GMAC MET Fund Blog

With Phase 2 Ending, the Innovation Is Just Beginning

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”

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.

i2i Challenge Proposals Frequently Asked Questions

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)”

“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

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”

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.

Read more about Alex and Ron’s idea on gmac.com.

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

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.

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

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”

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!

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

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.