Day 5
It’s now day 5 of the program and it has been yet another eventful day at the wonderful INSEAD campus here in Fontainebleau. I think we’re all adjusted to the daily routine by now – the students have learnt to get up early if they want to get their hands on the popular pains au chocolat at breakfast, 99% of them come on time for class (standing ovation to those who come five minutes early #timekeepersforthewin) and I can only assume they’ve decided to go to sleep at a more rational hour, since we didn’t spot a single day-time sleeper today. A great adjustment, indeed.
As for what was on the brain-food menu for today, the students were served a three course “meal” beginning with an apperitif by Katell le Goulven from the Hoffmann Global Institute of Business and Society, the main course by Guillaume Roels on Operational Management and the sweet, sweet desert was a lecture on Behavioural Science by Ziv Carmon.
Katell was part of the morning debrief and gave the students a quick but motivational talk. She gave us several examples on how business can deliver a positive impact on people and society – everything around us really. Her main point was being conscious about how we use business and encouraging us to make an active effort to use business for good #InseadForGood. With the 57.000 INSEAD alumni (including yourself maybe – to some of the parents reading this?) spread out in 174 countries, she asked the students: “Imagine the impact it would have, if all these people practiced business as a force for good?”. Strong words.
And with those words in mind we move on to the main lecturer today – Guillaume, an INSEAD professor of Technology and Operations Management. During the hours the students had with him, they learned everything from understanding a product-process matrix to the concept of throughput time to how different elements such as reliability, conformance, serviceability, durability, etc. play into the totality of operations management as a whole.
The students had several assignments during the day, one of them being evaluating a case called Kristen’s Cookie Company. In essence the idea is that the imaginary ‘you’ and your roommate start a company that will use your dorm-room kitchen to make fresh cookies for late-night studying students on campus. In the assignment, the students, were given the task of evaluating the company’s design for the production process – they had to figure out prices, numbers of orders per night, needed equipment and figure out how to optimise the whole production process to create more value creation and make sure the company is profitable.
As they were sent out into their break-out rooms to complete the task, I took a little stroll amidst the cubicles and heard their approach to optimising the operations in the company. They talked about economics: how many baking trays, electric mixers and ovens they would need, calculating the profits, figuring out their hourly wage per night if they get unlimited demand. They also discussed the restraining factor of the production process – the oven and its limited space – and examined what would happen if they bought/loaned an extra oven and trays and changed the bottleneck in the process so that it was themselves, and their human capacity, instead of the oven. This shift in bottleneck would eventually lead to an increase in revenue, as long as the demand is large enough (and if not, the demand would be the next potential bottleneck). So yes – a lot of elements to take into account, a lot of talk about theoretical cookies and yet no actual cookies.
Bottom line: yay for the interesting assignment, boohoo for having to complete it on an empty stomach. Rumble. Rumble.
Now for today’s intellectual desert in the cookbook of behavioural science – a whole 90 minutes (that passed by all too quickly) about how psychological insight into what makes people do (or not do) something can be used to ‘nudge’ people into doing to ‘right’ thing. Ziv Carmon, the lecturer, gave the students plenty examples on how nudging has been used in the most creative ways to get people to do more virtuous asks. Here are some of my favourite examples:
- Moscow municipalities made a ticket-machine with a camera that allowed people to squat 30 times as payment for a free metro ticket. It was made with the increasing obesity rates (that are hugely costly to society) in mind and in attempt to get people to be more active.
- A hospital in Stockholm started to write down the phone numbers of their blood donors. They would then automatically get a thank-you message after donating blood and would later on get a message letting them know, when their blood had actually been used. This intervention is basically costless in terms of money or even effort and yet it’s a simple idea that made a difference in the hospital’s number of blood donors and especially the amount of them who came back to donate more.
- Click HERE for a video of yet another example of nudging – spoiler alert: it’s very funny
The students learnt that nudging especially becomes effective when there is reward substitution – basically (and I quote) “a concrete immediate (small) reward for good behaviour”. Other nudging levers could be to make a reminder, to get people to pre-commit or to simplify the task that you’re trying to guide the person to do. This was all very juicy stuff, people! For a soon-to-be-psychology-student, my neurons were practically drooling at this point.
For y’all who want some food for thought to nibble on, here are two very interesting questions that were asked in class:
- If you start noticing and becoming aware of nudging, won’t you ultimately become immune to them the more you see them? (How effective are they really long-term?)
- Aren’t people in the area of behavioural economics afraid that if people get used to reward substitution, they will stop doing good virtues the moment they don’t get rewarded? That what used to be something that motivated them to do good will end up backlashing?
- (I’m saying it again: Actually dr-ool-ing as this deliciousness melts in my brain because mamma mia these are some crunchy munchy questions)
After this last mind-boggling class, students headed up for dinner where they got some actual, literal food, which happened to be steak et frites tonight. They then finished off the evening with a very important meeting with their YFCD groups where they had to be assigned their roles in the company as well as figure out how they’ll approach their acquisition negotiations. The meeting was peaceful and productive for some while it was a little more hectic and ‘passionate’ for others. The YFCD simulation starts next week so it’ll be interesting to see what all the groups settled on by then.
And now, my fellow readers, I am fully confident that you are satisfactorily updated on all the details of what Summer@INSEAD has entailed for the students today. On that note, this very bleary-eyed and typo-prone (my apologies!) counselor will be going to get some sweet, merciful sleep before a long and exciting trip to Paris tomorrow morning. Goodnight to you all.