September was a busy month for everyone in Leaders’ Quest and it seemed at one point that we had teams of people in most time zones around the world. I am writing this blog from Moscow, where I am a guest of SKOLKOVO, the new Russian ‘School of Management’, as their name says.
The first EMBA class is graduating this weekend and they have invited me to come. This is the group that Mark, Kenzie, LinLin, Renee and I took to China on a Quest in March. I learn my first evening at dinner with a few of them that they are allowed to bring only one guest to the ceremony – that is even more restrictive than going to Buckingham Palace to receive a knighthood (the Queen allows a future knight to bring 3 guests)…. So I am grateful to be able to participate.
I have heard so much about the campus and building I can’t wait to see it for the first time. The land, just outside Moscow, is worth some $200m (yes, million) and was donated by one of the founders, Roman Abramovich. He announced at the graduation ceremony that he will be building an innovation and entrepreneurship centre on part of the adjacent land he still owns. The architect is David Adjaye from Dar-Es-salaam by way of London, and landscaping was done by a class of Italian landscaping students as their senior project (what a fun senior ‘thesis’!). The result is absolutely stunning.
Click here for a tour of a 3D model of the school’s campus, faculty accommodation etc. The whole project is a case-study in entrepreneurism in a rapidly changing, hard-to-operate-in market.Ruben Vardanian, a successful entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Troika Dialog Group, formed the vision for the school when he decided, some 10 years ago, that he wanted his son to have a choice of a non-western business school when he grew up. He invited a group of other Russian entrepreneurs to join him in funding and founding the school – the list of founders is impressive and thought-provoking. He also, however, had to fight hard to keep the all-powerful Russian state off his back.
