Visit to KAOSPILOT Business School Denmark

What would you do if your town had a persistent problem with people dumping cars? Write to your MP? Complain to the council to encourage them to increase spending to sort the problem out? Write to the paper? Moan to your friends? Get an agreement with the council to allow an arrangement for you and some friends to take the cars to a space in town where they could be used as seats for a drive-in cinema before they are then taken to the breaking yard? The latter is the unlikely solution created by students at KAOSPILOT Business School in Denmark. Other projects involved exporting scrapped bicycles to African villages and monitoring the resultant development of mini industries based on bicycle repair or making tow trolleys from scrap. One Translation service company is doing well in Sweden and Norway but poorly in Denmark and so they asked some KAOSPILOT students to design an awareness programme for the area.


I discovered all this on a recent visit to KAOSPILOT with whom I have been in contact for a few months. It is a private business school based in Denmark that has been operating for over 20 years and is developing centres overseas. It has a very ambitious aim of producing students who are willing and capable of making a significant social impact via business. Although they do not award a degree they are so highly regarded that they are oversubscribed with applicants and inundated with potential projects from local and international organisations, commercial and otherwise. The majority of the students become entrepreneurs after they graduate.

The curriculum is very much focused upon developing students who can understand themselves as potential business change agents and leaders and this is predominantly explored through project work (as described above). A lot of emphasis is therefore placed on 'process' skills such as project management and problem solving techniques. This is not, however, at the expense of academic theory. The theory is carefully selected to fit the project based template. A broad brush approach to a subject is therefore rejected in favour of specific targeted areas of a subject that are covered in depth and with real quality.

At KAOSPILOT the students are truly empowered to question and develop not only themselves but also the course and the business school. A striking example is that if they feel the lecturer (80% of whom are external) is not delivering in a way that adds value, then the students will take him or her out to lunch and give them detailed feedback about why they are falling short - this might cause a rapid expansion in the waistline for some of us! 2nd year students also conduct the selection process of the first year intake. This is a rigorous three day process during which students are selected for their suitability to enhance the business school and cope with the pressurised and creative atmosphere. The philosophy is one of group work, creativity and diversity, so only students who can add to add enhance this will make it. The 2nd years have been through the process and are rigorously prepared in how to conduct it.

A striking concept is the 'Listen Louder' philosophy that is behind a lot of what KAOSPILOT does and how it does it. Students work in groups and so must 'listen' to and be sensitive to group processes and issues; in addition they must 'listen' to business and social developments in order to identify projects and potential business opportunities.
This business school looks a world away from the traditional model and in some ways it is but it is not so removed that we cannot learn a huge amount from it and even work with it. I found it to be fascinating, exciting and inspirational - I also had mussels for lunch. What's not to love?!

www.kaospilot.dk

About the Author: Eliot Lloyd

Eliot joined the University of Bedfordshire in 1996 where he currently works as a Senior Lecturer in Strategy. Eliot is also undergraduate Field Chair for Strategy and Course Leader for Executive MBA.