Mr. Lamballais, Head of the Strategy, Management & Innovation, and Entrepreneurship teaching units, creates the event!
Inspired by the traditional “ Night of Crisis “, organized for several years atINSEEC Business School, he wanted to adapt this interactive session for our 3rd year students. This simulation allows the students of theINSEEC Bachelor, Paris campus, to put in place, in a concrete way, the strategies and methods of crisis management seen in class. During the night from Friday to Saturday, 150 students, divided into teams, had to replay the famous episode of the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 14-28, 1962), in English! Let us recall that this crisis opposed Americans and Soviets about Soviet nuclear missiles and that the sequence of events brought these 2 powers to the brink of a nuclear war.
A Cold War atmosphere has been totally recreated for the occasion:
The teams divided the roles: Information providers, Negotiators, Kennedy’s government (USA) or Khrushchev’s government (USSR).
For example, Anthony, a 3rd year student, held the role of US ambassador to the United Nations. Although the experience was tiring, he underlines the good organization whether it is at the technical level or at the level of the provisioning (food, drinks and breaks to hold on)!
The exercise took place over 12 hours, in order to be as realistic as possible, since one hour corresponded to one day. Mr Lamballais explains that such a situation is “more realistic at night because the feeling of crisis is duplicated by fatigue”. Moreover, the students all had the right to one hour of sleep but none of them wished to sleep, far too involved in this life-size role-playing game!
If at the beginning, students confided to their professors their reservations and doubts about this situation, the 1st Night of Crisis at PBC was a unanimous success !
Updated 24 February 2022