No, we don't spend the whole day from party to party. Today I feel like writing about four conferences/lectures we've had, all of which have been very interesting.
The first one was last Friday as an introduction to our course on Organisational Behaviour. The title was Team building – complex high performing teams, and it was given by Mark de Rond, who spent seven months observing the Cambridge Boat crew’s preparation for the 2007 Boat race against Oxford. Cambridge won, coming from behind, working as a team. The captain had to make a number of difficult decisions in order to choose the best possible team, that is not always formed by the eight best rowers.
Saturday morning we had other two conferences. The first was Stimulating Innovation for a More Competitive Europe, by Arnoud de Meyer, the Director of our school. He said that "Europe's and the UK's competitive position cannot be built on low-cost competition and efficiency, that the University is a hotbed of technological breakthroughs and inventions, and that the challenge is how to bring these into the market and couple them with exciting creative business models".
Later we received Lois Jacobs, from Jack Morton, a leading marketing agency specialised in big productions. The title was Branding a City through Olympic Ceremonies and it was a very good story because our speaker was in charge of the production of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games ceremonies. The lecture explored the 20 month journey it took to produce them, describing how she recruited a volunteer cast of 8000, a support team of 2500 volunteers and a multi-national production team of 1200.
And today we've really enjoyed the visit of Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the world's leading creative organizations, employing over 7000 people in 83 countries. This man is the originator of Lovemarks. "Lovemarks are brands that inspire loyalty beyond reason. People love them because of what they are, not because of what they do. Their appeal is emotional. Companies may own brands. But Lovemarks are owned by the people who love them." He really knows how to motivate people. He is a very tood speaker and he really really likes to be a leader. He encouraged us to think about our dream job and try to make it real. Not always very realistic, but very inspiring indeed. By the way, he arrived almost two hours late because it took to him six hours to drive from Heathrow Airport, so we missed our Beer Game.
The first one was last Friday as an introduction to our course on Organisational Behaviour. The title was Team building – complex high performing teams, and it was given by Mark de Rond, who spent seven months observing the Cambridge Boat crew’s preparation for the 2007 Boat race against Oxford. Cambridge won, coming from behind, working as a team. The captain had to make a number of difficult decisions in order to choose the best possible team, that is not always formed by the eight best rowers.
Saturday morning we had other two conferences. The first was Stimulating Innovation for a More Competitive Europe, by Arnoud de Meyer, the Director of our school. He said that "Europe's and the UK's competitive position cannot be built on low-cost competition and efficiency, that the University is a hotbed of technological breakthroughs and inventions, and that the challenge is how to bring these into the market and couple them with exciting creative business models".
Later we received Lois Jacobs, from Jack Morton, a leading marketing agency specialised in big productions. The title was Branding a City through Olympic Ceremonies and it was a very good story because our speaker was in charge of the production of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games ceremonies. The lecture explored the 20 month journey it took to produce them, describing how she recruited a volunteer cast of 8000, a support team of 2500 volunteers and a multi-national production team of 1200.
And today we've really enjoyed the visit of Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the world's leading creative organizations, employing over 7000 people in 83 countries. This man is the originator of Lovemarks. "Lovemarks are brands that inspire loyalty beyond reason. People love them because of what they are, not because of what they do. Their appeal is emotional. Companies may own brands. But Lovemarks are owned by the people who love them." He really knows how to motivate people. He is a very tood speaker and he really really likes to be a leader. He encouraged us to think about our dream job and try to make it real. Not always very realistic, but very inspiring indeed. By the way, he arrived almost two hours late because it took to him six hours to drive from Heathrow Airport, so we missed our Beer Game.
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