Author: Angela Leone

Let me introduce myself. This is the first time you are reading content written by me on the MIP Knowledge base. I am Davide Ritorto, a 25-year-old Management Engineer from Bari (Italy), currently working at Lamborghini and living near Bologna.

I say this is the first time, because I am a member of the 2021-2023 International Part-Time MBA class, (which has just started), so you will surely have the chance to read some more content that I will be writing during these years.

This article is about exploration and uncertainty. Yes, because my biggest passion is Scuba Diving, so I would like to draw some parallels and take you “underwater” with me in what will be my longest dive so far (almost 2 years long, basically).

Let’s first jump into the sea, so that those of you who have never experienced the underwater realm in any way other than by snorkeling, can have an idea of this amazing adventure.

Nowadays it is relatively easy to cross the surface of the sea, the threshold that divides the two elements, and directly observe the life of this world as never before. The charm of these observations is perhaps only comparable to space exploration: we cannot ignore the sensation of mystery, of fascinating discovery, which is connected to every encounter with underwater life, with the structure of the seabed, with the vestiges of ancient civilizations that the water has jealously and often wisely preserved over the millennia. To feel these emotions, there does not necessarily need to be any encounter with submerged archaeological remains. Indeed, an old bottle full of encrustations is enough.

It’s been ten years since I got my first scuba diving license. I have explored shipwrecks, coral reefs, crashed planes, and this dive (my MBA Experience) carries some of the same emotions experienced during those explorations.

In fact, I am feeling a mix of strong emotions also precipitated by the desire to live this experience in the best way possible: with excitement, happiness, curiosity, motivation and … uncertainty.

Talking with some of my MBA colleagues, I have understood that a common feeling experienced is that of the unknown. Personally speaking, the sense of the unknown relates to how this experience can fulfill me, how it could boost my professional and personal life, what are the ideas and new concepts that I will learn, and who are the people with whom I will develop strong connections, even afterwards. This feeling of the unknown is also similar to the sense of uncertainty that surges before a dive.

We tend to think about the unknown almost as the scariest thing, something to avoid, a fear, basically. The fear of missing out, the fear of not knowing what will happen, the fear of not being good enough, etc.

I, too, sometimes tend to lack this awareness, but I believe uncertainty can actually be a fascinating feeling: an opportunity to explore something new, to explore ourselves, to find things and paths we like the most and eventually to discover that our past fears were unfounded.

Of course, we should deal with uncertainty with the right attitude and preparation.

I will therefore draw one last parallel between my experience in preparing for a dive and what, similarly, I did to prepare for my MBA journey.

For one of my latest Scuba Diving licenses, a game-changer, I trained with an organization called GUE (Global Underwater Explorers). GUE divers follow a standardized sequence to prepare for their dives, which aims to minimize any possible mistakes or omissions that might affect the outcome of the dive. This sequence follows the acronym GUE EDGE.

Well, I would like to try to do the same thing for my MBA dive:

G (Goals) To be concise: my personal goals are to improve myself, evolving as a professional and also as a person, acquiring top-notch knowledge on Business Administration and its related fields in a practical way.

U (Unified Team) Networking will definitely be a plus of this experience. From what I have learned at the Kick-Off, the team of students is made up of people of 9 different nationalities and different backgrounds. Diversity will be a strong enrichment factor for the class.

E (Equipment) As for the equipment needed, we will be provided with teaching materials mostly on the D-Hub Platform (a very well-built platform, I would say). One other useful tool for career development that I will surely use is FLEXA, a personalized continuous learning platform.

E (Exposure) This dive will last 20 months (a pretty long one J).

D (Decompression) Before getting out of the “water” we will test our competences and skills learned during the courses in a final Project Work.

G (Gas) The “fuel” for this experience will for sure be the teamwork with other candidates and the support from my colleagues, family and friends.

E (Environment) The background of this journey will be the beautiful Milan for most of the time, Barcelona and Munich for the International Weeks and hopefully, Silicon Valley for the Exchange Program.

In conclusion, I hope this will be a great dive for all the candidates. See you underwater!

About the author

During my MBA experience at MIP, one of my focuses has been to improve my leadership skills.

Some of the courses I attended have provided me with excellent foundations, which have allowed me to further explore some topics that I consider crucial in my professional growth.

With this goal in mind, some time ago I happened to read an article by the famous management and leadership expert, Jacob Morgan. The main question he aimed to answer was, “What should we be teaching leaders now to prepare for the future?”

In order to do this, he interviewed more than 140 top CEOs from around the world and tried to summarize their answers into four main mindsets which leaders of the future should have: Global Citizen, Explorer, Servant and Chef.

The last two fascinated me the most, so I tried to look into them more deeply with Daniel Trabucchi, assistant professor at MIP Politecnico di Milano and expert in Leadership & Innovation.

“The concept of leadership” – says Professor Trabucchi – “ is going through one of the most delicate moments in its history. The drastic changes undergone by business and the world in general in recent years have meant that the new emerging theories are breaking away from the classic ones. Finding a trade-off between the two factions will therefore not be easy.

Among the mindsets that Morgan mentions, there is the ‘Servant’, the dimension that comes from the Agile world and from Scrum, which introduced the concept of Servant leader associated with the Scrum master. Nowadays, leaders must know how to put themselves at the service of their team and their organization to help them give their best, to put everyone in a position to get the most out of the available resources. A fictional example, but very appropriate to explain this type of approach, is a scene from the Netflix series, “New Amsterdam”. It is based on the story of Dr. Max Goodwin becoming the medical director of America’s oldest public hospital. In his introductory speech, everyone expects to hear about the direction he will be giving to the hospital, the decisions he will make and implement shortly thereafter. Instead, he shocks everyone with a simple sentence: ‘How can I help?’ Here, these 4 words are the fifth essence of servant leadership.”

Another mindset proposed by Morgan is that of “Chef”, which sees the leader as an expert in balancing different ingredients, including technology and humanity.

“Here, we are once again approaching the more classic themes of leadership”, continued Professor Trabucchi. “This mindset, however, adds something compared to the standard theories: chef as the one who knows how to dose those elements, not just use them, knowing when to stop with one and exaggerate with the other. This metaphor still reminds me of the agile world, from which I borrow the concept that most makes me think of chefs: cognitive flexibility. It is nothing more than the ability to combine ideas, intuitions, visions and knowledge that come from different “worlds”, making them grow on each other. A bit like the chef does in fusion cuisine, taking the flavors of different culinary cultures and combining them into something new and even better.

Approaching new technologies with this mindset, with the desire to take what they offer and reinterpret them in a new way, is what today’s leaders need.”

About the author

Usually we tend to apply what we learn in specific fields only in that field; we study it and rarely do we contaminate models coming from different disciplines. As a matter of fact, however, a lot of scientific findings come from interdisciplinary researchers. For example, Daniel Kahneman, one of a countless list, discovered the two systems of thought by using psychology, behavioural economics and decision-making principles. Finally, as a psychologist, he won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

In our normal lives (unless working in research) we are not asked to study to expand human knowledge, but we can do something easier and more effective just by applying to our daily routine what university courses have taught us in specific modules. We could use financial principles to better plan our household budget; we could use some supplier evaluation models when it comes to buying a new piece of furniture, or we could apply some marketing rules when we need, for example, to promote ourselves.

Speaking about careers, what I think could be useful is to gather and apply some of the university teachings that can help us to have a better and more efficient career; and this is what the Career Development Center at MIP pushes candidates to do alongside their formal MBA lessons.

For example, in some lessons the lecturer encouraged us to think of our personal career as a real project to manage, with achievable objectives (such as a position to reach or a company to work for) within a defined timeframe; activities to be planned that can enable us to gain an interview and to master it; resource allocation (not only the time to spend weekly on top of our working hours, but also investments in specific courses or a premium subscription for some professional networking platform). Then there is the monitor and control phase and, really importantly, also the “change request” analysis: it is not unusual to change the scope after a period of maturation.

Another topic imported from formal studies is professional network management. Network theory is used in many disciplines such as statistics, computer science, electrical engineering, as well as sociology and neuroscience. We saw it applied for career purposes. During the courses, the lecturers encouraged us to write down a list of our personal contacts, starting from our first position up until our current job, with the field of specialization, the background and the possible connection with the company we aimed to work for or the position we planned to apply for. It might be surprising that while writing the list, more information and connections between our contacts (that we had not thought of before) popped into our minds.

Of course, simply planning their career and creating a map of contacts to systematically nurture does not ensure that the candidate will attain their desired position. There are professionals who achieve their goals without these tools and, at the same time, others who, despite their efforts, do not reach the position they desire. I think that these two instruments (together with others touched on during the Career Development courses), if consistently applied, represent a great help in defining our position on the career path. Sometimes we apply for jobs automatically and later realize that the road we are following is wrong, or not perfectly aligned. To have a map to refer to (and to fine-tune regularly) enables us to know exactly where we are, to change route, and to deepen our knowledge of matters that can help us during our career journey.

What is important is to be consistent and to beware of the mental obstacles that occur. The phrases within us like “I know a lot already”, “theory is easier than practice”, “I am who I am; I cannot change” are the worst enemies we can face during our path. They are inside us and are harder to beat because they are part of us. But like in sport or with positive habits, the hardest part is at the beginning. Once we start to work with these tools, they become part of our routine and essential to demonstrate our clear positioning during interviews.

About the author

That’s all Folks!

No, this is not the end of a Looney Tunes cartoon. This is the end of a personal growth path undertaken in the last two years of studying for the International Part-Time MBA at MIP Politecnico di Milano. Two years full of hard work but also plenty of satisfactions. Two years in which I consolidated my knowledge in the Supply Chain field, but which allowed me to get to know and explore other areas of interest in more depth, from Corporate Finance to Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Brick after brick, I think I managed to consolidate the foundations and build that castle that makes me feel, today, a better professional than I was in October 2019.

Now I would like to focus on the culmination of my journey: Closet Relay, the object of my project work. Closet Relay is a business idea which was born among MIP’s desks, starting from the concepts learned in the Innovation Leadership course, with my fellow adventurer, Alessandro Calvino, and my colleagues, Marco Postorino and Elisa Serra.

The goal was to create a digital platform focused on the long-term rental of luxury clothing and accessories for children. How many times during your childhood did you hear your parents saying: “Better buy it a bigger size, so it’ll fit you for longer?” And, in fact, this is what often happens to children, as in 47% of cases, their clothes are disposed of due to an issue relating to size and fit. This fact causes an enormous environmental impact, feeding the 92 million tonnes of textile waste generated worldwide every year.

Closet Relay, with its long-term rental business model for luxury garments, would allow the useful life of the products to be extended by up to three times. And this effect would be further amplified by the creation of an “outlet” channel, dedicated to the sale of second-hand garments that can no longer be rented as they are not being worn any more (they are no longer considered “as new”).

To develop this idea, we have applied most of the concepts learned in the last two years: from strategic planning (internal and external analysis, market positioning, competitor analysis), to marketing (touchpoints and customer journeys), from logistics to financial planning.

We have also applied innovative simulation techniques, such as Monte Carlo analysis. This allowed us to identify the optimal rental price configurations, mix of items and logistics networks.

Closet Relay not only allowed us to end our MBA path with “icing on the cake”, but also to win a prestigious international contest in the luxury sector: the Mark Challenge contest, organized by the University of Monaco.

This has given us good international visibility, but, above all, it has allowed us to get in touch with professionals, investors and companies which helped us in further improving ourselves. And who knew that this idea, born among MIP’s desks, could one day become a beautiful reality?

So, are we sure “That’s all folks”? Maybe not. After all, as an old Hindi saying goes: “Never Stop Learning Because Life Never Stops Teaching”.

About the author