Courses that Crack the MBA Mold

Tired of cookie-cutter B-school curricula? Try parsing Napoleon's instinct or Gordon Gekko's ethics in four offbeat courses from NYU to INSEAD

by Francesca Di Meglio

Tired of those run-of-the-mill core courses? Some business school professors are breaking the mold of traditional business school offerings—and bringing lessons to students in ways you might never have imagined. Although students still have to take the usual quant-heavy requirements, they can also find electives that will transport them to a whole other world. Aspiring Master in Business Administration candidates signing up for these classes are doing everything from analyzing the behavior of film character Gordon Gekko to viewing a kidney transplant operation—all in the name of furthering their business education. Whoever said school was boring never saw these class descriptions:

Napoleon's Glance Based on Associate Professor William Duggan's book, Napoleon's Glance: The Secret of Strategy (Nation Books, 2002) about strategic intuition, thisColumbia Business School half-semester elective is designed to teach students how to brainstorm and plan well—in their careers and personal lives. "As you get older, you realize that you don't follow your dream, you follow opportunity," says Duggan. He hopes to give students the tools to do just that. For starters, in the MBA, executive MBA, and executive education versions of the course, Duggan teaches students that strategic intuition is more than ordinary intuition because it's based on knowledge of historical examples and firsthand experience brought together by a flash of insight.

The idea for the book and course comes from the evolution of the word "strategy," which first entered the English language in 1810, at the height of Napoleon Bonaparte's military success. It was at that time that Napoleon's enemies started to study his approaches to determine how he was successful, and strategy became part of the lexicon. Duggan has picked apart the strategies of Napoleon, and even of artists such as Pablo Picasso, to help students see how they too can use inspiration to be better leaders and have a better life. "Other courses teach the science of management," says Duggan. "This teaches the art of management." (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/3/06, "The Myth of Creativity").

Since 2005, the course has been attracting hundreds of students. Dave Lewis, a 2006 graduate of the MBA program, says "Napoleon's Glance" stretched his thinking and led him to his current job at ?What If!, a New York company that helps organizations find creative solutions to problems. "This course deals with how you come up with ideas and everything else we do at school is about how we can capitalize on those ideas," adds Lewis. Good thing, because you can't be a manager until you have something to manage.

The First 100 Days This mini-elective is one of the most popular courses taught at France's INSEAD. Since 2004 the course has had students taking the reins of a simulated company during its first 100 days in business. Before they can even sign up for the class, students have to form a team of four, with one student serving as chief executive, another as chief financial officer, and the other two heading operations and marketing and sales. There is a limit of 10 teams per session, and you can't drop out of the course once you have won a seat in the competitive bidding process.

But the class is not your usual B-school simulation, where students input information to a computer that spits out results that show whether they did things correctly. Professor Patrick Turner relies instead on friends—real accountants, journalists, and lawyers—and his own acting abilities to give students a taste of what acquiring a new business is like. Turner serves as chairman of the board for each team's company, and when students send e-mails to employees in various departments of their company—such as Lucy in accounting—they're actually corresponding with their professor.