Lessons from MIT - part one, settling in

Drinking from a fire hose
Well, I have been at MIT Sloan just over a month and I’m housed, furnished and settled. You forget about the challenge and enormity of this exercise when you arrive in a new city with two suitcases. Both Harvard and MIT are located in Cambridge. And wouldn’t you know, Cambridge is in Middlesex County – Massachusetts, USA, not Cambridgeshire, UK. Still, the town was named for the famous university in its English namesake.

The city is particularly well set up for students. Accommodation - ranging from dormitories to upscale apartments (guess what I am in) – abounds. There are the huge malls with every type of furnishing and electronics you’d ever need. However, where you hit difficulty is with the utilities…yes things such as gas, water, electricity, cable, phone and internet that we rarely ever think about at home.

With a population of more than 300 million, the US does not encourage you to talk to anyone personally. You get pushed vigorously through a long phone list of voice recognition options or on to the internet. Both are time consuming, complex and frustrating. The voice recognition simply disconnects you because it doesn’t recognise the Kiwi accent. And the internet is frustrating because you do not have a social security number – an item that appears to be the divine key to almost everything.

I will never complain about NZ customer service again…please do not let us become like this, speak up to keep regionality…or even nationality!

The weather in Boston and Cambridge at this time of year makes up for the domestic frustrations. The temperature is in the low 30s and the Sloan school where I mostly reside looks straight out on the Charles River where the MIT and Harvard sailing clubs cruise and compete. Many of my classmates have joined the clubs and enjoy sedately sailing up and down the river. For a Kiwi, it looks very tame, so I have had more fun exploring the gorgeous parks and shopping areas.

I had been told the first semester was like drinking from a fire hose. I thought at the time this was probably wildly exaggerated and coming from a very busy company with multiple things going on, I would be fine. How wrong I was! The professors, the classes and the work are unrelenting.

But on the up side, it’s absolutely fascinating and I can say that I learn at least one new thing in every class. We have so far completed a full MBA syllabus in Marketing and Advanced Economics, complete with homework, multiple assignments and a three hour exam which I sat last week. I don’t think the exam will be the shining light in my academic career, but the relief when the exam was over - and the drinks with fellow students at the pub after - was almost worth the pain (almost !).

The class interaction is as good as, if not better than the lectures. The nationalities, industries and previous careers and lives of the participants are fascinating. After a month, people are starting to get to know one another and relax, so the depth, spontaneity and laughter in each class grows daily.

The professors encourage this and in fact very much enjoy it, as the average work experience at the Sloan is around 15 years, in comparison to that of an MBA class of around two or three years. One professor compared it to working with lions - if you show one bit of fear, they will rip you a part. I don’t think we are quite that bad, but the level of expertise and experience among the individuals is both exhilarating and daunting…and I am only one of them, not facing them en masse.

For this semester we are divided in to study groups of four. These may be combined with other groups for specific projects, but for the large part we are working together. Mine is a wonderful quartet in which we luckily seem to complement one another with our skills.

Lucinio, who is from the Spanish Treasury, Hiro from Kirin Beer in Japan and Stacey, a US Air Force man from Louisiana who works in Washington in the Vice President’s office. I tell them we have the Beer, we know how to pay for it, how to defend it…and as a New Zealander I can teach them how to drink it!

MIT itself has a very progressive and rich history. It was founded in 1865 and from the beginning was co-ed, albeit with very small numbers. The motto of “Mens et Manus” (hand and mind) and literally meaning translating ideas into action, is fully entrenched into the fabric and culture of MIT. And that is part of why the entrepreneurial culture here is almost a cult. The connection of science and engineering with solutions is celebrated and on average two inventions are created every day and four patent applications are lodged every week.

It’s frightening the number of clubs, mentors and incubators you can join here or be introduced to. There is not enough time in the day for the things you would like to hear, see and do…including not even the preparation and home work required!

The campus, layout and buildings at MIT embody the culture of pragmatism with function versus form taking precedence. Eclectic buildings - from Roman elegance to extreme minimalism abutting Geary randomness – are scattered across the campus, mostly joined by strange air bridges. This is in stark contrast to Harvard two miles down the Charles River, with its elegant red brick, well-thought spaces and manicured lawns and gardens. Even the squirrels seem to have an air of superiority about them.

However, the MIT founders would have been pleased with the look and the contrast. It screams of ‘we are interested in what goes on within us and around us but not what we look like’. You can envisage ‘the Geek meets the Banker and makes a lot of money’ which is probably why the two get on so well and we are encouraged to take co-joint courses.

New Zealand itself plays an important role in both MIT’s present - with a number of pre-eminent professors and faculty here – and its past. In 1908, a New Zealander by the name of Richard McLaren - who was at the time the head of the Maths Department at Columbia University - took the hot seat as president of a nearly bankrupt MIT.

In the space of seven years he endeared such families as the DuPonts, the Eastmans and the Levers to support the school with donations. In fact the building the Sloan School is in at present was the original Lever factory, the business that later went on to become Unilever. McLaren used the funds to privatise the university and buy the land by the Charles River which now forms the heart of the campus. Thus the university was saved by a New Zealander and that history forms part of what it is today.

Perhaps it’s a lesson we could learn in New Zealand. A moment where the foresight of pre-eminent industry leaders, knowing and believing a country does not need one more ivory tower of academic learning, fund an institution to transform ideas into commercial reality.

About Sarah Kennedy
Sarah Kennedy is the former chief executive of health and lifestyle products company Vitaco. She has the backing of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FORST) in her quest to find out why New Zealand lags the world in innovation commercialisation. Ms Kennedy is one of two New Zealand women to be accepted for MIT’s prestigious Sloan School of Management Innovation and Global Leadership programme in 2010. They are only the second and third New Zealanders to have been accepted for the course. Ms Kennedy joins 110 others - including only 17 women - from 26 different countries for the 12 month Fellowship in Innovation and Global Leadership