Jay Wong, MBA Student, US: Welcome to MBA PodTV. I’m your host, Jay Wong. We’re here at the MIT Sloan School where I’m studying in month-long immersion as part of The Lisbon MBA. Today, we’ll talk to my fellow students, deans of the program, administrators, and professors to learn more about The Lisbon MBA.

Belen de Vicente, Executive Director, The Lisbon MBA: The Lisbon MBA is a one full-time year program that starts in January and ends in December. It has four main blocks. The first block is the core courses from January to May then we have a one-month MIT immersion in June. July and August are dedicated to action learning through internships or international labs and then September to December, we have the elective courses and we end with a case competition.

Jose Ferreira Machado, Dean of Nova SBE, Lisbon: The main goal of The Lisbon MBA program is to create in Lisbon a program that can compete in the international market for talent, all together create a great experience and a great development tool for each of these individuals.

Fatima Barros, Dean of Catolica-Lisbon: We have very good students from all over the world. We have students from Asia, from Europe, from Latin America, and also from the US so it’s a quite an international program.

Belen de Vicente, Executive Director, The Lisbon MBA: The internship program runs from July to August, it’s two months the internship program and we use the internship to a lot of students to have a real experience at the service of a company. This is very important because it allows them to show their value. It gives them an opportunity to experience a different sector for career switchers. This is essential since it is very difficult to move from one sector to another without experience, the internship provides that bridge.

Steven Eppinger, MIT Sloan General Motors Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management Professor of Management Science and Engineering Systems, Co-Director, System Design and Management Program: This is a more collaborative learning experience. They’ll be appreciating each other’s perspectives. Each of the students needs to listen to the others, build on the others, agree or disagree but somehow come to a point, you know, an opinion that they can emphatically believe and express and that’s something that business professionals need to do, right. They need to form their opinion and be able to contribute to it in a way that it will, you know, bring us forward, bring the business forward, or bring a decision forward.

Tânia Roquette, Marketing and Admissions Director The Lisbon MBA: The program structure is very unique. You have a lot of different experiences throughout the year including the MIT immersion, the labs, which make it very dynamic and a great experience, but really you will learn a lot from your peers and from your learning experience with them.

Richard Locke, MIT Sloan Professor of Political Science and Management and Head, Department of Political Science: In today’s world, successful managers, successful leaders really have to basically balance two sets of skills. One set of skills are the basic management functional skills and that’s what most good MBA programs teach. But in addition to that, one set of kind of functional skills we believe or I believe that successful leaders, MBAs, managers actually have to have a second set of skills. So what we try to do is through a series of case studies and discussions, try to get the students to basically practice how do they hold together both sets of skills, how might those sort of more functional skills have to be adapted to different national environments.

Jay Wong, MBA Student, US: We’re here at MIT Sloan School for our month-long immersion program where we’ll study with MIT faculty for three weeks with three different courses, each has several professors that give very dynamic modules, and then we have a business case in the last week, which is a new addition to the program.

David Pereira, MBA Student, Columbia, Portugal, US: I kind of wanted to step back, take a look at what I had done. Aggregate some of the ideas that I had no time to think about while we’re working and bounce those ideas off likeminded individuals who I thought maybe would have a more global perspective and maybe could add some more value to what I was thinking of doing and could help me actually implement those ideas.

Jay Wong, MBA Student, US: I think the high points for me here at MIT have been in the classroom, in the discussions that have come about that the class really comes alive and the diversity of international experience. You get a lot of different opinions in the air and the professors have been really fantastic to kind of guide those in very interesting directions.

Oliver Sergeant, MBA Student, Belgium: I actually think that being able to reflect together with the professors on a new idea, on an idea that still need to be concretized and formalized creates a lot of value for the project. Being able to discuss these with students, filter this business idea through the classes, I think that creates different points of view and it can only make the project better. I actually want to go to Brazil and start a company there. I thought even though my university in Belgium is a good university and my diplomas are valuable, I would think for Brazil, if you look at their managers, most of them have MBAs or at least they really value it. So I think going to a foreign country if you want to be able to talk to banks and other investors I think it’s more interesting if you have an MBA than an undergraduate.

Teresa Cruz, MBA student, Portugal: MBA is a really good experience because we have different backgrounds sharing different experiences. I thought that it will be a good experience for me to think about my future. I chose the program, The Lisbon MBA, because it is in Portugal, I wanted to build my network in Portugal then because it’s a mixture of three really great schools, two top schools in Portugal Nova and Catolica and then the MIT, which is a brilliant and thrilling experience for everyone in the world.

Oliver Sergeant, MBA Student, Belgium: If you do like an MBA program you get re-thrown in a pool of different backgrounds and different interests because you’re confronted with students from different countries, new professors like you did in the undergraduate. But now you have working experience and maybe you have also an idea or a plan that you really want to investigate into. So that really gives you a chance to look at it more profoundly and work in it in a constructive manner.

Daena Giardella, MIT Sloan Lecturer: The other thing that is extraordinary about The Lisbon MBA program, it has to be said, is the environment. The campus, it’s located in this absolutely inspiring environment where you’re surrounded by nature in the middle of the city and yet you feel like you’re away from the city. I was just blown away when I walked around the campus. So I think anybody coming to the program would have a wonderful surprise when they realize that you have the city right there, but when you walk into the campus it’s like walking into another world, walking into a world where creativity and nature and beauty are all around you.

David Pereira, MBA Student, Columbia, Portugal, US: What really attracted me to The Lisbon MBA was the people first of all. When I went there, I didn’t know very much about the program and everybody was extremely open.

Carolina Coimbra, MBA Student, Portugal: The Lisbon MBA really tried to develop not only our hard skills but also our soft skills that today are really important in our professional lives. So the Friday Forums, in the beginning I was a bit skeptical about it, what would it be, but now I can say it’s really, really a great experience.

Fatima Barros, Dean of Catolica-Lisbon: I think that the main feature of the program is the Friday Forum Program because students have a very important experience outside the classroom.

Tânia Roquette, Marketing and Admissions Director The Lisbon MBA: That’s why Monday to Thursday across the whole year except when they’re abroad, the students have the normal classes, but Fridays are always dedicated to the Friday Forums, which are exercises that put the students out of their comfort zone to develop specific skills. So they spend a day in an advertising agency creating an ad, they have to sing, they have to do a Shakespeare play. So there are several different activities or workshops in topics that we think are important.

David Pereira, MBA Student, Columbia, Portugal, US: Another factor was the fact that I wouldn’t just be taught by professors here in the United States or professors that were attracted from the world to the United States. I would actually be going to Europe, a country that I had very little experience in and I wanted to learn more and reach out there. I also thought that it would provide a perspective, European and global, that only Portugal could give.

Tânia Roquette, Marketing and Admissions Director The Lisbon MBA: We are looking for people that want to make a difference with a leadership potential that are really good in terms of teamwork. Our program not only because of the history of the program but because of the holistic approach that we have during classes, it really fosters collaboration and teamwork. The one thing that I’m most proud of being admissions director are our students. I think what makes our program unique is the people that are in the program, the talent that we have inside the classroom.

David Pereira, MBA Student, Columbia, Portugal, US: The best advice I would give anybody who was thinking about participating in The Lisbon MBA or applying would realistically be to look in the mirror and say, are you ready for probably one of the more challenging things that you’ve done in your life up to this point. You might be a parent, you might have traveled around the world, you might have worked in the top companies in the United States or in the world, but really none of that will prepare you for all the challenges that you will face when you join this program. I can definitely say that it has been a wonderful experience.

Class of 2011 Profile:

Gender Balance

34% Female

66% Male

Average Professional Experience

5.5 years

Average Age

30 years

Nationality

31% International
69% Portuguese