Challenge from one of his professors at Alliant University’s Marshall Goldsmith School of Management. Immediately, he considered partnering with Ron Rembisz, founder of Rembisz & Associates, where Alex is an intern.

“Collaborating with Ron was a no brainer,” Alex said. “Ron is a mentor who is committed to developing leaders and is always seeking innovative ways to do so.” He told Ron about the challenge, and they went on to become the only duo to make the winner’s list.

Alex and Ron looked to cyberspace to improve graduate management education. Ron and his associates are already working on a virtual environment in which to assess and develop executives. Using that framework, Ron and Alex researched universities to see what kind of virtual communities are already in place.

“Despite increased popularity,” they found, “use of virtual world platforms for graduate management education lacks strategic focus.”

“We were quite impressed,” Alex added, “but realized little collaboration is currently taking place.”

To leverage the latest technology, Alex and Ron recommended building a graduate management virtual education community around two values: inclusion and innovation. Their idea would remove the constraints of time and space from the business school experience.

In this virtual environment, Ron sees a future in which working and collaborating online will be commonplace and preferred, where information and ideas can be exchanged and discussed quickly and openly. Alex and Ron’s idea would embed that environment in graduate management education from the start, using the virtual space for classes, conferences, field trips, and more.

“The environment will be dynamic and creative—a world of exploration and imagination,” Ron said.

i2i Challenge, Second Place: Dawn Iacobucci, “Every Student Creates a Business Plan”

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 16:15:00 -0500

Dawn Iacobucci doesn’t usually enter contests like this. As a professor as Vanderbilt University’s Owen School of Management, though, improving graduate management education, is something she thinks about a lot.

“I have been teaching MBAs for a long time and I care about their education and our ultimate impact on business,” she said.

Dawn’s idea would add a “thesis” element to graduate management education, requiring students to prepare a final business plan to “do something in the world better.” Students would begin thinking about their business plans from their first day in the program and incorporate what they learn along the way into the final proposal. Integrating business concepts into a plan wholly their own would embed those concepts more, Dawn said, than earning better grades.

She has wondered for a long time how to get students to take their MBA educational experience more seriously. Similarly, Dawn wants to signal to the outside world that business schools are rigorous and high intellect. This idea would challenge students to think creatively, view their courses from a practical perspective, and contribute to the world outside business school.

“We, the business education community produce some 500,000 MBAs a year,” she noted in her idea. “How wonderful it would be to produce 500,000 new ideas of how to make business and the world better, each year.” Even if only 1% of those ideas became reality, that’s still 5,000 informed, creative, thoughtful attempts to make something better each year.

Dawn’s idea would address a struggle she has observed in recent years around how to help students “put all their learning together and integrate the concepts from finance and marketing and ops.” To prepare this business “thesis” or proposal, and successfully defend it, students would do just that from start to finish.

Profiles of our final second-place duo will appear here next week!

i2i Challenge, Second Place: James Falbe, “Using 'Big Ideas' to solve big problems”

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 10:13:00 -0500

For Jim Falbe, taking the GMAT led to more than graduate management education. Jim was one of thousands of recent GMAT test takers who received an email inviting them to take part in the Ideas to Innovation Challenge.

“As I am currently applying to business schools,” he said, “I looked at the contest as a type of scholarship opportunity and went for it.” Jim is currently in Jordan, consulting on projects for nonprofit and for-profits organizations and teaching classes in his community.

Jim won one of four $25,000 prizes with his idea: Using “Big Ideas” to solve big problems. The “Big Ideas” in Jim’s submission reach outside traditional business principles to incorporate different disciplines, such as psychology, history, and math. “The excellent manager,” Jim wrote, “needs to be able to identify a cause, whether it be sociological, physical, or even managerial, and then have the tools to know where to turn to address the problem.”

“Large nuggets of problem-solving gold lie on the ground just on the other side of the academic fence,” he said.

Jim sees the implementation of his idea as a semester- or year-long program embedded in existing curriculum. The program would immerse graduate business students in the major problem-solving models from other disciplines with help from guest lecturers. Incorporating an outside consulting problem would help students apply their multidisciplinary training to a real business issue.

Multidisciplinary thinking has appealed to Jim since his undergraduate days. Reading Poor Charlie’s Almanack, a collection of written speeches of Charles Munger, helped focus his approach for this challenge. “Following the motto of the famous mathematician Carl Jacobi, ‘Invert, always invert,’ Munger not only points out the advantages of multi-disciplinary thinking for business, but also the pitfalls of not thinking this way,” Jim said.

“Multidisciplinary thinking isn’t just for the few,” he added, “but needs to be a part of how we educate the management talent of tomorrow.”

Read more about Jim’s idea on gmac.com.

Profiles of the other second-place winners will appear here over the next few days—check back to find out more!

i2i Challenge, Second Place: Chukuwama Nze, “The Hub Network”

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 08:00:00 -0500

Chukuwama (Chukky) Nze has been interested in business intelligence and cloud computing since his dad bought him a computer, long before the concepts were household terms.

“Increasing amounts of computing power and data storage are nothing,” Chukky said, “if new and innovative ways to access and analyze data cannot be applied to create solutions that make our lives better.”

Chukky’s idea, The Hub Network: How GMAC Can Get Ahead of the Business Incubator Trend, could vastly expand the reach and the impact of the b-school cohort and group project norms. Chukky’s Hub Network idea would take collaboration to a global level, allowing graduate management students from countless schools to connect and work on projects based on their interests. Projects for this Hub Network could come from schools, businesses (or Business Incubators), or individuals and would take advantage of networking technology already in place.

The news about the GMAC MET Fund i2i Challenge reached Chukky at Loyola Marymount University, where he’s pursuing his MBA. “I was putting a team together for a different competition when the Dean of my department sent me an email informing me of the Ideas to Innovation Challenge. She thought I’d be interested,” he said. She was right.

“A lot of competitions are designed to keep the participants focused on a particular pertinent problem, locked in to a particular style of thought, and/or constrained by a limited set of resources,” he said. “The GMAC challenge is more open than most. It only ask[ed] for the idea. I am an entrepreneur as well as a student so that type of simplicity really called to me.”

Global collaboration and entrepreneurship are the foundation of not only Chukky’s idea, but his career. Originally from Nigeria, Chukky earned a BSc degree in economics and built a career in database and development solutions. He founded NotaryTools.net in 2004 and continues to lead a team of programmers based around the world.

“Much of my career has been focused on this principle, he said. “Applying it to the idea I chose for the challenge was a natural outgrowth.”

Profiles of the other second-place winners will appear here over the next few days—check back to find out more!

i2i Challenge Winners List

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 23:40:00 -0500

First Place

Contextualizing Graduate Management Education: Creating New Degrees Using Stackable Knowledge Units

Using stackable educational units and certificates can create customized and unique graduate management education.

Alice Stewart
NC A&T State
336-334-7656 x4008
Acstewa1@ncat.edu

Dr. Alice C. Stewart (PhD, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) is an associate professor of Strategic Management in the School of Business and Economics at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Prior to joining NCA&TSU, Dr. Stewart was the director of strategic analysis and planning at The Ohio State University, where she was also an assistant professor of strategy in the Fisher College of Business. Dr. Stewart’s research on strategic planning in higher education, top management teams, organizational learning, and frontline leadership training has appeared in the Journal of International Business, Management Learning, Journal of Business Venturing, the Journal of Small Business Strategy, and the Decision Science Institute Journal for Innovative Education.

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Second Place

The Hub Network: How GMAC Can Get Ahead of the Business Incubator Trend

GMAC can address this by creating a web application restricted to students interested in entrepreneurship.

Chukwuma Nze
Loyola Marymount University
cjunze@gmail.com

Chukky Nze has a decade of development and database experience. He founded NotaryTools.net in 2004, where he created a successful business model using a cloud-based, database-driven application. Nze holds a BsC in economics from the University of Nigeria and is working on his MBA at Loyola Marymount University, where he is studying entrepreneurial organizations and information and decision sciences.

Using “Big Ideas” to Solve Big Problems

Only by training today’s managers in the “Big Ideas” will they be able to treat both the symptoms and causes of tomorrow’s big problems.

James Falbe
International Service Partners
jim.falbe@thepartnerscenter.com
facebook.com/jim.falbe
twitter.com/jim_falbe

Jim Falbe is an interim team leader for humanitarian agency International Service Partners, where he does consulting work for both non- and for-profit companies and projects on the ground in Zarqua, Jordan. Falbe holds a master’s degree from Baylor University and is currently applying to graduate business school.

Every Student Creates a Business Plan

Every student writes a fully detailed business plan to improve something in the business or the world.

Dawn Iacobucci
Vanderbilt University
dawn.iacobucci@owen.vanderbilt.edu
Faculty Profile

Dawn Iacobucci is the E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Marketing at the Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, where she also served as senior associate dean. Previously, Iacobucci was professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. She has published in a variety of journals, including the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, Harvard Business Review, and others; Iacobucci has also served as editor on several journals. Her research focuses on the modeling of dyadic interactions and social networks, the conceptualization and measurement of customer satisfaction and service quality, and multivariate and methodological research questions. Iacobucci is author of Marketing Management and Mediation Analysis and coauthor of Marketing Research.

A Whole New World of Opportunity: Collaboration in the Virtual World

A graduate management virtual world education community to promote collaboration.

Alex Howland
Alliant International University
ahowland@alliant.edu

Ronald S. Rembisz (not pictured)
Alliant International University
ron@rembisz.com

Alex Howland is an intern consultant with Rembisz & Associates in San Diego, California, where he researches and facilitates leadership coaching and assists in developing assessment centers. He holds an MS—and is working toward a PhD—in consulting psychology from Alliant International University.

Ron Rembisz, PhD, has worked for the past 30 years as a full-time consultant and executive coach to corporate management. His primary professional focus has been on organizational and leadership effectiveness. He has assisted organizations and leaders in assessing where they are today, where they need to be in the future, and how to get there effectively and efficiently.

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Third Place

Management Research Platform (MRP)

Create a platform for global dissemination of management research with collaborative features.

Sanjith Yeruva
University of Wisconsin-Madison
ysanjith@gmail.com

Sanjith Yeruva holds a master’s degree in life sciences from Devi Ahilya University, India. He pursued his research career in Virchow Biotech Company, India; Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea; and University of North Dakota. Currently, he is working as a research specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Working on innovative contests is his favorite pastime. Over the past three years, he has won multiple contests in innocentive.com and Atizo.com and reached the finalist level in the Wipro-Knowledge@Wharton Innovation Tournament, the Cisco I-prize contest, the GE ecomagination, and the Myprize contests in past year.

World Issues Focus on Integrity Innovation (WIFII)

By bringing business leaders, faculty, and students together, WIFII will make integrity a core foundation of innovative success.

Mariana Lebron
Syracuse University
mjlebron@syr.edu

Mariana Lebron is completing her PhD in Management, with a major in strategy and minor in organizational behavior, at Syracuse University. Her research focuses on how the power dynamics between CEOs and boards of directors affect the strategic decisions that leaders make and how companies perform, including their ability to innovate and diversify, and manage the sensitivity around executive pay-for-performance compensation. She has presented nationally on strategic leadership, organizational change management, and positive social change for colleges, universities, and professional associations. Her speaking credits include the Academy of Management, the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), and the American College Personnel Association (ACPA). Mariana previously worked as a higher education administrator and oversaw the development of new departments, leadership courses, academic-student affairs partnerships, and university-community partnerships. She is the founder and owner of Soul Vision, which provides educational services to organizations in the areas of leadership development and strategic change management. Mariana was one of 11,500 individuals selected from the 210,000 nominated nationally to carry the Olympic Torch for the 2002 Olympic Games as it made its way to Salt Lake City, Utah.

Alternate Reality Training for Management Education: A Third Way to Teach Management

Unite thousands of current and aspiring business students in a real-life scenario that plays out over the course of an academic year or longer.

Ethan Mollick
Wharton School of Business
Website: http://www.startupinnovation.org/

Ethan Mollick researches the factors that lead to success in entrepreneurship and innovation, with an emphasis on the way individuals shape companies and industries. Some of his work has focused on the video game industry, and he has a book (with David Edery) on video games and business called Changing the Game. Mollick has also done research on subjects ranging from communities of hackers to the Department of Defense.

Leading in a Civilian Context

An MBA course for veterans that leverages service experience, speeds time to degree completion, and provides community and reentry support.

M. Kendall Fitch
Harvard University
mfitch@mba2012.hbs.edu

Kendall Fitch is a joint MBA/master’s in public policy candidate and Rubenstein Fellow at the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School. At Harvard, Fitch was selected by faculty as course assistant and published case writer for Government Budgeting course. She manages and distributes the $10K Harbus Foundation grant package and directed the Social Enterprise Conference pitch competition for $12K in grant awards. Previously, Fitch was a senior consultant at Bain & Company.

Practical Entrepreneurship Education for MBA Candidates

Create a real-world, cross-functional entrepreneurship program that fosters practicality and immerses students in an environment that breeds innovation and future success.

Patrick Cheung
MaRS
patrick.cheung87@gmail.com

Patrick Cheung is an associate in advisory service at MaRS Discovery District in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Previously, he worked as a business analyst at Berkeley Payment Solutions. Cheung holds an HBA from the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business.

Moving Towards a New Admission Process

Increase diversity in the classroom and, in turn, business globally through an innovative selection method.

Orsolya Szabo
HEC Paris
orsolya.oszabo@gmail.com

Orsolya Szabo is head of research at the Budapest office of Egon Zehnder International, where she has worked since 2006. Prior to that, she was the Budapest Region manager for the Ipsos Group. Szabo is a PhD candidate at University of Debrecen, where she also earned a master’s in work and organizational psychology and one in English-Hungarian technical translation. Szabo is currently working on her MBA at through HEC Paris.

Cloud Business Networking

Create a platform in which the management education community can converge, share, and exchange ideas to drive innovation.

Pritesh Sikchi
Green Quotient
pritesh.sikchi@yahoo.co.in

Pritesh Sikchi is founder and director of Green Quotient, which specializes in carbon and renewable energy advising for public and private entities. He is also a research associate at World Institute of Sustainable Energy and a core member of the organizing committee of WindPowerIndia 2011, first held in 2006 and now the largest wind power symposia in India. Sikchi holds a B.E. Mechanical from the University of Pune’s Vishwakarma Institute of Technology.

SME Partnership MBA Program

Create a unique MBA program that meets the ambitions of entrepreneurs in domestic economies by solving the challenges that face Small and Medium Enterprises.

Yousef Al-Tamimi
German Jordanian University
yousef_tamimi@hotmail.com

Yousef Al-Tamimi is marketing and sales professional with global environment experience who specializes in proposal development, contract management, customer acquisition, project management, competitiveness analysis, market intelligence, risk management and mitigation, account management, and business development.

Practical Challenge for Social Good

Through practical projects, students will execute real-life problem solving and planning, and put their leadership and teamwork abilities to the test.

Sisi Zhou
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
zhu.sisi@gmail.com

Sisi Zhu received her bachelor’s of science in biological engineering from MIT and currently works as a senior consultant at Rosetta, an interactive agency in New York. Although her background is in biology, for the past two years Zhu has specialized in developing marketing strategies and consumer segmentations for healthcare and consumer products, including clients such as Novartis, Shire, J&J, and Microsoft. She intends to pursue an MBA in the next few years and hopes to put it to use bringing about positive change.

Externship, Preparing for the Telecom Age

Develop a cross-university exercise that enables students to better understand and experience the limitations and differences telecommuting creates.

Aadel Al-Jadda
University of Rochester

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Honorable Mention

Build 60 International Graduate Management Education Programs in Less Developed Regions in 5 Years

Increase access for underrepresented populations, bolster local academic prosperity, and increase global communications.

Richard Zhou
China-CEIBS
zjiazhen.m09@ceibs.edu

Richard Zhou is working on his MBA at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS). At present, he is at London Business as an exchange student in human resources. Before returning to school, Zhou was operations manager for Wang & Li Asia Resources. In 2004, Zhou earned his bachelor’s degree in management information systems at Donghua University.

Professionalizing the MBA through Service to Others

Provide a structure to enable MBA students to serve others by teaching business to underrepresented urban student populations.

Erich Dierdorff
DePaul University
edierdor@depaul.edu

Erich Dierdorff is the 2010 Gus Economos Distinguished Teaching Award winner and assistant professor of management in DePaul University’s College of Commerce, where he teaches at the graduate and undergraduate level. Prior to coming to DePaul, Dierdorff was an instructor North Carolina State University. He is widely published and has conducted five grant-funded research projects since 2005.

Communication and Information Technology: What else is there?

Students who excel in using information technology will be great leaders because they demonstrate the ability to learn and change.

Lauren Hanat
Lehigh University

Lauren Hanat graduated from Lehigh University in May of 2010 with a BA in journalism and classics with a concentration in Latin. She is currently in the MS Accounting and Information Analysis program at Lehigh University and will be graduating in the spring of 2012. Hanat aspires to work as an auditor at a public accounting firm in New York City.

Crowdsourced Open Consulting from the Classroom

By using an innocentive-like model, companies large and small would be able to offer up potential student projects to MBA teams in a central repository.

Wade Eyerly
Defense Intelligence Agency
wade.eyerly@gmail.com

Wade Eyerly is a policy lead in a government agency, where he is a subject matter expert on human intelligence collection. Prior to that, he worked in campaigns and media interaction. Eyerly holds a master’s in public policy and a certificate in global management from Brigham Young University; he is currently applying to business schools.

Physical and Intellectual Growth: The Augeo Project

Proctored students will teach certificate programs in their local communities that propagate workforce earning power and increase enrollment for business schools around the globe.

Price Paramore
Oklahoma State University/US Air Force
price.paramore@gmail.com

Price Paramore is a husband, a father, and an officer in the United States Air Force. Paramore hails from Allen, Texas, and went to college at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. While attending school he took a two-year sabbatical to serve a church mission in Siberia, Russia. After graduation, he accepted an Air Force career as a hospital administrator. Currently, Paramore works as a medical group practice manager at Incirlik Air Base in Adana, Turkey, and is a MBA student at Oklahoma State University.

i2i Challenge Winner: Alice Stewart, “Stackable Knowledge Units”

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:31:00 -0500

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before!” she said.

Dr. Alice Stewart, associate professor at North Carolina A & T State University and first-place winner in the GMAC MET Fund’s Ideas to Innovation Challenge, had already been thinking about how to look at management education differently when her dean told her about the contest. Alice teaches strategic management NC A&T, which offers a master’s of science in management but doesn’t have an MBA program. As part of the UNC system, where other nearby schools already offer an MBA, NC A&T is investigating the value their programs could add to the traditional management degree.

Alice’s collaborative idea, Contextualizing Graduate Management Education: Creating New Degrees Using Stackable Knowledge Units, expands upon a concept used now in executive education—combining technological or specialized expertise with managerial specialization. Graduate management students could combine courses to build an educational plan that fits their career interests, meets the needs of the job market, and leverages proven, effective instruction across disciplines.

These “stackable education units,” Alice wrote, would be approved to stand alone and deliver “discrete knowledge chunks.” Students could build a meaningful, practical graduate management degree across universities, state systems, or consortia, much as they can now transfer classes that meet agreed-upon criteria.

Alice’s idea was inspired by the feedback she’s heard from corporate recruiters, who find that managers sometimes lack the right level of technical knowledge and that engineers could use more business basics. Her idea considers the needs of particular industries—a combination of knowledge blocks or units might better serve industry-specific business models.

Although Alice is on the faculty side and loves teaching, she also enjoys the administrative side of higher education and really valued the five years she spent as director of strategic planning at The Ohio State University. “I enjoy administration because I teach strategy,” she said. “Higher education is my own personal industry—I can’t just ignore it.”

Her administrative experience made Alice particularly excited about the Ideas to Innovation Challenge because she knows just how difficult it can be to initiate change on a grand scale. “Pushing the edge of the envelope happens more at the individual level,” she noted—right now, there’s no venue in place yet for big-idea, institutional-level innovation.

“GMAC opened this can of worms,” she said, “and I can’t wait to see what ideas have come out of it.”

Profiles of the four second-place winners will appear here over the next few days—check back to find out more!

GMAC Awards US$260,000 in Prizes to Winners of Ideas to Innovation Challenge

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:30:00 -0500

Please join us in a celebrating what we believe is a watershed moment in graduate management education. Earlier today, GMAC awarded a total of $260,000 in prize money to the top 20 winners who had participated in the Ideas to Innovation (i2i) Challenge.

More than 650 individuals (and teams of five or fewer) from over 60 countries answered the question, “What one idea would improve graduate management education?”

The first prize of US$50,000 is going to Alice Stewart, PhD, an associate professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in the United States. Stewart won the i2i Challenge with her idea to allow management education students to use “stackable knowledge units” to craft customized degree programs closely aligned with today’s information-based economy.

Four other ideas are receiving prizes of US$25,000 each, 10 will take home US$10,000 apiece, and another five are earning US$2,500 honorable mention citations. These proposals include requiring business school students to translate classroom concepts into full-fledged business plans; developing an Internet-based video repository for research; and exposing MBA candidates to mandatory entrepreneurship training.

Find out more about all the winning entries at www.gmac.com/i2iwinners. To read more about the winners, view the i2i Challenge Winners List and watch this space for profiles about the top five challenge winners.

Predictions and winners

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:00:00 -0500

As one year closes and another begins, it’s a fairly common practice to see pundits and subject matter experts reflect back on the year past and make predictions for the one ahead. Graduate management education has had its own share of such predictions with Poets & Quants’ founder John A. Byrne writing What’s in Store for B-Schools in 2011 and Veritas Prep writing Six Predictions for 2011, among others. In some ways, this process of reflection and prediction is a natural thought process many of us do. Curiosity abounds in looking at the current environment, dynamic factors, and how things are changing in a given area. It seems there is a natural curiosity around change, dynamics, trends and innovation.

GMAC has embraced innovation as a core element of navigating the years ahead in the graduate management education field by designing, funding, and leading the challenge to answer the question: What one idea would improve graduate management education? Over 650 individuals (and teams of five or fewer people) from more than 60 countries responded to the Challenge, and tomorrow, Wednesday, January 19 at 2 pm ET, we’ll be announcing the winners on gmac.com.

Although we don’t know what exactly will unfold in 2011, we do believe that as a community of professionals dedicated to improving GME, the excitement, ideas, and creativity coming from the Ideas to Innovation Challenge will make 2011 one filled with more conversation and actionable projects around improving graduate management education, not just in our home countries and schools, but across the globe.

Truly, a global Challenge

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:03:00 -0500

When GMAC’s Ideas to Innovation Challenge was initially designed, GMAC MET Fund Director Allen Brandt stated his intention to receive 50 percent of the submissions from outside the U.S.

It was a pretty lofty goal.

Statistically, this goal would seem very do-able—there are more people living outside the US than inside. But achieving such a goal is something that can be neither forced nor controlled. We couldn’t make people want to participate. But the GMAC team went forward, intent on getting 50 percent or more of the i2i submissions from beyond the US border.

We wrote press releases and announcements in English, Spanish, French, and German. We set up a Sina.com site with the Challenge’s submission requirements in Mandarin. The global team of GMAC representatives, leaders, and customers went to work communicating news of the Challenge to their schools, communities, and colleagues. And social media tools were used to take news of the Ideas to Innovation Challenge even further.

We’ve crunched the numbers, analyzed the data, and assessed the demographics. Ladies and gentlemen, we are delighted to share the news that we reached our lofty goal. In fact, of the 650+ submissions received, slightly more than 50 percent of the submissions came from outside the US, with India, China, the UK, Canada and United Arab Emirates in the top countries for number of ideas submitted.

Stay tuned—we’re announcing the winning ideas on Wednesday, January 19!

Winners announced next week

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:27:00 -0500

Curious to know who won the GMAC’s Ideas to Innovation Challenge? On January 19, stay tuned to your favorite international business news source to find out. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in total prize money will be awarded to the winners who best answered the question: What one idea would improve graduate management education?

The Challenge, which launched in July 2010 and closed October 8, 2010, was open to participants worldwide. Over 600 individuals (and teams of five or fewer people) sent in their best ideas. Here’s what’s on the table:

1 $50,000 first-place prize
4 $25,000 second-place prizes
10 $10,000 third-place prizes

…plus worldwide attention from the graduate management education and business communities.

Behind the scenes, our team has been hard at work since the Challenge closed. We had to confirm that the ideas submitted were, indeed, legitimate and complete. We lined up the final list of top-class reviewers and make sure they understood the process and requirements for scoring the entries. We created a “blind” judging system to make sure none of the judges would be swayed by recognizing a person or school. And we had to crunch the numbers to make sure all contestants were given a fair shake regardless of which set of reviewers scored their idea (if you’ve ever had a professor who rarely gave anyone an A, you know what we mean).

We’re really excited to bring to the graduate management education community—and business leaders far and wide—the results of GMAC’s Ideas to Innovation Challenge. We hope you’ll tune in next Wednesday and join us as we congratulate the winners.

The I2I Challenge is now closed

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:43:00 -0400

GMAC’s Ideas to Innovation Challenge is now closed for submissions. People across the world were offered the opportunity to answer this question: “What one thing would make graduate management education better?” And they did. More than 600 submissions were received from people in over 60 countries. All of them offering their perspective on how to make graduate management education better, and each aiming to win their portion from the $250,000 in total prize money available.

Now that the Challenge is closed, the judging process will begin. GMAC has lined up a stellar team of judges from the business world—winners will be announced in December. A total of 14 prizes will be awarded: 1 - US$50,000 first-place prize, 3 - US$25,000 second-place prizes, and 10 - US$10,000 third-place prizes.

Stay tuned for news of our winners. In the meantime, if you’re not yet following us on Twitter or Facebook, please consider doing so.

If you submitted an idea as part of the I2I Challenge, best of luck to you!

Countdown to the I2I Challenge close

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 13:17:00 -0400

You’ve heard about it, read about it, and probably have even given it some thought over these past few months. But now is the time to transition from “thinking about it” to taking action. Yes, GMAC’s Ideas to Innovation challenge closes this week on October 8. The submitted ideas will be processed through a layered system of qualification and judging with the winning ideas announced in December.

There’s US$250,000 in total prize money on the table, but you need to get your idea submitted on time and inside the challenge rules and regulations to qualify for the chance to win your share of the prize money.

Don’t delay. Submit your idea today!