One of the key strengths of the Smurfit MBA programme for me is how collaborative it is. This weekend served up a few reminders on the importance of teamwork. On the academic side, my learning group had to tackle three projects based on case studies from the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. I was team leader on two of those, which involved compiling the insights of my colleagues and I to deliver an analysis of the challenges being faced by the firms in those areas and our recommendations on how best to overcome them. This effort was in no small part helped by this being an era where smartphones are ubiquitous and resources like Dropbox freely available, so we were able to update the projects in real time throughout the weekend.
While I was very proud of what a team of 5 people from India, Ireland and Vietnam achieved this weekend, outside of college life I also felt a great sense of pride in the achievements of a team of 15 Irish people on Sunday morning, as we secured our place in the quarter-finals of the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. Having won all four of their pool games, including a historic victory over Australia, Declan Kidney’s side has shown that, with the right mix of determination and co-operation, a team can achieve great things. Let us all learn from that example!
– Philip O’Sullivan