I just arrived from an extraordinary trip from the city of Cologne. Apart from housing some wonderful museums and giving the world it’s water (That’s Eau de Cologne), it’s been host to one of the largest student run conferences in the world called the World Business Dialogue.
I was amazed by the level of professionalism the organizers showed. The speaker list was also fabulous. I would’ve liked had there been more interaction between the speakers and the students, but it seemed that most of them operated on tight schedules.
I was also happy at them embracing social entrepreneurship. This wave of thinking is still at a very nascent stage in Europe but its still heartening to see more students wanting to get involved in the social sector.
Another thing I noticed was that the German companies have started hiring big time. Though if you want to work in Europe, be sure to equip yourself with at least 1 foreign language apart from English if you want to work on the client side.
Coming to the educational scenario, things are pretty laid back in Europe with many students pursuing 2-3 degrees and taking a year off in between them. One interesting observation about Germany was that there were no elite institutions (unlike say UK), which doesn’t mean that the standard of education isn’t good, it merely means that the playing field is more leveled. Germany is definitely a very good option for higher education, especially for its emphasis on creativity, something which is lacking in most Indian schools.
Coming back to the conference, I loved it because of the international crowd. Sure there were too many Germans than previous editions, but I enjoyed hanging out with them too and learning amazing things from there such as the complex German digital tax system (Note: The licence fee has to be paid even if the device is not attached or has no immediate capabilities to connect to internet). The lectures/panels should be put up by now, I specially recommend (as will most people at the WBD) you to check out the talk By Robert Wolcott who apart from looking like Quentin Tarantino, spoke on innovation.
Some of the things (apart from many other) I gathered:
- The Germans and most of the western world were severely affected by the recession and most of them are still in the process of recovering.
- Most didn’t see this coming and as some of the CEO of major companies admitted during the panels didn’t have plans in case they were hit with such a scenario, which mean back to the drawing board when the recession came. They were prepared for growth but not for bust.
- One of the major challenges for businesses in the future is going to be maintanence of IT infrastructure. The future is going to be how well you can keep your data real time. No one wants to wait till the evening news.
- Numbers are important but so is recruitment is a major concern. Multi-disciplinary teams are going to become more prevalent. They are much more likely to hire “boy scouts”, whose Indian counter parts I suppose are Quizzers
- Companies need to invest in risk managers to position them better since booms and busts are part of a cycle.
There was very little talk about environmental sustainability with more emphasis on business sustainability. Then there was usual chatter of how one needs to improve customer relations etc etc, you know the drill of how the entire world is a service industry.
They had a forgettable career fair, but the workshops were interesting. On the first day we played the role of consultants, with actual management consultants sitting with us and working on a case for some of the worlds’ future problems. I picked the one of business ecosystems (there were about to choose from) and it expected us to come up with challenges and solutions to a problems we envisioned will affect the business scenario in 2030. On the second day, the workshop was more of a broadcast with industry folks talking to us about what their company did.
One of the best parts of any conference is the people and this one had some of the more interesting people I have met. I loved how down to earth most of them were and how after a heavy days of attending lectures and workshops you could go downtown to grab a cold one (or many cold ones). It was inspiring to be around people who were involved with so many fascinating projects. While the average age of the WBD delegate was 23 point something, there were the odd 18 year olds who had founded successful human rights organizations, the odd 27 year old who was running three companies and people from South Africa who were interested in obtaining an MBA in Social Entrepreneurship and them going back to their homeland and bringing about change.
The rest of the days were filled with city rallies, beerfests, visits to the museums and hanging outwith friends in pubs where everyone knew your name.
I would definitely recommend anyone to apply to the World Business Dialogue!
Enjoying lunch with friends from all over the world
On top the bridge overlooking the Rhein River. There were over a 10 thousand of these on the grill.
Latino lover
On one of the city rallies with the folks.
