iMagination Week 2017: Shaping the City of Tomorrow

ESSEC launches its second edition of iMagination Week – Singapore, a unique seminar dedicated to imagination and creativity for students from the MSc in Management and Advanced Master in Strategy & Management of International Business (MS SMIB) programs. Revolving around the theme of ‘Shaping the City-State: politics, policy, and society’, iMagination Week reflects ESSEC’s cross- disciplinary learning approach, and was started six years ago at the school’s French campus in Cergy.

Professor Xavier Pavie, Academic Director for the MSc in Management and Director of the iMagination Center at ESSEC, said, “Ever since its inception, the purpose of iMagination Week has been to raise ESSEC students’ awareness on the subjects of creativity, cross-disciplinarily, and imagination, in order to train decision-makers who are as free as they are responsible, as imaginative as they are realistic, and who are capable of producing ideas and actions which are truly innovative. Our objective is to encourage students to go beyond their limits, overcome their prejudices, change their habits, and to challenge what they take for granted.”

iMagination Week at ESSEC Asia-Pacific

This year, the week-long seminar in Singapore focuses on the notion of City and the program challenges students to generate ideas that will help in ‘Shaping the City-State’ – whether in the areas of ‘politics, policy, or society’. The event mirrors iMagination Week in Cergy, which recently drew to a successful close after five days of testimonials and workshops centered on a similar theme of ‘Political City, the Politics of the City: My role in the city of 2050’.

During iMagination Week, students are given the opportunity to reflect on the relationship they have with the city and society and to think about how they can evolve as individuals. Leading experts, who have found ways to bring creativity into a great variety of disciplines, are invited on campus to inspire students through the sharing of their personal journeys. The week culminates with students presenting their observations and ideas to a panel, using either artistic, literary, or multimedia mediums.

This year, ESSEC invited several distinguished speakers to lead the various workshops in Singapore. These include Pascal De Petrini, Executive Vice-President- Strategic Resource Cycles at Danone, and Patron of iMagination Week Singapore 2017; Janadas Devan, Director, Institute of Policy Studies, and Chief of Government Communications, Ministry of Communication and Information; Jean François Milou, Founder of studioMilou architecture; Hossan Leong, a Singaporean stage and screen actor; Andrew Tan, Chief Executive of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore; Prof Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, a Swiss Canadian computer graphics scientist, Director of the Institute for Media Innovation (IMI) in Singapore at Nanyang Technological University, and Founder and Head of the MIRALab Research Laboratory at the University of Geneva; and Tan Ying Hsien, first and only Master Sommelier in Singapore and Owner of Taberna Wine Academy in Singapore.

An ESSEC alumnus and a firm believer of innovation, Pascal De Petrini, Patron of the program, shared, “I wish iMagination week was already in place when I was a student at ESSEC many years ago! This is a unique opportunity for students to shift their perspective and strengthen their ability to develop an unconventional vision of the world, which will be an asset – not only in their professional life but also in their personal life. The topic of ‘Shaping the City-State’ and the quality of the different speakers and workshops will undoubtedly stimulate the students’ imagination and creativity. I am looking forward to their contributions.”

Build Your Own Course – a Unique ‘Learning by Doing’ Experience

The week is also an opportunity for students to get involved in the design of new courses within the framework of the Build Your Own Course (BYOC) project. Launched in 2015, BYOC is a unique and innovative approach that allows students to imagine new courses – the way they would like them to be taught – by co-creating the course content and format together with the professors. This year, students participating in iMagination Week will also be involved in the BYOC program. They will work on a proposal of several new courses during the week. The selected courses may be co-developed with students in the second and third trimesters of the MSc in Management program.

View the Press Release at this link.