"A shared project of Israeli, foreign, Palestinian and Jordanian managers, under the supervision of lecturers from Israel and abroad, is currently gaining a lot of success: An Internet site and a new book contain the course summaries of the leading courses in a Tel-Aviv University MBA program that is considered one of the best in the world for managers."

To be a part of an International global body might not currently seem to be a desirable situation, when to the world, it looks that in Israel, they just fight.  This is the way that the students and graduates of the Kellogg-Recanati MBA program at the Faculty of Management of Tel-Aviv University felt.  We are speaking about an International program that has existed in Israel already for 6 years, and where half of the lecturers arrive from abroad.  The managers, who are now graduates of the program, have decided that it's about time to remind their colleagues in at least 4 more countries where similar courses are run, of the "Israeli spirit": creation of ideas, global teamwork, managing businesses, helping other people, and mainly keeping the International relationship - networking.  They decided and they did it.

The managers - students that finished their studies last Autumn, put in writing the summaries of all the courses in the program, 28 in all, that they studied over a 2 year period, they polished them, they passed them back to the lecturers of the courses in Israel and abroad for remarks and feedback, and after the material received their approval, the course summaries were made available to the public.  And the result: A printed book and also an Internet site (www.kr04.net) that is open for everyone, that includes the selected course summaries in English.

The editor and founder of the idea is Stuart Ballan (43), an immigrant from England, and the owner of a company in the area of managing, consultancy and high-tech.  He had at his side, his fellow friends from the class, who joined the project, all of them managers from Israel and abroad, including from the Palestinian Authority, from Jordan, from China, from India and of course, from Israel.

"In addition to what I called this Kellogg-Recanati Challenge, note we are speaking about very interesting, top quality courses.  The original idea, to print the material and publish it on the Internet started with the concern that I had started to forget the material", he says and emphasized: "Then I had the idea of a joint project, that incidentally was done on a total voluntary basis, for the benefit of our business community".

Summaries of the leading courses in the program, that were written by the students of the course, and approved by the course lecturers, appear in the printed book and on the Internet website, including: A course summary of Marketing Strategy, given by Professor Lakshman Krishnamurthi; International Marketing Channels, given by Professor Anne Coughlan; the Market Research course of the Dean of Kellogg, Professor Dipak Jain, and also lectures in Accounting and Finance, Human Behaviour, General Management & Strategy, Statistics and more.  Recently, Business Week magazine, which makes periodic research to grade the quality of MBA schools around the world, graded Kellogg, a part of Northwestern University in Chicago, the best program in the world in the area of Executive MBA programs.  Orit Mendelson-Shoham, the manager of the Kellogg-Recanati programs, says, "This is an example of the initiative of people who participated in the course, who produced something to answer a need that came up in their group, but als stresses the group work and team work within the program.  Each one of the people that associated themselves with this project is a top manager, busy in studies and of course, at work, and in spite of the strain, they and the lecturers who taught them, answered the call and put the needed effort to complete the project.  The extra value of the program is not just in its academic knowledge, but also in the personality of the people who participate, all of them top managers in their own field, and the unique academic atmosphere that is being made in the lessons, amongst the participants."

It should be mentioned that the project has been received very well from all around the world, including from the other Kellogg students and from students of other MBA programs. The project also received the support of the Dean of Kellogg, from Northwestern University, Chicago, Professor Dipak Jain, 10,000 (!) visits from all around the world to the website that was made by the graduates, and a large response via email, directly to the editor of the site, Stuart Ballan.