Business School Businesses

When it comes to one of the most prestigious public services, the railways often comes high on the list. It is also one that creates resentment in the user community (cost, poor service, delays...) which is particularly evident in the face of increased fuel costs and government gobbledygook about the need to become more green.

Additionally, following my London Underground experiences (mainly 1998-2002, 2006-2007), I often found myself contemplating a model to enhance the various functional and stakeholder requirements. For example, building additional track with a backup locomotive might ease problems when a train breaks down. The options should be quite feasible to model, taking into account resource deployment and costs.

So it was with considerable joy that I learned about a logistics project at RSM Erasmus University in Rotterdam, supervised by Professor Leo Kroon, a specialist in Quantitative Logistics. The project sought to offer an enhanced scheduling rota for the Dutch railways!

The results? Passenger demand up 15% on some lines. Passenger satisfaction up. More trains arrive on time. Netherlands Railways profits rose by €40m ($61.8m, £31.6m) in the first year of the timetable, with more profit growth expected down the line.

Read the article on ft.com

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Talking of smart business school activities. I pleaded with Tanaka Business School (Imperial College, London) to establish a consulting arm of their MBA activities, with idea of creating a pipeline of projects on which students could contribute but also one which they could, in turn, use to obtain (cheaper) consulting when alumni establish their own businesses.

One particular idea was quite different. To create a company that the students would run, not just to learn the theory in the MBA classes - but to apply it and act as custodians of a real operating business. This might be a fund management, or even a niche management consulting group. At Imperial College there already exists an external company for knowledge transfer for start-up companies and licensing (Imperial Innovations), and there is a project management/resource hiring company too (Imperial Consultants); so a distinction would be needed between this MBA-student activity and that which already exists.

...so again, it was not a surprise to read that the School of Finance and Management in Frankfurt, Germany, has established a novel financial company spun out of academia. It is positioning itself as a niche player in "the esoteric but growing world of microfinance to speed economic development in eastern Europe". So it is benefiting from the opening up of eastern Europe, together with access to special funds for East and South-East Europe. Smart people: they get funded research, train their paying students, deploy the students to manage assets, prepare the students to take on roles in developing zones... and the cycle might continue through re-investment options. Smart people - yes, I already wrote that. Shame Tanaka could not stomach the concept.

again, their exists an Ft.com article for you to read

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...then again, there exists the loan system "by Alumni for Alumni" : prodigy finance
Insead showing how to instil alumni networking and profit sharing!
They claim to have methods of determining risk associated with future income, perhaps significantly influenced by the data collection from the rather large volume of students who pass through the Insead system each year... something that works in their favour, but is still remains an easily replicated venture - particularly when coupled with an institution with a risk management research group (such as Tanaka, hint hint - perhaps protègé-finance will be coming to a business school establishment near you...)