Eng Khalid Al-Zanki ENBV Guest Speaker
In its endeavour to prepare students as effective business leaders and successful entrepreneurs, KMBS periodically invites guest speakers from the business community to share their experiences with students. On such an occasion, Eng. Khalid Al-Zanki, a dynamic and maverick entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Al-ZANKI ENTERPRISES gave an inspiring speech on how to become a successful entrepreneur.
With only KD12500 seed money from personal savings, Khalid started his business organising seminars and workshops in leadership skills from scratch, and grew the business value, over 50 times, in less than 4 years. He attributes his success and such remarkable achievement to hard work and passion for the work he does. These are just some of the characteristics of entrepreneurs. When asked about what an entrepreneur needs to do to survive the current economic crisis, Khalid replied that ‘first and foremost an entrepreneur needs to sell his or her products and services and constantly review the business strategies’.
KMBS students were so inspired by his entrepreneurial success that some of them are contemplating starting their own businesses and becoming self-employed.
As one of its MBA modules, KMBS teaches Entrepreneurship and New Business Ventures (ENBV), which explains the various paths required to start up and run a business. The course is delivered by Prof Hernan Riquelme and Dr. David D. Madzikanda, and gives students the capabilities and skills required for starting and running their own businesses.
Guest speaker at KMBS - Mr. Anthony Erasmus
Recently, KMBS had the opportunity to welcome a speaker from NBK in order to share with MBA students his practical experience as an internal consultant. Under the umbrella of the course entitled The Consultancy Process (Professor Michel Delorme, Ph.D.), Mr. Anthony Erasmus, Assistant General Manager Human Resource, NBK, visited KMBS to speak about the role and challenges of the internal consultant. 50 students attended one of the two conferences given by Mr. Erasmus.
After a short introduction of NBK, its structure and the role of the Human Resource Department, the conference covered different topics such as: the reasons why consultancy is necessary in organizations, the roles of both the internal and the external consultant, the consulting process (contracting, diagnosis, analysis, feedback to the client, joint action planning, interventions, and evaluation), what consultants do in general, the challenges that the consultant has to face, and examples of interventions (case examples). The speech was followed by a period of questions and answers with the participants.
The conference gave a good opportunity for MBA students to learn from an experienced practitioner in the Business field. It was also a nice occasion for some students to ask key questions regarding the career’s opportunities at NBK or for consultancy in general.
Guest speaker at KMBS - Mr. Adel Al-Munifi
Mr. Adel Al-Munifi is President of Equate Marketing Company in Kuwait. He is a graduate of the University of Toledo in the USA with a BSc degree in Industrial Engineering with more than 24 years’ experience in industry, 13 of which spent in Equate. Mr. Al-Munifi spoke about the creation of Strategic Business Units (SBUs) in Equate, as a successful experience in the development of this company. SBUs are autonomous units created with the objective of giving the company a competitive edge in the market. The SBU system works a kind of matrix structure, where the people who belong to the SBU also belong to a functional department. The key to the success of the SBU is the ability of the leadership team to work together. Regarding the challenges of setting up such a system, Mr. Al-Munifi referred to the difficulty of changing the mindsets of people who were use to working in a more traditional structure. However, the system has been operational for two years now and the results are very positive. The talk which lasted about one hour was attended to by 35 students from Intake 7 who intervened with a number of very relevant questions.
Guest speaker at KMBS - Mr. Khaled Makkaoui
Kuwait-Maastricht Business School (KMBS) has recently hosted a highly-appreciated lecture by Mr Khaled Makkaoui, who visited the school as a guest speaker on the E-Commerce course. Khaled is the e-channels manager of Kuwait Finance House, one of the major financial institutions in Kuwait. The students were enthused by the insights and practical elements offered by a practitioner who is applying E-Commerce concepts on a daily basis. The ability to get answers to questions and discuss real-life business scenarios was a distinctive highlight of the session.
In particular, the speaker touched on issues related to e-channel strategies, as well as the benefits and challenges of e-services. As an example, the speaker emphasised the benefits of e-services, not just for the bank but also for the customers. From the perspective of the bank, the value of embracing e-services comes in the form of improved operational efficiency, reduced costs, and better customer services. For the customers, the benefits include the convenience of being able to access the bank’s services at any time of the day and from any location in the world, as well as customised communication about the bank’s products and services.
Inviting guest speakers to give presentations on the MBA programme is part of a wider desire on the part of KMBS to establish links and collaborations with local companies and other organisations. KMBS is convinced that such collaborations are necessary if mutual benefits are to be realised between the local industry and the business school.