jesperbergmann

is it within a domain you know a lot about?

is it fun?

can you build it?

can you sell it?

what makes it stand out? someone will copy it if you're successful, so what makes it sustainable e.g. brand, customer engagement, network effects etc.

Massimo Banzi is a great guy and a true visionary. Incidently he gave a speech in one of my classes and explained that the purpose of Interaction Design Institute Ivrea was to create an Italian verison of MIT's famous Media Lab.

Typically, he said that when it was recognized for its excellence world wide, Telecom Italia decided to shot it down.

I think

I particularly think the importnat part is making it cross-disciplinary. As somebody who has studied business I would have liked much more interaction with engineering/humanities discipline etc. If universities trust each others quality, cross-registering for courses shouldn't be difficult to execute.

I agree that one of the most untrue stereotypes of Italians is that they do not work hard, because most people I have met are willing to put in very long hours.

Unfortunately I have also found the "Italians are not that effective" stereotype to be somewhat true. In a university context people are willing to meet and study all day long but often there is no agenda, no direction poor preperation and people being late. Basically I think Italian systems should focus more on brevity and precision, then they could also take some more time off and get the same amount done :)

I took entrepreneurship and classes at UNC Chapel Hill for my undergraduate and it was a great experience taught by former entrepreneurs and PE-people. My point is not so much that there are only few classes in Europeean b-schools but that these courses get a lot of things wrong, that they do not prepare people to become better entrepreneurs.