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As you might expect from a program whose participants are ranked best in Canada, and who average 18 years of work experience and 12 years of management experience, there’s a tremendous amount of knowhow in the class even before the professor steps into the room. A key philosophy of the EMBA McGill-HEC Montréal is to ensure that knowledge gets shared.  Part of that comes through program design, where time is built in to each module for experience sharing. And part comes through the emphasis on networking and the importance of the class network.

The EMBA McGill-HEC Montréal Knowledge Fair, during which the class spends two half days soaking in each other’s areas of expertise, taps both of these aspects, by sharing ideas and knowledge and cementing the network.

How does the Knowledge Fair work? Everyone in the class volunteers their own areas of expertise, and indicates topics in which they are interested in learning more.  Using that information, topics were chosen for “Knowledge Booths”, for a fair held over two afternoons.  The topics are diverse, ranging from Catastrophe and business continuity planning, to The art of asking the right question, to China business strategies update, and many more.  Everyone in the class will have the chance to learn from at least 7 experts on topics of interest to them.  The cumulative experience of the class is hundreds of years, and the Knowledge Fair gives everyone a way to directly access that experience.  The fair’s orientation is practical: how is a particular topic dealt with successfully in business today? What are the learnings from real experiences? What REALLY works?  The Knowledge Fair gives the class a chance to learn from someone who’s ‘been there’ – asking questions, sharing experiences, leveraging each others ideas to build new ones.

The Knowledge Fair is an important element in the practice-oriented, issue-driven learning approach we adopt in the McGill-HEC Montreal Executive MBA program.