Growth in the U. S. market had already stopped, and business schools were increasingly looking at international students. I assumed more schools would open one-year degree programs as they realized that Europeans typically don’ t want to commit to two years of study. In fact, there has been less of that than I expected, but as a team, we agreed that if we didn’ t offer something else on top of our one-year program, what was relatively unique could quickly become a commodity.
The inspiration for taking students around the world actually came from a student named Jeffrey Egerstrom. During my first year at Hult, he took a whole bunch of students to China between what would now be Module C and D( May – August). Probably half of the class, 30-odd students, went on a self-organized study tour to China. Based on the trip’ s success and the obvious customer interest in the scheme, we decided to set up a formal rotation to China in 2007. For the first two classes, we literally said that if the class votes in favor of the proposal, we will move six weeks of electives to Shanghai and will pay for hotels and flights; 98 % of the class opted in.
Q: What was the rationale behind choosing Shanghai as the first location for rotation?
As the location chosen by the first class, there was something nostalgic about it, but the main reason was that everywhere you looked, big companies were choosing to do business in China. It was also helped by the fact that I was living in Hong Kong at the time, and EF Education First( EF) had lots of schools in Shanghai that were empty during the day. We decided to run electives in EF schools and shift the professors who were going to teach in Boston over to Shanghai. That’ s how we started the rotation program.
When we saw half of our classes voluntarily going to Shanghai during their two-week breaks, we knew there was a demand to study elsewhere at some point during the course’ s duration. We decided that six weeks was long enough for students to get to know the city and get used to commuting around it, but wasn’ t so long that, if you ended up hating Shanghai for whatever reason, it would massively dilute your Boston experience.
After we launched the rotation program in China, we started to seriously consider opening up other physical campuses. That is how we took ourselves to Dubai, London, and San Francisco.
Q: Going back to you, how would you describe your leadership style?
Where do I start? Honestly, I think I would describe myself as someone who sets aggressive goals. The way that we approach each year at Hult is based on what we expect to achieve within that year. My background in building startups has helped me fine-tune this mentality. For instance, if you and I were starting a company tomorrow, we wouldn’ t spend loads of time trying to predict what will be happening in ten years’ time. Instead, we would focus on what we need to tangibly achieve in the next three, six, and twelve months so the company grows successfully. That sort of approach is how you want to begin, and that is very much the culture that informs all of Hult’ s decision-making.
I guess my leadership style is to try to push people to the limit of what they think is achievable. It’ s okay to make mistakes
— ultimately mistakes are inevitable when you are trying to do something complex— but I don’ t have a lot of time for people who constantly make excuses. Once you’ ve signed up to work under this style, I guess I can be quite tough, but I do always try to do it with a sense of humor.
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