Another brick in this wall?
“We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey, teachers, leave them kids alone
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall”
Floyd has always appealed to the contrarian in me. And to see myself click a ‘cliche’ in front of the ‘Insead wall’ would have made my 20 year old self cringe. But, here we are :)
My Insead experience started a little earlier than this year. In the buildup to Insead, as I was ‘exploring’ what my calling was; I realized that inherently I loved to critique anything and everything around me. Whether it was a film, a mobile app or even a basketball play. I’ve always had a thought or two on how something could be made better.
When I chanced upon the Product games, a product management competition for B-schools, it felt like the problem statement spoke to me. How many of us have been frustrated by Alexa not responding to our requests. Building a voice based product felt like my true calling!
But, there were two major hurdles.
Hurdle 1: Team- There were 70 participating teams from some of the best business schools in the world in the previous edition. People who knew who their classmates were, who were active in various clubs and students who’ve sat in classrooms on building products from some of the best professors out there. And here I was, a month away from school, with only virtual access to my future classmates.
So, going through my future class register, I decided to take a leap of faith and approach 3 of them to be a part of it. And, to my surprise all 3 readily agreed.
Hurdle 2: Time- Being the diverse class that Insead is, 4 of us were based out of different time zones: Spain (GMT+1), Middle East (GMT+3), India (GMT+5:30) China (GMT+8). I wondered discreetly, how could we work on building a product with people whose backgrounds we barely knew and working styles we had no clue of.
It took a week to get all of us on-board and by the time we e-met for the first time, we had less than 2 weeks to the final submission. Wasting no time, we bounced ideas back and forth, until we hit the perfect use case. Why not Digital nannies for Babies?
As each of us dwelled into our years growing up, we realized how nannies played such an important part of our formative years, immaterial of the cultures we came from.
After consulting with young parents in our networks, about the issues they faced with raising kids in the digital world, we were able to design Yo Nanny!
The challenge also required us to think through our value proposition, go to market strategy among other things. Working remote, each of us took the lead in conceiving various aspects of the business and within the nick of time we made our submission.
Yesterday, we were informed that we were among the Top 4. As we compete with teams from Wharton, LBS and Berkeley-Haas for the final prize next month, I realize how we are so much better equipped than before. As a team, we finally get to work in person (3 out of the 4 start in Fontainebleau) and the bigger advantage of dipping into Insead’s diversity pool.
In the 2 weeks of my time here, I’ve met scientists, doctors, army vets, artists, lawyers, journalists, engineers among others from a pool of over 90 countries on campus, always willing to help. Each of us so different, yet similar.
And finally, as I ask myself, am I just another brick in this wall? I realize this wall’s a little different. None of the bricks here are of the same mould. Sorry Floyd, All in all I’d love to be another brick in this wall!
-Team Tic Tac Toe (Prakash, Sue, Arjun, Esther) Insead 19D
