Instant Response

What makes MIT so unique and amazing is its almost instantaneous reaction to many issues and challenges that are shaping the world -- no matter how new or difficult they are. The U.S. Congress recently passed a seminal healthcare bill, and there are groups of students on this campus working already on building technologies that will plug into and enhance this new healthcare environment. This instantaneous response -- as well as the self-confidence, enthusiasm, and ability to distill a very complex environment and identify viable opportunities -- is absolutely amazing to see. It's contagious.

The Inclusive School Pride

Every MIT student who participated in the today's MIT 100K Elevator Pitch Contest must have felt tremendous school pride. There were so many, impressively many, students from other schools -- even as far as Michigan and Penn -- who tried their luck in this world's greatest American Idol for entrepreneurs. What's more, there were people who weren't even students or alums, and they gave it a shot too -- some of them may even go to the finals! It was just so inspiringly inclusive.

Magic happens when you merge bright with inclusive.

Wine In The Elevator

What’s the closest thing to having wine in the elevator? At MIT, it’s having wine at a practice bootcamp the night before the MIT 100K Elevator Pitch Contest. That’s exactly what happened tonight at a session organized so thoughtfully by the MIT Entrepreneurship and Execution Club. Students practiced their pitches and received feedback, and the event spoke volumes about the often unsaid wonders of entrepreneurship at MIT.

First, it’s really remarkable that students felt completely at ease practicing and polishing their pitches in front of their future contestants. This symbiosis of cooperation and competition is a powerful fiber in the fabric of MIT. Second, it was amazing, pride-instilling, and heart-warming to see how generous the students were with their time, knowledge, and ideas.

These are the things that often aren’t easy to see when looking at MIT from outside in, but they are very much the things that serve as the very definition of entrepreneurship at MIT.

Who Brings You Here?

"What brings you here?" is often the first question you get at networking events. It's a way to engage, but it's hit-and-miss - there are just so many ways to answer. It's a hit, and you exchange contacts. It's a miss, so you move on.

But what if you had an event where it all began with, "Who brings you here?" A professional networking event, for example, where people bring their mentor. An event to celebrate and exchange stories about partnerships and goodwill between people. There won't be a single one uninteresting or irrelevant conversation at such an event. Instead, you'd come away full of stories, familiar stories, yet nonetheless ones that never fail to delight and inspire.

A Sip For A Semester

It's SIP time here at Sloan, i.e. Sloan Innovation Period - a week when regular classes are off and students instead attend one-off seminars picked from a myriad of choices. SIP has many meanings. For some students, SIP means breezing through the required seminars on Monday and Tuesday and then going off to travel. For others, it's about letting random learning run amok by sitting all manner of disparate seminars. And yet for others, it's simply a chance to catch up on some blogging.

As I'm sure one can gather from the list, SIP isn't a particularly important period. But it can be. What if SIP wasn't just for a week, but for an entire semester. Just imagine, an entire semester of business school dedicated to disparate learnings and roaming from one random seminar to another. Every new learning will then come wrapped in surprise, and I bet you'd learn a ton.

Care for a routine of delight?

From Impractical To Practical

Business school education isn't always a tailored experience, so it's not surprising that students often ask, How is this useful? As in, How is this piece of knowledge that seems at once complex and basic and abstract - and often jarring to creativity, free thought and imagination - useful? Useful to my career, life, or learning goals?

Fair question, but one that gets quickly resolved during exams. With midterms looming, you have to learn, you have to know, you have to understand, and so you do. You cram, and suddenly, a piece of knowledge that only seconds ago appeared incorrigibly impractical becomes so useful in a million ways. Enlightenment.

And why just a moment ago did it seem so far beyond imaginable that you can't find something useful before you know it and understand it?

When Feeling Bad Is Good

Business school is peppered by moments of discovery and delight, but it's also punctuated by subtle moments of disquiet, moments when things just don't feel right. Often a product of subconscious expectations, not all of them can be explained or explained away. But they are good. When they come, focus on them, savor them, enjoy them, for they are showing you a way to understand yourself when you are changing.