Here's an idea for you: Start a new kind of international business school, one that focuses not just on the standard M.B.A. stuff, but on knowledge systems; on the incorporation of new technology and global thinking into management practices. Get successful managers from global businesses to act as visiting lecturers, and entice some of the best professors from the US and UK to come over for one-year stints. If you build it, will they come?
If you build it in on the French Riviera - fast becoming Europe's equivalent to Silicon Valley - they will, and they have. Just five years old, the fledgling Theseus Institute trains managers who are fluent in the technology-driven global marketplace. (The Theseus of Greek myth slew the Minotaur, a half-man, half-beast that lived in the middle of a maze. In honor of that myth, Theseus calls its graduates "Infotaurs.")
Professors at Theseus are as likely to come from Thinking Machines or Apple as they are from Harvard. According to Charles Wisemann, professor of strategic information systems, managers today must have "an intimate familiarity with technology not only as a competitive weapon but as a tool for continuous organizational innovation." The program has two required cores; one for management and the other for technology. The one-year program, which costs $25,000, features standard classroom lectures, a field consulting project with a technology-related business, and "Clusters"- four-week intensive explorations of concepts like "The Learning Organization and Information Technology." The average class is taught in English and composed of 30 to 40 students hailing from as many as 24 different countries.
Theseus Institute, Sophia Antipolis, France: +33-92-94-51-00, or contact Catherine Harris: (harris@theseus.fr)
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