masters students standing by an ideas board

Creative Thinking - Individual Development

Writing a book

Each year we teach creativity techniques to the MSc in Strategic and Organisational Consultancy students at EDHEC, the Grande Ecole in Lille, France and each year we dream up a new project for them.

In 2011 we asked them to write a book (in less than four days, whilst learning creativity techniques along the way).

We only had five half days with them, in an elapsed time of four days. These students are really some of the brightest in Europe so we (well Steve!) decided that we could serve them best by really challenging them.

We set the whole thing up as a consultancy project, working in teams, across business themes, with a single deadline and weaving in not only the creativity and innovation content - but consultancy skills too. Then when they have interviews or get jobs in the major consulting firms (which they do, and in fact did, as we were there!) they will at least have had one experience!

The output was awesome, and is best left to speak for itself.

link to download the students Tipping Point Leadership PDF

Here are extracts from the book which show their Strategic Development techniques.
(PDF file opens in a new window, 2Mb download).

They say...

I want to thank you and thank Steve because you contributed to my success in securing the job with Capgemini. Not only because you gave me some clues about Capgemini and consulting during this course but also because I was in a good frame of mind after this awesome week with you. So, sincerely thank to both of you.
I really believe that all went well thank to all the class and I would like to thank both of you for your energy, your pedagogical skills and all you taught us. It is not so frequent that some teachers are able to capture the attention and the motivation of all the class. So actually, you played a major role in the success of the week.

Kiran POTA

All the tools you gave us was very great also because we realise after these two weeks that it is very good to have concrete tools that we manage to use during a bad or tricky situation, and your way of doing class is great: to allow us to explain the tools and allow us to learn it faster I really enjoyed the way your lessons were built, meaning a small introduction and then practice, which was the best way for us to learn everything, without even noticing that we were learning tons of interesting things!
My overall impression on this Creativity Lesson is a very good one, and in my opinion, this lesson was the most interesting we've had during the first semester. I had a really good time working with you and would like to thank you for that.

Arthur SYLVESTRE

I think it could be very interesting to learn how to mobilise people like you did with us - basic things and speaker things.

Clément BOURDIS

Allow me of behalf of team focus and the class to thank both of you for the wonderful workshop. It was a fun and a great learning experience. So thank you.

Sanjay RAM