I am part of an informal group formed to discuss technology topics. Slowly the group has got its critical mass and evolved into a casual entrepreneurial opportunities discussion forum. We meet once a week during weekdays at lunch and a lengthy session during Saturdays. These groups are great not just because of the topics discussed but for understanding the other side of the class mates. Many silent spectators in class pitch in a lot in these forums.
I can not give too much detail in to what has been discussed. In addition to our ideas discussion, we help each other in business plan, preparing for competitions and now applying together for internships. It is a very good group and I enjoy being part of it.
This raises a question for business schools consider - how to increase the effectiveness of clubs and bring in such casual conversations into the main forum. There are many schools that publish a list of clubs, their website which have not been updated for ages. For example a club I am very much interested in is yet to organize a noteworthy event this academic year. My recommendation would be to encourage a period get together in clubs to facilitate a few focussed groups. If a club i s not active for a few months, stop the funding and eventual dissolution.
After graduation..
15 years ago
1 comment:
Came across this post while doing research for, Convos, an internet startup that I co-founded.
We've always found it amazing how a simple discussion can grow into a larger collection of people, spawn smaller groups off of it, or join up with other like-minded groups to share information.
The problem is that most tools we used provided too much structure and dictated how a group should function. That can pretty much kill that open forum that make informal groups so powerful. And, there has to be an easy way to scale it up.
There was a great study about this out of the McKinsey quarterly.
We recently released an initial version of our tool and it's been really good to see how groups use it and what really matters. If you want to check it out, stop by and I can get you into our Beta.
Matt, Convos
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