Manage your time: how to survive (and enjoy) one year of Full-Time MBA

Prospective students or professionals interested in the MBA program have reached out to me lately to hear my say. One of the most recurrent questions I have had so far is about the effort it takes in terms of study-life balance. Commonly enough, I find myself recalling how challenging it was during the past months to deal with a very tight schedule including attending classes, submitting assignments and preparation for interviews. As I recognize this is a very relevant theme, I decided to put pen to paper to give my ultimate 3 tips + 1 guide to time management, or rather, on how to survive and still enjoy this amazing and sometimes overwhelming year!

 

1.       Do not procrastinate: do it and do it now!

Let’s be clear: after the first month of onboarding with the basics in digital phase, made up of clips to browse online and pleasant encounters at MIP with the students who have already relocated to Italy, the first trimester is the real challenge of this program. You will easily find yourself immerged in a full week of classes, most of the times followed by after-school talks and company presentations which you don’t want to miss, and at the same time you have to work, every weekend, on the submission of two assignments. Living around the clock will soon be the norm, so if you want to be on schedule, do not wait for tasks and deliverables to pile up (because you will have tons!), do not go through the same task back and forth seeking for a second, third or maybe fourth read. Do not wait for perfection: act fast and act now.

 

2.       Be in the moment

This is very connected with the previous point and it is something I learned from one of the most inspiring professors I had this year, Filippo Passerini. In his words, one of the most effective ways is to stay focused is “to be in the moment”. This is by no means achieved by a strong will not to get distracted by technology and social media, maybe leaving the mobile in your pocket on purpose for the whole duration of the class or taking notes on paper rather than on a digital tool, but also avoiding multitasking. As the human attention span gets shorter and shorter with digitalization (did you know it is shorter than a goldfish’s?), multitasking is indeed reducing this threshold. Being in the moment means getting rid of all those objects, thoughts and ideas keeping us from the here and now. If you want to take (and learn) the most from what is happening around you, set a blank mind. You cannot imagine how much time you will save later.

 

3.       Take that hand: people are here to help

We are all in this together. It might sound like the claim of a manifesto, but truly enough, your classmates are the best allies along the way. Setting up study-groups where you can dive deep into topics that were mentioned during class, asking for a read-through or a double-check on your assignment, rehearsing for an exam by exchanging notes and ideas, are all very common things you will find as you walk around the busy desks of the study stations at MIP. Rest assured, in your class you will find at least one person who was previously working in the same area of expertise as that of the subjects studied, and the good news is that everyone wants to lend a hand and help each other, to be cross-pollinated and to learn from other peoples’ experience. Take that hand, especially when your time is short, teamwork will help you eat the elephant piece by piece.

 

+1. Work hard, party harder

After all I’ve written and said, this might look contradictory, but no. The core of this experience is the human value coming from the network of people you will meet along the way. This program is really multicultural and diverse in its soul and what you will grasp from your classmates will make your day. You will work a lot, you will challenge yourself in many circumstances, at times you will be tired and stressed out, but on top of this, you will have plenty of aperitivos, calcetto (five-a-side football) matches, pizza nights, beers and drinks with the best laughs. You will eat handmade Chinese dumplings, learn how to dance salsa and hopefully become a huge fan of reggaeton, and your time  ̶  despite being short  ̶  will never be so rich, it will never be worth so much!

 

About the author
Marianna Trimarchi
I am a candidate of the International Full Time MBA at MIP. I have a background in academia as a PhD in Communication and Strategic Analysis and a career as content producer in the Media Industry. I have worked for the Italian Television as author and assistant producer for cultural programs as well as for other media outlets as journalist. I am passionate about understanding complex phenomena particularly related to internationalization and global development from a multidisciplinary perspective.

 

 

 

Top 10 Online MBA Programs for Salary Growth

Online MBA students tend to be older than full-time candidates and looking for a career acceleration: they enter the programs with relatively high pay and it generally surges higher still on graduation. The increase can be as high as nearly 50 percent after a few years and the actual salary achieved above $200,000 on average.

Online MBA candidates can typically hold down a full-time job while they study part-time, so they do not incur the opportunity cost of not working like their counterparts on full-time campus programs do. So online students keep earning even while learning, applying what they learn directly into the workplace, working towards a promotion.

Finance and banking are the most popular industries pursued after an Online MBA — sectors known to compensate their employees handsomely.

The best Online MBAs for salary growth are often those that are ranked highest by rankings publications like the Financial Times and US News & World Report. This reflects these publications’ rankings methodologies—which tend to prioritize salary increase—but may also raise the esteem of an institution in the eyes of corporate recruiters.

In some cases, Online MBA students also may have access to all the same career services as their counterparts on campus do. This coaching from industry experts can help with securing well-paid jobs. And as Online MBAs are cheaper than residential courses, the absolute return on investment from digital degrees can be far higher too. […]

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MIP, EY, SACE: the trident to address the challenges of internationalization

From Brexit to the pandemic, trade wars and the climate emergency: there are many elements that have revolutionized the chain of global values on which many companies based their organization. However, change can open new spaces for Italian companies that, with the right strategy, can take advantage of new and important growth opportunities

 

Until just a few months ago, the business model of many companies was based on a global scale value chain. Production activities were in different countries, according to a principle of convenience. Brexit, trade wars, the climate emergency and, since 2020, the pandemic, could change this paradigm. «The mechanism has gone into crisis», explains Professor Stefano Elia, associate professor of International Business and director of the short courses in the Management of Business Internationalization programme at MIP Politecnico di Milano. «There are two possible answers to this setback: on one hand we could see the resilience of the current model, on the other its reconfiguration».

 

Between resilience and change: an opportunity for Italian companies

«In the first case», explains Elia, «we would see growing flexibility in the production model, accompanied by increased digitalization In addition, companies on one hand could focus on areas that have suddenly become strategic, like chemical and medical ones; on the other, they could focus on incentive-driven sectors. The second scenario has shorter production chains. It abandons global scale, to re-adapt to a macroregional horizon. Within the European Union itself there is a heterogeneity that allows to redistribute certain activities, without moving them outside of the continent and, also in this case, digitalization could play an important role in facilitating an increase both in the quality of products and production processes. This scenario has at least three advantages: trade wars are avoided, nationalist-sovereign winds are kept at bay and the climate emergency is addressed, as the supply chain is shortened». And it is here that Italian companies could come into play: «There is room for them to assert themselves in a competition in which quality becomes fundamental, not only in B2B but also in B2C. It is thought that the United States will recover quickly, as well as Germany, China, South Korea and Vietnam. These are some of the countries to look at, because between 2021 and 2022 the market rebound is estimated at between 5 and 11%».

 

Towards internationalizations: the need for a good strategy

An opportunity for which you need to be prepared. «Companies have two alternatives: either they diversify, or they go outside of their borders, facing greater competition, but also greater growth opportunities. The important thing is that this step is guided by the criteria of quality». And a good strategy: «First you need to understand the attractiveness of your product and based on this understand the countries that could be most interested. Then you need to understand how to present yourself in those countries, adapting your offering to their cultural and institutional characteristics, but also determining whether it makes sense to enter the market on your own or with partners. Lastly, it is important to understand what the most suitable financing means are. Grants, guarantees and credit insurance, legal and tax aspects: nothing should be left to chance».

 

MIP, EY and SACE: together to provide skills

MIP’s short courses in Management of Business Internationalization aims to provide the tools to address all these areas. «Teams that handle internationalization must have a strong capacity for strategic planning, analysis, process management, but also the capability for adaptation and flexibility, to correct errors in judgement or to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities. From this point of view, explains Elia, «MIP courses guarantee an education that covers the areas of business planning management and digital technologies that are functional to internationalization. The winning formula, however, can be found in the MIP, EY, SACE trident: EY, our partner and among the four most important advisory and auditing firms, completes MIP’s managerial offering with technical and professional expertise, sharing its legal, tax and risk management know-how, as well as giving access to its network of consultants and companies. SACE, the Italian agency for the promotion of international investments, provides an institutional perspective, making available a series of powerful tools supporting companies in the phase of internationalization that it intends to make as widely known as possible so that companies will use them to seize the opportunities inherent in the current scenario».

 

The fundamental value of my MBA Project Work

The MBA experience came to an end in mid-July. It had been a long journey… sometimes exhausting, always interesting but for sure a lifetime adventure!

Our last step was the delivery of our project work, a final paper focused either on a strategic project within our company or on a startup development plan of our own.

The project could be managed in groups (for startup business plans) or by a single student (for the in-company project only) and it is discussed in front of MIP professors (and, if possible, is also open to other students) as the last step of the MBA. In both cases a tutor is assigned for each project, represented by a MIP professor with experience in the specific area of interest. This figure is key in the development of the project work because the tutor helps you step by step with useful indications and relevant tips based on his/her knowledge of the industry. I found my tutor to be a really great source of discussion and encouragement.

Personally speaking, this project was a chance for me to concretely apply all the notions I had collected and internalized during the last two years. The MBA courses fostered our capacity of giving life to embedded startup ideas and increased our understanding of business logics. A great thing is that often entrepreneurial ideas comes to life concretely thanks to startup contests linked to the Politecnico through the PoliHub, one of the main Italian incubators for startups.

I decided for the in-company project focused on fashion supply chains and the impact of Covid, which was a great personal and professional experience. It was a big chance for me to be part of one of the main strategic choices of the firm I work for, involving my specific area. I was able to grow and learn from the company’s top management in order to define and deliver the project, giving me more visibility and a deeper understanding of my firm’s strategic path.

Therefore, this final work was for me more than an assignment but truly professional growth for which I will be forever grateful. In general, for example for all my MBA colleagues who did the startup business plan, it was a chance to develop their ideas with a great deal of help from brilliant minds and the possibility of concretizing them.

 

About the author
Pietro Cavallo

My name is Pietro and I grew up in Milan, where I am currently living. I work in Switzerland, in the Supply Chain division of a clothing multinational. I am the husband of an incredible wife and father of 2 crazy kids.

 

How Online MBAs Forge Real-Life Networks

Students are finding that virtual networks can be just as valuable as the real deal

Forging face-to-face networks with students and faculty has long been a big draw to campus-based MBAs. But coronavirus-mandated travel curbs and campus closures are forcing students to embrace virtual learning.

That has long been admired for its flexibility and has been considered more environmentally friendly. But students are finding that virtual networks can be just as valuable as the real deal. A confluence of advances in technology and changing cultural and working norms are boosting the appeal of Online MBAs.

The travel clampdown caused by coronavirus and closure of campuses has made online networking more important than ever. “Now that everything is virtual, networking is an even more vital part of not just the job search, but also to keeping a cadre of allies and advocates ready and willing to bat for you,” says Stephanie Gray, associate director of Graduate Career Services at Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

She says that, with the cancellation of large in-person events such as conferences, students are having to rely more on one-on-one networking, which may be a welcome change for introverts. […]

There are downsides though. Antonella Maria Moretto, associate dean for open programs at MIP Politecnico di Milano in Italy, says that relationships struck in person tend to be stronger and longer lasting because they are more personal. “I am not sure that remote networking is effective as a personal chat to develop these relationships in the long term,” she says.

She believes that virtual networking is simply different, not better or worse than the campus experience. “The coronavirus obliged business schools to start using remote networking,” says Moretto. “After this crisis period, I think we need to learn how to blend together face-to-face with remote networking as these two methods are complementary.” […]

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i-Flex networking experience

Digital and “spread” classrooms, distance learning and international spirit: which are the benefits, the challenges and the incentives of building an i-Flex network?

The choice of a learning path is never a simple step. It will require you to dedicate your time, energy and also money. Especially for a master, it will affect your life for several months. There is no second opportunity, so it would be worth weighing up your decision. With the increase in online courses, the first question that comes to mind is whether these have the same value, in terms of knowledge, experience and overall job market recognition, as a traditional one.

One of the biggest differences between an online and a traditional course is the common concept that a traditional class reinforces the relationship among students. The social contribution of a course is vital, as well as the knowledge learnt during the course itself. Discussions with colleagues, the sharing and comparing of new ideas, working groups or pure networking all enable skills that enrich the training offer. There is no doubt that a face-to-face class has all those characteristics. But are we sure that they cannot be replicated in a remote class? Nowadays, we are living in a social world and everyone is in the habit of interacting with others on social media using the most varied tools. Chatting, speaking and video calling far-off people is a practice which takes place several times a day. It can start friendships and enable you to get in touch with people without any need to organize demanding trips. Furthermore, in this way, you can also get in touch with friends who are located very far away, even on the other side of the world. So why not benefit from such tools and adopt them in order to complete the learning path? This should not be a substitute for frontal lessons but can be considered as something that provides added value to the lessons. Being in an international class brings a variety of cultures and points of view that can be very different from the usual ones. By giving people, who could not otherwise attend, consent to access distance learning courses, the composition of the class is more diversified. Moreover, most jobs are already designed in this mode, being agile and involving collaboration with people who are not in the same workplace. A situation analogous to remote working groups can be created within distance learning. Groups are part of the learning process. And what remains when the course has ended? A solid network already trained for the whole ongoing program, in the sense of continuity and staying connected.

As I was saying, having online lessons should be complementary to an initial, face-to-face approach. As for any type of relationship, it’s necessary to trust other students when sharing questions of clarification or when targeting collaborative assignments. Trust takes longer to build at a distance and real contact can speed it up. The i-Flex program thinks exactly in this way. An initial week is mandatory in order to aid the establishing of trust among students in a teamwork perspective. This week is also useful to get to know the faculty processes and professors with a few face-to-face lessons. Anyone who has experimented with agile work knows that teamworking at a distance is totally different from working at the same table. There is the coordination of meeting times to be considered, collaboration without physical interaction, the need for training with regard to work alignment, as well as for the many assignments in working groups. Most of us are practitioners and professionals. Combining work and study may become a tough challenge which requires finding and keeping focus and enthusiasm on your own. The true difference from a traditional course is exactly that. On one hand, it allows so much more flexibility, choosing the most suitable time in accordance with other engagements, but on the other hand it requires strong determination and self-motivation to keep assignments with other students and to maintain your overall study plan. And if that is not enough, there are many additional complementary activities like business games, new idea challenges and webinars that help us get to know each other better, share interests and also provide support for extracurricular issues, and to build stronger relationships among us: a cohesive network.

I have definitively found many new friends. Of course, if we could have been in the same city we might have met up more frequently for dinner together but we are still in touch very often, even sometimes every day, and honestly this would not have been possible alongside all the other commitments of daily life. It’s a tough task, choosing which type of master to follow, with pros and cons for each program. Personally, the international context and networking were essential to me. With the quality level of classes being comparable, moving over to a digital platform just better matched my needs for flexibility and for maintaining long distance relations with my new friends.

 

About the author
Vito Conversano

Chief Information Officer @ San Marzano Vini SpA with extensive international experience in IT & strategic consultancy for fortune 500 companies. Creative, Curious, Travel lover. Passionate about discovering new concepts, learning continuously and developing new ideas.

 

The Project Work experience, an opportunity to bring your ideas to life

An International Part-time MBA at the MIP Politecnico di Milano School of Management always ends with the discussion of a group Project Work. During this final step, students have the possibility to put into practice what they have learnt during the two years in a consultancy project in their area of interest.

For this occasion, we had the possibility to join up with three colleagues and implement a project in our own company or develop a new business idea with the support of the MIP faculty.

I joined forces with Luca Randazzo, Alessandro Artuso and Alessandro Brunitti in a heterogeneous team in terms of knowledge and competences in the fields of law, engineering, marketing and information technology. We decided to develop our own business idea, willing to venture into a sector different from the one in which we work daily and, for the first time, to be responsible for an owned business, feeling like ambitious entrepreneurs and no longer just employees.

I met my Project Work colleagues for the first time during the MBA. We got to know each other during the courses and became good friends very soon. During the two full weeks abroad at leading European business schools offered by the Part-Time MBA program, we strengthened our friendship and we discovered that we had one common passion: traveling.

We first decided to extend the second of the two weeks abroad by taking the opportunity to explore the city of Munich and then we also organized another trip together to celebrate our graduation.

On these two occasions and in the context of the lockdown caused by the Covid-19 emergency, the idea for ​​our project was born: an app that simplifies travel planning and also brings tourists and tour guides closer thanks to remote tours, live or on demand. An app that allows guides to work remotely and that offers tourists multiple content solutions according to their individual needs. In defining this idea, talking about our past travel experiences and sharing personal stories, we also got closer to each other. Furthermore, we were able to put into practice all the main lessons of the course from Financial Accounting to Strategy and Marketing (to name a few) by applying them to the various project phases and defining an accurate business plan.

In addition to the opportunity to access the PoliHub – Politecnico di Milano’s in-house start-up incubator – MIP has assigned Filippo Renga to us as our tutor, expert in Management Economics, counting multiple personal experiences in different start-ups, also in the tourism sector. Filippo has been able to give us not only technical advice on how to set up a start-up but also food for thought. He often made our sense of security falter by testing our motivation to go beyond the idea of a project, with the simple goal of graduation, but rather, to take the path that would actually bring it into being. He also made us face up to the reality of the entrepreneur’s lifestyle, when you are often alone, fighting against numerous failures by pursuing your own ideas, very distant from that of an employee, both from a practical and an emotional point of view.

And now that we have just graduated, ambitious to carry on with our project, the real test and the most complex part will come: the implementation. But we are ready to get involved, to take our responsibilities and face the risks focused on the next goal, the first public release.

 

 

About the author
Andrea De Donatis

I am Andrea De Donatis, a student of the international part-time MBA at MIP Politecnico di Milano. I Graduated in energy engineering and I am currently working in technical sales for a leading multinational electronics company based in Milan.
I am very passionate about technology, IT and digital marketing. I strongly believe that disruptive innovation is vital to create new value.

 

How to use a “digital mentor” to avoid the dunning-kruger effect

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” (Albert Einstein)

Curiosity is one of the main leverages for continuous improvement. However, it is not enough if you don’t have someone to guide you along a growth path. With this goal in mind, MIP Politecnico di Milano developed FLEXA, the online platform created with Microsoft and aiming to be a digital mentor for current MIP students and alumni, in order to create a path of professional growth that is as flexible as possible.

Thanks to the work of Artificial Intelligence, FLEXA offers:

  • A hard skills self-evaluation
  • A soft skills assessment
  • A digital skills assessment
  • The possibility to insert your career goals
  • The chance to define the daily/weekly amount of time you want to dedicate to your improvement.

The user starts by defining the areas in which he/she wants to grow. After an evaluation, the platform allows the user to identify the gaps and the content necessary to be able to fill them.

Another important component is the time that the user has available for his/her training (“time is money”, they say). The content provided and the growth plan, in fact, consider the weekly hours that can be dedicated to studying and the period within which you want to obtain results.

With only these two pieces of information, FLEXA will provide you with plenty of materials, webinars, articles, events and videos from which you can choose to boost your knowledge.

Let’s talk about the self-evaluation. Is it truly easy to do? Apparently yes, but it’s not.

It takes time to properly evaluate your own level of knowledge. If you do it in a superficial way, you risk either overestimating or underestimating yourself, falling into the Dunning-Kruger effect.

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool”, wrote Shakespeare in As You Like It. And that’s the essence of the Dunning-Kruger effect, according to which those individuals who are least capable in a particular area of knowledge are most likely to overestimate their capability.

Only with experience can you properly get to understand which is your true level of competence.

The Dunning-Kruger effect makes you understand how important it is to fully comprehend your strengths and, above all, your weaknesses. Yes, because you must work hard on these weaknesses to improve yourself and to become an all-round professional.

Aristotle, one of the most famous philosophers in history, was convinced that “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”. And the “beginning of all wisdom” can’t be that easy, can it?

Starting to do a good evaluation of yourself and your competences is the first step towards setting the best path for career growth. So, before beginning FLEXA’s skill assessment, try to focus on yourself. With a digital tutor it is even easier to be honest and admit your weaknesses.

This test will also be a good chance to focus on the main skills you’d like to improve and on the aspirations you have in the long term.

 In the Hard Skills section, you’re encouraged to reflect on yourself and the technical skills you have acquired to date. Through a self-assessment, you will be asked to define your level of knowledge of each of the complex skills that, based on the benchmarking, are generally required to operate within the functional area of ​​your choice.

The Soft and Digital skills sections are a little different and are evaluated through a bunch of multiple-choice questions.

At the end of the set of assessments you will be offered feedback, based on which you will be given a guide for the development of the level of your skills. The top critical skills to be developed for each set of skills (hard, soft and digital) will be highlighted as follows:

during the time, FLEXA will show your progress in each of the three fields of skills. From my point of view this is really helpful, and quite motivating. Having continuous feedback on how much you have improved and the great results you have achieved can be a huge incentive to keep on learning.

So, in order to stay curious, as Einstein said, why not give it a try and start your FLEXA Journey? Go to https://www.flexa.polimi.it/en/ and log in with your MIP email. For any questions or need of support, you can contact the FLEXA Support team by writing to flexasupport@mip.polimi.it.

 

About the author
Marco Di Salvio

Student of the International Part Time MBA at MIP Politecnico di Milano.
Industrial Engineer currently working @ Gucci as WW Supply & Demand Planner, based in Florence.
Tech passionate, Cinema-lover, Sports addicted.
Solving the world’s problems one spreadsheet at a time.

 

Online MBA Students Thrive in the Era of Remote Work

Digital degrees can help students collaborate with and lead teams remotely, boosting their employability

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of digital skills in the era of remote work. Online MBAs reflect this new working paradigm and prepare participants for collaborating with and leading teams remotely. “Online collaboration is a vital skill,” says Amy Foster, director of the Online MBA program at North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, which was launched in 2011. “Our students become extremely proficient at collaborating online, often working with peers across geographic boundaries and timezones,” she says. “These skills are increasingly required to conduct business around the world and are valued by employers.”

Demand for the course is high at a time of heightened economic uncertainty and an acceleration of digital working patterns and project-based work. “Part of the increased appeal is an acceptance and realization that remote work is likely to continue beyond the pandemic,” says Foster. “Virtual collaboration in the classroom mimics what is required in the workplace.” […]

Tommaso Agasisti, associate dean for internationalization, quality and services at MIP Politecnico di Milano in Italy, emphasizes the soft skills as well as hard technical abilities. “Online MBA students will become experts in dealing with intense situations, and will master skills such as empathy, resilience and knowing how to motivate and manage teams in person and remotely,” he says. “Ultimately, Online MBA students will learn a huge amount about how to develop dynamic communication skills for an ever changing world.”

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Top 10 Most Affordable Online MBA Programs

Most prospective students choose an Online MBA for the flexibility, but cost is a big factor in their choice. With lower overheads like campus teaching facilities and smaller class sizes curbing the cost of faculty, Online MBAs tend to be just a fraction of the price of their full-time counterparts on campus.

There are wide variations in the price of Online MBA programs. Some schools price them close to the cost of their full-time courses, arguing that this reflects the cost of putting on a high quality course. Prospective students will need to balance cost with quality, and that is what this list seeks to do by presenting the top 10 affordable online programs. While the below aren’t the cheapest Online MBA programs around, they are the most affordable, high-quality programs out there.

Online MBAs have risen to prominence in the coronavirus pandemic, which accelerated uptake after years of slow adoption. Covid-19 forced business schools to invest in upgrading their digital learning environments, which is good news for Online MBA students.

Milan’s MIP puts on the two-year International Flex MBA that is digitally delivered and was designed by a whole host of top companies including Microsoft and Vodafone. The course has core MBA modules in strategy, accounting and the like but its real focus is on digital transformation and features guest lectures from leaders managing digital companies like Amazon.

Click here to read the full version of the article