Dear Friend of INSEAD,
I am writing to invite you to submit a project proposal for the INSEAD MBA elective course on Private Equity, which will run again from August until October 2009, both on the Europe and Asia campus. Specifically, if the opportunity described below interests you and you choose to become a project champion, I would like to invite you to submit a brief (max. 1 page) project proposal any time between now and August 3, 2009 (the earlier the better for you, because of the higher visibility among the students already enrolled in the course). There is a simple process for proposal submission and for matching interested students with external project champions. If you are interested in learning more about this process, simply reply to this e-mail.
Potential student projects could deal with a wide range of topics, such as:
- Strategically positioning or re-positioning your new fund
- Formulating an entry strategy for your firm into a new geographical market
- Screening of interesting investment targets
- Doing a survey of the junior partners in your firm to surface what organizational issues your firm is facing
- Examining the generational succession in your firm
- Studying and evaluating a historical deal
- Etc.
To give you one concrete example, the Paris-based mid-market buyout specialist Activa Capital Partners has championed several reports on the potential for mid-market buyouts in France. The student teams involved in these projects have administered surveys to the CFOs of the top publicly quoted firms in France. Their studies have led to interesting insights, and received wide coverage in the business press.
You may want to consider such a project because it will give you a window on the current talent at INSEAD (which might be useful for staffing decisions both within your own firm as well as within any of your investee companies) You will get work done that would otherwise consume some of your own costly resources....And it might be fun working with a team of motivated and bright MBA students.
The project is a requirement for participants to pass the course, and it counts for 30% of their grade. The students have a strong incentive to work on external projects (and to execute them well) because these projects allow them to gain first-hand experience about issues that are relevant to the management of Private Equity, and to network with industry professionals.
The basic idea behind such a project is to give students an opportunity to experience what Private Equity is about. I would therefore like the students to work in groups of 4 - 6 team members on projects that (a) are relevant to the practice of Private Equity, and (b) expose the students to issues that affect the core of your, and your colleagues' professional activities. I would discourage the students from working on issues that Private Equity firms typically outsource to third parties (such as certain forms of strategic, financial, or technical due diligence), which involve relatively low analytical skills (e.g., data mining, database building), or on tasks that are typically the responsibility of the entrepreneurs that you coach and support, and in which you (or your colleagues and associates) would normally not become involved. The project should allow students to learn something useful about Private Equity, and it should allow them to gain an appreciation of what it means to work in a Private Equity firm. After completion of the project, students should have a better understanding of the strategic, organizational, and managerial challenges that Private Equity professionals encounter. They are asked to reflect on these challenges using tools and frameworks acquired in their academic studies, and explain how these challenges could be addressed.
Here are some parameters that will give you a better idea about the timeline and the available resources for projects:
· The next time the course will run at INSEAD will be from March to April 2010, and then again in September/October 2010
· Last time the course drew 100 participants in France and 50 on the Asia campus (over 50% of the whole promotion) – with the distribution between campuses being inverse in the winter months
· The background of course participants is diverse, ranging from prior PE experience, to investment banking, consulting, and industry
· By the start of the course, students enrolled in the course have to make a decision on which project they pursue
· Project teams are usually composed of 5 people (e.g., last time there were 24 teams)
· If each team member dedicates 3 hours of work on the project per week, you can expect to benefit on average from 3 * 5 * 6 = 90 (wo-)man hours; many teams invest considerably more time than that if the project topic is interesting and presents a great networking opportunity
· The students submit a written report at the end of the project in compliance with the course requirements, and they make a presentation to the external project sponsor (if desired)
I hope that you find this an attractive opportunity for you and your firm, and that we will have the pleasure of hearing from you soon.
Best regards
Claudia Zeisberger
Affiliate Professor of Decision Sciences
Academic Co-Director
Private Equity Initiative (PEI) – The Abu Dhabi Center
Programme Director
Center for Decision Making & Risk Analysis (CDMRA)
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- Tan Yinglan
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