Truly International: an MBA at SDA Bocconi

TopMBA.com talks to a former MBA student at SDA Bocconi about how international the course and students were and how this has helped his career. 

I originally wanted to take an MBA for three main reasons - to increase my network of business contacts around the world, to learn a new language and to refine my business knowledge in a systematic way. This meant that I looked for a general MBA in Continental Europe that would give me a broad overview, with a high proportion of project work. It had to be taught in English but at the same time force me to learn the local language. SDA Bocconi fulfilled all these criteria and also meant that I would be living in Milan - the financial capital of Italy - which could be valuable given my investment banking background. It is the graduate school of a top economics university, so the faculty members are true academics who also have outside careers, and it has many excellent visiting lecturers from around the world. For example, about 50% of our professors were non-Italian. The fact that Milan is 30 minutes from the Italian Lakes, 90 minutes from the Ligurian coast and has two world-class football teams was no deterrent!

Truly international

The MBA students in my year literally came from all over the globe. We were divided up into groups right from the beginning, and the course had a high proportion of group work; I suspect this was an ingenious device to see how individuals coped with cultural and personality differences while having to work hard to tight deadlines. My career in international banking meant I had experience of the tensions generated in groups and perhaps dealt with them better than some of my colleagues. Nevertheless, it was fascinating to see everybody gradually relax and realise that by being friendly and co-operative they could achieve more.

Choice of electives

Classes had about 65 students, and the first part of the course consisted of core subjects such as accounting. Then came the opportunity to choose from a wide range of electives, including organizational behaviour and marketing. As I was considering moving to a multinational corporation, my own choices focused on business strategy. One unusual option was entrepreneurship - I took that one as well because I had thought of setting up my own business.

Out in the field

One of the most appealing aspects of the MBA at SDA Bocconi was the opportunity to choose a three-month field project halfway through the course. In my case this meant secondment to the Dutch airline KLM in Amsterdam, to conduct a strategic review involving its cargo division. For me, meeting a client and actually applying business theory was very satisfying - so much better than sitting in a classroom.

For our KLM project, four of us reviewed its live animal transport operation, which extended from racehorses and chickens to fish. After visiting their clients and competitors we had to recommend markets from which they should withdraw and others on which they should focus. Our results took the form of a seven-hour presentation - and the airline seemed very happy with the outcome.

More efficient

The career guidance provided by Bocconi is very good, and I took the opportunity to have interviews with potential employers in the automobile, telecoms and consultancy sectors. After much consideration I decided that my future lay in finance, and came back to the bank which had sponsored my MBA. Since then I have won two substantial chunks of business purely as a result of networking at Bocconi.

However, the overwhelming benefit has been that I am now able to function much more efficiently by adopting a systematic approach. The MBA has filled gaps in my knowledge and provided me with a valuable set of tools - eg, for analysis - that I simply did not possess before.