During the first few days on campus, Chetan Bhargava was amazed by the ecosystem that MIT had built in Cambridge, Boston. There was a great intersection of technology, ideas, VC funding, all helping in promoting cutting edge technology and inventions, and also creating new enterprises for the economy.
Bhargava is doing the MIT Sloan fellows programme, a mid-level master’s degree in general management and leadership. It is targeted at experienced managers who have demonstrated a significant degree of career success (either within organisations or as entrepreneurs).
“No other experience in the executive education realm allows you to step back for a full year to rethink, retool, and reinvigorate your career and your life,” he says.
What matters the most to Bhargava is the exposure he has to world class faculty. “Prof. Andrew Lo (a leading authority on financial engineering and hedge funds) taught us financial management. Also this fall semester we have Prof. Simon Johnson teaching us marco economics – and he is the ex. chief economist at IMF,” says Bhargava.
Before he joined up, Bhargava, who did international marketing from the Delhi School of Economics and a post graduate programme in management from IMI Delhi, had to participate in a 360 degrees leadership assessment programme with a dozen of his handpicked peers, managers, subordinates and clients. He then had to review the results of this assessment during the summer term before beginning intensive leadership studies.
The orientation week helped him get to know his learning community - and to get oriented to MIT and the Cambridge-Boston area. Leadership and professional development components in the summer term are designed to kick-start a year of deep exploration and reflection across all aspects of programme experience, he adds.