On August 26 2009 the IMBA students of RBS welcomed the EMBA students from Lally school of US, and joined in their cocktail reception party in Radisson SAS Hotel.

Lally school is an affiliated business school of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of USA. Lally School specializes in cultivating senior managers in engineering and technology, and put emphasis on the embodiment and development of creativity spirit during business operating process. Their EMBA students come from various industries with different academic backgrounds, such as from 3M, GE and other world famous corporations.

On the banquet, RBS IMBA students warmly welcomed Lally School EMBA students. Most of them could talk to their partners freely in English. The two parties exchanged ideas in many fields and communicated in an atmosphere of relaxation and friendliness.

From 27 to 29 August, RBS IMBA students and Lally School EMBA students were divided into 20 teams to join operating contest in simulated business environment. Every team had to make decisions in the fields such as company investment, operation, and other aspects according to analysis about business environment, resource and product. The purpose of this simulation program was to learn the differences between different cultures, business environments, and thinking methods; and observe the team organization with different students combined. What was mostly interesting was the operating difference between American and Chinese students in the same business environment.

The dean of Lally school, Professor David, explained the contents of the program, and then gave a lecture of creation at the beginning. He emphasized that the change of human life had been accompanied with creations in the past several decades, and technology invention and product innovation would be still the eternal theme of business function in 21st century.

As a business school whose clients are mainly companies of engineering technology, Lally school has made a lot of research in technology invention and product innovations. It has formed a mature theory system in the subject of management in the creating process. Professor Lois Peters of Lally School made a concise lecture concerning about the development of new products, which made the students of RBS feel really refreshing.

The IMBA students had been in RBS only for a few days when they met with the American partners or competitors with many years practical managerial experience in English software environment. The simulation lasting for 3 days was a superb opportunity for RBS IMBA students to exercise and study from Lally EMBA students. At the same time, IMBA students found their gaps in managerial knowledge through the simulation and will improve themselves in the future learning.

The competition began on the morning of August 27. Faced with complicated data and the simulative market elaborated to last detail, RBS IMBA students felt that they were thrown into thick smog even though they had made preparation in their mind. For the first time, market exhibited in front of them.

At first the teams formed by EMBA and IMBA were better than others. The EMBA students with plenty of business knowledge acted as consultants in their teams and enabled their teams to spare a lot of time in decision-making. However, the team only formed by IMBA students needed a lot time to read and absorb the contents of all kinds of materials, although they made decisions in a shorter time. After flustered at the beginning, IMBA students adjusted their speed quickly and adapted to absorb information more quickly and made decisions stably.

It looked like a course of rapidly growing up for RBS IMBA students, although there were many difficulties. At that time the simulation seemed not to be a testing game or a research program, but a real competition and a true fierce contest in market.

Six rounds in 3 days demonstrated 6 years operation of 20 companies in 4 industries. Each time the contest results announced, there were exciting cheers always. Observing carefully, you would find that the exciting hurrah not only belonged to EMBA students with golden hair and blue eyes, but also belonged to our IMBA students.