* Apologies for cross-postings *
Dear colleagues,
The following might sound interesting to some - I would gladly like to hear
your comments or ideas. Perhaps some of you already know good examples to
follow.
Our faculty is about to launch with Estonian National Television a weekly
TV game on solving management case studies. Our idea is to bring executive
education out of the classroom in an attractive manner.
In each game two teams of 3 middle managers compete in a reality-TV like
setting. In every show the selected teams go to a different company to
address a managerial problem to demonstrate their skills of applying
managerial tools and techniques. The panel of judges consists of: the
executive of the case organisation, a management professor and a management
consultant. Jury decides which team was better to allow them progress to
the next game. The winning team will face a new team of middle managers in
the next show. The team that lost will be eliminated. Winning team will be
ultimately selected in the final challenge among the two teams who won the
most challenges during preceding 15 weeks.
TV Format of Case Studies? I have authored number of management case
studies for the classroom use, but this experience is new. The TV format is
different for two main reasons:
1. They must be short and precise - the case study should be presented
within 1-2 minutes.
2. Their solving should require more than mere sitting-around-the
table and discussing (the usual MBA setting is more appropriate for a radio
show). The competing teams need to move around in the company, talk with
people and observe their work before they come to their solutions - it must
be appealing on the TV screen.
The format needs to be attractive to wider TV audience, but it should avoid
being "yellow" like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apprentice . Our
intention is to popularise management education - to make managers in the
entire country think more about applying better tools and techniques and
educating themselves further. For this reason the 16 shows should start
with simpler case studies and gradually progress towards more complex
challenges to serve the educational function well.
We are very excited about this - we have recorded the pilot show already,
which has been approved. During the summer we will start the production to
hit the screens in September.
What do you think of this idea - what is good, what could be improved? Can
I ask you to brainstorm - which cases would you recommend?
Marko Rillo
-----
Chair of Organisation and Management
Tallinn University of Technology
E-mail:
marko(a)rillo.ee
Phone:
+3725040260 (Estonia)
Homepage:
www.rillo.ee