School Bells

First day of classes under my belt and I'm already feeling smarter. Class today was mainly a chance to introduce ourselves to one another and for the professors to introduce themselves and lay out the expectations for the coming year. As anticipated the class is comprised of people from all across the globe. There are a couple of swedes and a couple of americans, but the rest of the group is from everywhere in between. I sat next to Leonard (Dutch) and Yanna (Swedish). Since Leonard was the first Dutch lad I had met I took the opportunity to ask if the wooden shoes are just a tourist novelty, or if in fact people actually wear them. Leonard, without hesitation, informed me that they were once widely popular, but now have been replaced with rubber knock offs similar to crocs. Thank you Leonard. The Swede was the typical 'you have to say something to me before I'll say something to you', so I started the conversation as I'm finding is necessary to do in this country. Yanna informed me that she studied graphic design at Malmo university and was now continuing on with her education in this program. Yanna asked how I enjoyed living in Lund and asked me what I missed about home. Today the answer to that question was black bean burritos. Damn if I can find any black beans over here. Anyways, we exchanged some more niceties and it was time for class. The program is going to be perfect. We start out the first 3.5 months with three intensive classes where we conduct market/industry analysis on the present economic landscape on a global scale (not just within Scandinavia), as well as a specific class on market exploitation and resource acquisition for venture projects. Once we blast through those we're off for our winter break which lasts about 3 weeks depending on how the testing gets scheduled at the end of the semester. Looks like there will be plenty of winter possibilities for vacation destinations as pretty much every developed country in the world is represented in my class and I can make friends with just about anyone. After the winter break we return to an intensive class line up dealing with venture growth and management of the growth process. It's those classes mixed with our project work that runs right up to commencement in June. It's going to be intense. It was also made quite clear today in the overview that the goal of this program is to identify and build out a high growth potential venture while at Lund. If the venture has legs come commencement the university will place you and your team in the on site innovation incubator and let you have a year of free office space, technical resources, communication resources, academic resources and mentorship. I can't imagine a scenario outside of academia where such an opportunity would exist.