Academic Director of TIM-Technion Institute of Management, Israel's leading executive leadership development institute, Shlomo Maital has been a visiting professor for 20 years in MIT Sloan School of Management's Management of Technology MSc programme.  He is the author co-author or editor of 8 books and over 80 scholarly articles in refereed journals.

He served as Director of the National & Economic Planning Authority, Economics Ministry, Government of Israel and initiated USA Today's annual survey of total factor productivity growth among Fortune 100 companies. His research currently focuses on profit-driven innovation - how to combine creativity and discipline to achieve marketplace success.

This prestigious figure is a pioneer in action-learning methods and the MBA participants thoroughly appreciate his course which breaks with traditions and provides a particularly enjoyable learning atmosphere. This course brings to a close the MBA's in-class learning before their company consulting projects and it provides the ideal occasion for the participants to bring together their acquired knowledge in finance, strategy, leadership and marketing.

The Innovation Management course is 5 days of creative-thinking. After ice-breaking activities such as role plays and after an explanation of several tools such as emotional branding or The 7 Whys, participants are encouraged to re-discover the creativity that is often lost in adulthood through a team project where members must come up with the full business model of an innovative product or service. The teams are then evaluated on the quality of their business model in the eyes of an investor. The other students consider the business potential of each project and decide which project they wish to invest their fictional £10,000 and grades are awarded accordingly.

"Innovation is all about breaking rules - it requires creative energy that can't be released if we have to respect rules" says Maital, "Children are more creative than adults. They are always asking questions, trying to get to the root of something and understand the logical progression of things. This inquisitiveness is stifled as we grow older. In this course I encourage the students to break the usual constraints and ask at least seven questions to really get to the bottom of an idea without feeling embarrassed that they might be bothersome."

The MBA participants have thoroughly enjoyed the course so far. Alessio Antonioli, an Italian student explained why. "Shlomo is a tremendous facilitator. He's able to energize the class and manages to transmit to us the passion he has for his topic. His class is dynamic, amusing and out of the box and yet he always focuses on the objective at hand. I'm starting to look at things differently and I now realize how important this is to creative thinking."

"France is the ideal place for creating." concludes Maital. "While the others are leaving the country in search of easier places to innovate, they are leaving a space wide open for those who choose to stay here and set up on their own."

Encouraging news for entrepreneurs!