Electives

This weekend I finished reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, my favorite (so far) of the movies. It was a great read and I'm really enjoying the extra depth that the books provide--both of the plot and of the character development. Although it may sound blasphemous, I find that there are some scenes the movies actually portray "better" than the books, especially in Prisoner of Azkaban. Director Alfonso Cuarón really elaborated cinematographically on some of the J.K. Rowling's ideas to good effect.

One element that I enjoyed about Prisoner of Azkaban is that it is the first year that the students choose electives. They no longer all take the same courses and can now specialize in the subjects that interest them. In less than two weeks we will begin electives here at IMD as well. Only instead of "Divination" and "Care of Magical Creatures" our options are more like "Advanced Group Dynamics" and "Managing Change." They aren't quite as exotic sounding, but I'm still looking forward to them.

Following is a list of our available electives. The ones I will be taking are in bold:

Course 1:

Introduction to Advanced Group Dynamics - Jack Wood (our Leadership professor)

Economic Dilemma - Economic Opportunities - Ralf Boschek (our Industry/Company Analysis & Economics professor)

Course 2:

Entrepreneurship - A Longer View - Joachim Schwass

Business History - Lessons from the Past - Stewart Hamilton (our Accounting professor)

Global Corporate Strategy - James Henderson (our Strategy professor), Cyril Bouquet

Course 3:

Managing Change - Maury Peiperl (our Leading People in Organizations professor), Anand Narasimhan

Special Topics in Private Equity and Venture Capital - Benoit Leleux (our Entrepreneurship professor)

Turnarounds: Tools for Recovering Corporate Wealth - Jean-Frederic Mognetti

Course 4:

Advanced Supply Chain - Corey Billington (our Production and Operations Management professor)

Advanced Finance - Didier Cossin

Managing Information, People, and IT Capabilities for Business Value - Don Marchand

For most of the course blocks I was torn between two or more courses. Like Hermione Granger in Prisoner of Azkaban, I really wanted a way to take all of them. However, lacking a time turner, I've had to resort to more mundane methods to bone up on each subject. For example, in Course 4, I've been able to learn a great deal of the Advanced Supply Chain content during the ICP because Corey is our faculty advisor. For the other courses I may just procure the required readings and get to them when I can.

Regardless, there is still an ICP to finish before I can start really thinking about electives.