Last Thursday, October 13, at Stars’n’Bars EcoHub, the CONVERGENCE Monaco directional team held a collaborative dialogue with a team of five candidates in the Cornell Executive MBA class of 2017.
As part of the Cornell Global Business Consulting Initiative, the grad students have selected CONVERGENCE Monaco as their Global Business Project.
In 2015, Shane Heminway and Roger Randall cofounded CONVERGENCE Monaco with a goal to “help accelerate environmental sustainability through increased business profitability”.
Speaking to Monaco Life, Mr Heminway mentioned, “I was excited about having a young dynamic group of guys from a diverse background help to energise and fine-tune the package we’ve already started to develop. And to put it all in a way that’s more presentable and desirable to sponsors, presenters and companies. And maybe bring in a different vision than what we have in our little community.”
The second edition of CONVERGENCE Monaco, which takes place May 12 and 13, focuses on four key elements: a market place, showcase event, Formula E hospitality and social activities. The market place will present 25 “carefully vetted” start-ups, who will have 20-minute pitch sessions with potential investors. All participants with have access to the Hospitality Suite at La Rascasse, situated on the track, to provide Formula E viewing on Saturday afternoon.
The task for MBA Team Dallas’ business project is to provide comprehensive analysis on a business they collectively agreed had value, such as clean technology, and then “ spend a minimum of 525 hours evaluating the opportunity, assessing the options, and developing an effective proposal for senior management”.
For most of the group – Amar Mohey, Court Alley, Drew Bagot, Daniel Boone and Steve Caldwell – this was the first time visiting to Monaco. “The diversified, high intellect in Monaco is something people from the States don’t see,” commented Mr Boone. “Fostering good ideas from collective people from around the world who are talking about sustainability … this is the allure of Monaco, and it’s energising. It’s neat to get this perspective.”
“This is something completely different than what we do in our daily lives,” said Mr Mohey. “I come from a consulting background. People think about Monaco and the casino. I have to tell them that sustainability is heavily pushed here.”
The day took on constructive dialogue, with key considerations by the Cornell team including ways to strengthen the CONVERGENCE Monaco brand, targeting demographics and defining the sustainability initiative.
Mr Alley added, “The University is impressed that we’ve veered off the path a little with our project, which is unique compared to the traditional projects chosen by other MBA groups.”
Mr Randall, who admits he’s a conceptual thinker and not good at breaking down the details, remarked, “I was looking forward to the team bringing in new concepts and making it happen.”