NUS MBA 10 days Short exchange programme DBI (Doing Business in Israel)

Summary

The 10 days short exchange programme was at Coller School of Management in Tel Aviv University, the topic was Doing Business in Israel Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship and Innovation: The Israeli model. The DBI exchange programme counts as one module towards NUS MBA programme.

Exchange date

Sunday, December 15th - Monday, December 23rd, 2019

Air ticket

Transfer at Shenzhen China, each way took around 20 hours from Singapore to Tel Aviv, the itinerary was as below,

Shenzhen Airline ChangiAirport - Shenzhen BaoanAirport ZH9024 2019-12-13 17:25 22:05
Hainan airline Flight 743 Dec 14 1:35 AM Shenzhen SZX to Tel Aviv-Yafo TLV 7:35 AM
Hainan airline Flight 744 Dec 24 12:10 PM -Tel Aviv-Yafo TLV Shenzhen SZX 5:00 AM
Shenzhen Airline Shenzhen BaoanAirport - ChangiAirport ZH9023 2019-12-25 11:30 15:55

Personal comment

It was a great experience to attend the 10 days DBI (Doing Business In Israel) programme. Israel has its unique culture, both secular and religious people, and also Jewish diaspora people all over the world came back to their homeland, comprise the Israel’s heterogeneous society. With the hostile external environment, scarce natural resources, Israel has formed its collective personalities. All these elements are the contributing factors to the innovative, Start-Up nation. DBI programme was intense, fun and enrich learning process, the lectures from the professors of Tel Aviv University were fun, well prepared, and most of them are with industry Start-Up experiences. The company visits and culture trips were eye opening, stimulating more interest in Israel innovative culture. The whole programme lead us into the deep dive into Israel’s secret of Israel’s entrepreneur culture, innovative ecosystem, help us better understand Israeli culture in an effective way.

DBI programme has Interesting course subject, learning about doing business in Israel, Start-up, innovation ecosystem. It has great course structure, excellent professors, friendly course coordinators, and MBA students all over the world come together to exchange ideas. And accommodation was nice, we stayed at Herods Tel Aviv, Israel has good tourist interest sites, historical, culture visiting to various places can be arranged.

Some negative points from my personal points of view, the cost of living of Israel is high, the food choice was less, and I would say there was not much interactive with Tel Aviv University local student, but the MBA students from all over the world were outstanding. Another thing was the time difference, 6 hours late compare to Singapore / Beijing time.

Workload

10 days intensive course in class, company visiting, social activities, and one day trip to Jerusalem, there was three assignments, the first assignment was about preliminary study about the Start-Up nation, it has to be submitted before reaching Israel. The second assignment was about a case study on a Start-Up company, it was team work of four students, and submitted during the trip. The last assignment was about further study about strengths and weakness of Israel, analysis on the future of Israel, company analysis of the Israeli company, it was submitted after three weeks of the trip.

There was a weekend on Friday and Saturday, you can arrange your personal trip to Caesarea Haifa, Akko, Masada, Dead Sea etc.

Cost

The air ticket cost around S$1200.
The programme fee was around S$3300, which includes most meals, bus transport from and to school, Jerusalem trip etc.
Other cost at Israel was around S$900, which includes some food, local taxi, weekend trip to Caesarea Haifa, Akko, Masada, Dead Sea etc.

So the total cost was around S$5,400.

Below is the summary Youtube video of the whole trip, click to open the Youtube video.