Dear all,

I plan to use this section of the newsletter to keep you updated on our initiatives here at the INSEAD Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise Department and the Rudolf and Valeria Maag International Centre for Entrepreneurship (ICE).  Specifically, I will focus on those activities that could benefit you in your entrepreneurial pursuits. 

Chad Myers

Executive Director, Rudolf and Valeria Maag International Centre for Entrepreneurship

Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship

MBA'04J

chad.myers@insead.edu 

Web Initiatives

VentureNet

We are working on a revamp of the INSEAD VentureNet, our alumni entrepreneurship support platform, which should go live by summer of 2008.  The purpose of this platform is to provide better entrepreneurial advice and counsel to our students and alumni by shifting their requests of faculty to our experienced alumni entrepreneurs. 

The platform will cover four major areas:

• Matchmaking - classifieds for topics such as venture seeks funding, talent seeks venture, etc.
• Questions/Answers - forum discussing entrepreneurial topics
• Information Center - repository of information such as sample term sheets, NDAs, shareholder agreements, etc.
• Mentoring - ambitious initiative to provide mentorship for our alumni, who are starting/growing their businesses
  
  

We believe that if we can create a self-supporting online community of alumni entrepreneurs helping each other, we will have an invaluable resource that no other business school currently has.  We aim to create a community to which you can reliably turn for excellent advice on and help with your ventures. 

Entrepreneurship Project ClearingHouse

We have launched the INSEAD Entrepreneurship Project ClearingHouse.  This platform allows us to match students with companies to do real-world entrepreneurial projects. 

It works like this, an entrepreneur (i.e. you) posts a project on the site, and if the project catches the eye of a student, he/she then applies to do that project either for academic credit or not.  You select the student to do the project, and then the student does the project for you.  As you can see, it is designed to help you find talented help for your entrepreneurial needs. 

(One disclaimer:  the platform is currently in a rough Beta version, so if you plan to use it to solicit help on your ventures, please be patient with it and us as we work out the bugs.)

INSEAD Entrepreneurship Club Speaker Series /Singapore Campus

On the Singapore Campus the INSEAD Entrepreneurship Club has started a speaker series led by our own Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Cliff Go.  This evening series takes place four times per period and brings high-profile speakers to campus to guide our students and alumni on entrepreneurship.  The purpose here is to fill the gap of what is learned at INSEAD and what is actually needed to be an entrepreneur. 

If you would like to be added to the distribution list for this series, please email anya.navidski@insead.edu. 

India

We are in the process of hiring a director of the International Centre for Entrepreneurship India Office.  This person will be in charge of our entrepreneurship research, events, and general outreach in India.  We have some excellent candidates, and we plan to hire one of them very soon. 

In going to India, it is our plan to become a contributing, valuable member of the entrepreneurial ecosystem there.  From our conversations with venture capitalists, business angels, and entrepreneurs, we are seeing that there are two major gaps in this ecosystem that INSEAD and ICE could potential fill:

• Indian entrepreneurs lack an understanding of how to raise funds (seed, VC, and PE)
• Seed capital is practically non-existent in India
  

Once our director is hired, we will work with him/her to see how ICE can best position itself to accomplish our objectives, while at the same time playing a meaningful role in the development of the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem.  By doing this, we should be in a better position to help our alumni to establish and grow their ventures in India.  Therefore, if we may be of help to you in this market, please let us know. 

China

TAN Yinglan was our contact in China up until a few months ago, when he had to go back to the Singapore Government.  Now, we have an INSEAD alumnus, who has taken over as ICE's China Director based out of Shanghai.  His name is Bolei Zhan, also know as CHENG Pek Lui. 

Bolei oversees all ICE's activities in China and will be writing the newsletter column, From the China Desk.  Bolei has hit the ground running and is already making some excellent contacts and progress for INSEAD.  Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Bolei.

Just as mentioned above for India, our efforts in China should better position ICE to help our alumni interested in setting up or growing their businesses in this country.  Therefore, if we can help you with this, please contact us.  

Other news of note

• The INSEAD Entrepreneur-in-Residence program is a strong program that is constantly improving.  We now have 13 Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, who regularly come on both campuses to mentor students/alumni on their entrepreneurial interests.
• We are making improvements to the INSEAD Business Venture Competition.  The 14th competition took place on 21 June 2007 in Fontainebleau.  The quality of the plans presented in this competition is continuously improving, and the judges overseeing the competition are highly experienced venture investors.  The next competition takes place on the Singapore campus on 6 December 2007.
• The first Entrepreneurship Boot Camp, led by Cliff Go, took place in Indonesia on 1-3 June 2007. This weekend trip allows entrepreneurially-minded students to get to know one another in a non-distracting environment.  It involves workshops and speakers covering entrepreneurial topics, and the speakers in June included Cliff Go, Ilham Habibie, Emmo Italiaander, and Edwin Soeryadjaya.

INSEAD Business Venture Competition Winner “RentMineOnline?and INSEAD Alumni team “Kublax?Won at Europe's Seedcamp 2007

The winners of Seedcamp, the new incubator-style event for European startups, were announced on 7 September 2007. Two out of six selected startups are owned by INSEAD Alumni.

Seedcamp is a week long event in London, 3-7 September 2007 for twenty young entrepreneurs to showcase their early-stage strategies and product concepts. The idea is similar to the early-stage startup programs TechStars and Y Combinator.

In their decision the 36 judges (made up of business professionals, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists ?including nine of Europe's top VCs) decided to fund six of the companies out of the 20 semi-finalists. Seedcamp will invest €50K for a 10% stake in each of final six teams and provide ongoing mentorship and support for three months in preparation for the companies?formal rounds of financing. In all, 240 applications were received from 40 countries.
                                                     
RentMineOnline.com the 2nd- place winner of INSEAD Business Venture Competition, is a website connecting owners and renters, through an online marketplace providing goods for the renter and capital for the owner. The idea resembles eBay but instead of purchasing, the model is based on renting. The site establishes trust among owners and renters by tying in with Facebook.

The alpha site is focused on enabling the INSEAD community to make better use of idle assets. The model depends on having its "supply side" filled, so please support INSEAD entrepreneurship by posting your idle assets for rent online at http://www.rentmineonline.com/. For further information and to join the company's newsletter please email Ed Spiegel (MBA'07J) at Ed.Spiegel@alumni.insead.edu.

Kublax (site under development, but they have a working application) syncs with all your bank accounts, utilities, even loyalty schemes like Air Miles, and presents all the information in a user friendly format so that you can track your incoming and outgoing cashflow and start to really analyze your personal finances. All the key information (log-ins etc) stays on the desktop in hyper-encrypted files. It also creates a social network around your personal finances where key information is not revealed but the “crowd?can source intelligence on investments, savings accounts, mortgages, you name it.

This quarter, the family business team at INSEAD shares its insights on Next Generation. Developing capable leaders and owners is one of the most challenging tasks for a family business, and next generation members have their own dilemmas.

Next Generation and Family Business

The MBA optional course on Family Business has been in existence at INSEAD for 10 years and is quite popular. It gives our Faculty a unique platform to understand next generation dilemmas. Generational transition is also a core motivation for many families to come to our four day programme “Family Enterprise Challenge Programme?

Four key management skills for the new millennia
Professor Randel S. Carlock, Berghmans Lhoist Chaired Professor in Entrepreneurial Leadership and Director, Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise, has identified four key management skill sets:

Entrepreneurial skills
Identify and share your business vision
Communicate your vision and goals
Develop new products, services, relationships, organisations, and channels

Executive skills
Manage complex relationships between the organisation and its network of stakeholders
Install control and information systems
Continuously plan, solve problems, and make decision in real time

Strategy skills
Craft strategic plans
Secure and allocate resources
Assess results and reward performance
Strengthen governance and ensure accountability

Leadership skills
Align and empower people around their shared values and vision
Rigorously manage intellectual and human capital
Encourage a culture of risk taking, innovation and social responsibility
Develop people throughout the organisation
What are the critical factors for developing next generation talent? What is the New blueprint for managing a global business? Professor Randel S. Carlock shares his insights.

To read more? http://www.insead.edu/wicfe/documents/MillionaireAsia_AsianFamilyBiz-Jan07.pdf
& http://www.insead.edu/wicfe/documents/MillionaireAsia_ABNAMRO-Jan07_000.pdf

The Parent as Coach
Parents change their role as their children grow up : Professor Randel S. Carlock speaks about the importance of parent-child relationship. To listen to podcast: http://www.insead.edu/podcast/knowledgecast/library.htm#podcast6

Succession issues and Dilemmas of next generation members
Succession is a core and difficult issue in most family firms. Communication and Fair Process are key tools to facilitate the process. Several cases and research were developed using real-life dilemmas of participants at our programmes:

Niraj- Successor's Dilemma in an Indian Family Firm
This case written by Ludo Van Der Heyden, the first Wendel Chair holder for the large family firms and the Solvay Chaired Professor of Technological Innovation, and Christine Blondel, Executive Director of the Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise, describes the dilemma faced by a young MBA participant, Niraj, regarding the decision to join his family's business in India. The case also features the issues faced by his cousin who joined the business.

Find this case via INSEAD Knowledge-  http://knowledge.insead.edu/abstract.cfm?ct=12276

Love and Work: The Challenges of Family Business
Randel Carlock discusses how family businesses meet the challenges of mixing strong family emotions with management decisions and why successful family firms often outperform non-family firms.

To listen to podcast n°15 - http://www.insead.edu/podcast/knowledgecast/index.htm

Roger Levy and Ilapak
Members of the Levy family participated in “The Family Enterprise Challenge? program at INSEAD.
The case focuses on the exceptional growth of a family enterprise and the impact the business had on the family structure in the context of the classis succession dilemma facing many founding entrepreneurs: how to train or pass on a business to a son or daughter when you have never had that experience yourself
Find this case via INSEAD Knowledge - http://knowledge.insead.edu/abstract.cfm?ct=16803

The resort in Pueblo Valley
This case written by Christine Blondel explores some of the areas which can create stressful conflicts and shows how to avoid the taboos of transmission to the next generation.
Find this case via INSEAD Knowledge - http://knowledge.insead.edu/abstract.cfm?ct=13975

Women from shadow to light
For centuries, women have played vital but invisible roles in family enterprises. Both the roles and their visibility are growing fast and they should not be forgotten in discussions and succession.

Read more?http://www.insead.edu/discover_INSEAD/publications/documents/IQ10.pdf

And you?
Come with your family to “The Family Enterprise Challenge?to foster communication around the family business, including the role and preparation of the next generation. Next sessions take place in October 2007 in Fontainebleau and February 2008 in Singapore. Website: http://www.insead.edu/WICFE/executive_prog.htm

Stay informed, and update your details on our website : http://www.insead.edu/WICFE/

INSEAD activities in the field of family business were initiated thanks to the Wendel family, and further developed with support from other family businesses and individuals, in particular the Tetra Laval Research Fund for the Large Family Firm, the Berghmans/Lhoist Chair in Entrepreneurial Leadership, and the Andr?and Rosalie Hoffmann Chair and Research Fund in Family Enterprise. They are gratefully acknowledged

Any question? Contact us:                            
Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise
Tel: 33 (0)1 60 72 92 50      family-firms.fb@insead.edu

INSEAD Global Leadership Centre (IGLC) goes even more global! In answer to client demand, our on-line feedback instrument, the GELI (Global Executive Leadership Inventory) is now available in Russian. Our first Russian client, TNK BP, and their program with INSEAD entitled “Creating a World-Class Company Program? is presently using this Russian version of the online feedback instrument. IGLC plans to translate the GELI into more languages to satisfy client demands (Japanese is next).

The Tsinghua - INSEAD dual degree executive MBA (TIEMBA) 2007-2008 in China experienced the IGLC's 360 feedback instrument with leadership coaching as part of their leadership development exercise during Module 3 in Beijing led by a combination of coaches from Singapore and Europe. The follow-up of this leadership development element will take place in Fontainebleau on May 6 & 7, 2008.

Professors Manfred Kets de Vries (IGLC) and Randel Carlock (WICFE) will make a joint presentation at the Family Business Network (FBN) 18th Summit in Berlin this month. Their presentation is entitled "The psychology of Modern Business Families: becoming a more
emotionally intelligent family"

http://www.fbn-i.org/summit

For more details on any of the above, and to learn more about the IGLC activities, please visit our website http://www.insead.edu/iglc

PUBLICATIONS

Family Business on the Couch: A Psychological Perspective
By Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries and Randel Carlock with Elizabeth Florent-Treacy, Publication forthcoming with Wiley this month (see attached flyer).

The book has already been positively reviewed in Saturday 15th September's edition of the Guardian. http://money.guardian.co.uk/

Coach and Couch: The Psychology of Making Better Leaders
Edited by Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, Konstantin Korotov & Elizabeth Florent-Treacy (2007), Published by Palgrave Macmillan

The book has proved so popular that it has already gone into a second print.

This book is an edited volume of essays written by IGLC-INSEAD professors, Alumni and leadership coaches, on diverse leadership issues. The authors draw on their extensive research and implementation of leadership development processes in business schools and companies. The book presents the essential leadership models and approaches used at IGLC. It contributes to a better understanding of how people become extraordinary leaders, and equips practitioners with techniques for developing executive coaches and working with business leaders.

• In July 2007 a shortened and adapted version of Manfred's article "Decoding the team Conundrum: The Eight Roles Executives Play" (Verborgene Muster) was translated into German and published in WirtschaftsWoche #29. The article was published in Organizational Dynamics last year. 
• In the June issue "Svoy Biznes" (My Business) magazine a Russian interview with Manfred touched on several aspects of his work in the leadership field. The article is entitled "The Great Inquisitor has a circulation of 52000 and is sold throughout Russia.

• In August 2007 “Organizational Dynamics?published Professor Manfred Kets de Vries' article "Money, Money, Money".

The objective of this article is to explore the role money plays in our lives, for example Manfred touches on its symbolic role, especially as it relates to developmental forces such as rivalry, competitiveness, envy, greed, and love. Manfred contends that the mindless pursuit of money contributes to a “mortgaged life? In this context the relationships between money and health, and money and happiness are explored. Finally, ways of managing the money conundrum are discussed along with what can be done about managing our needs and, if wealth has been acquired, what is the most appropriate way to deal with it?

“A Made-in-INSEAD Entrepreneurship Tale"

by Yann Lechelle, ylechelle@gmail.com (INSEAD MBA'01J)

Paris - September 13th 2007

I clearly remember the day when the “you made it!? admissions letter from INSEAD reached my doorsteps in the New York winter of 1999. Despite the obvious euphoria, I was ambiguous about the next steps.

Would I confirm my place having neither visited the Fontainebleau campus nor really considered post-MBA career paths, or would I simply forgo this option and prefer alternative career or educational options in the Big Apple, thereby simplifying a number of logistics and local career opportunities? It seemed that my wife-to-be and I needed to get answers - but felt that I could only help myself.

This is how the NetVestibule prototype was born, around March 2000, cobbled-up together during my spare time left in a state of post-GMAT vacuum. Within a few months of receiving the letter, I had developed an online platform dedicated to my fellow admitted classmates, to discuss logistics, but most importantly to validate a choice that would surely remain a corner stone in my own life, and possibly the life of all current and future admits going through the same process. This platform has been an instant success, and remains to this day. Unknowingly, this was also the birth of a true Made-in-INSEAD entrepreneurship tale.

The rest of the story is in bullet points, appropriately:

• In June 2001, our “New Ventures?elective team won the Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Innovation Award at the European Business Plan Competition in 2001 on behalf of INSEAD for our "NetVestibule" business plan.
• Upon graduating in July 2001, and having not interviewed once, I decided to incorporate ETHERYL S.A.S., leveraging the working prototype and the general idea behind the business plan: a B2B offering catering to admissions department, helping them improve their admissions processes and yields using pioneering social networking techniques. INSEAD did become my first commercial customer (not without harsh negotiations!), gradually relying on our services to manage candidates, pre-students, students and alumni.
• In 2005, I was invited back on campus to regularly participate in the "New Business Ventures" electives @ INSEAD to illustrate the case of a Lifestyle Venture.
• In 2006, Filipe Santos, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD undertook to write and publish a case study called ETHERYL S.A.S. (A) Growth Paths for a Lifestyle Venture. Acting as a broadcasted“pitch book? this case study led me to meet two eager INSEAD students of the "Realizing Entrepreneurial Potential" elective around June 2006.
• In June 2007, these two freshly graduated INSEAD MBAs along with a member of Faculty eventually acquired an 85% stake in the business, helping us recruit yet another INSEAD MBA graduate in the process.

My story goes full circle, entrepreneurship-wise, from inception to exit. However its deep INSEAD roots and recent developments show how fruitful my initial choice to attend has been. But it is not over yet as the rest of the story remains to be written. Our new challenge as an expanded INSEAD team (4 MBAs +1 Faculty) is to grow ETHERYL to its logical next step. Our biggest challenge remains to convince our most cherished customer-- INSEAD (the entire institution) to adopt the cutting edge thinking around the possibilities of community management as embodied in ETHERYL's approach.

[BUSINESS PLUG] Our growing list of customers now also includes: HEC, Oxford, Manchester Business School, Trinity College Dublin, UCD Smurfit School of Business, Edinburgh Business School, University of Exeter, Manpower, Alstom, the CPI Group, the Global Enterprise Architecture Organization, Boostzone Institute, European Professional Women's Network, American University Clubs of France, Procter & Gamble Alumni of France?

For more information on how we could be helpful to you or your organization, please visit http://www.etheryl.com. Also, feel free to come and visit us; our offices are located in the heart of Paris (Montparnasse).

INSEAD Entrepreneurship Project ClearingHouse,
this platform allows us to match students with companies to do real-world entrepreneurial projects. 

INSEAD Entrepreneur-in-Residence,
this program includes 13 EiRs, who come on campus regularly to mentor students/alumni on their entrepreneurial interests.

INSEAD Entrepreneurship Club,
a speaker series started on the Singapore Campus that is bringing high-profile speakers to guide our students and alumni on entrepreneurship.