motivated to provide solutions to meaningful real-life problems. A global professor of innovation, entrepreneurship, and marketing from Hult, Professor Grandinetti dares to disrupt the familiar. However, he is not only into the seriousness side of things. From a craft-beer tasting event to bring together his many former students – kindred “hackathon junkies” who flew in from around the world to join him, to an expert-facilitated Lego Serious Play session which served as a highly effective team building exercise between NGO leaders, mentors, and organizers, Mike Grandinetti understands that work and fun can – and should - go together. He knows that cohesive teams are better at collaborating and drawing out the best of each team member, which makes them more creative and more effective teams.
“I believe that there is no effective way to teach entrepreneurship and marketing in a purely academic fashion—it requires ongoing, practical application for the
A NEW WAVE OF MENTORSHIP
skills to be learned deeply,” says Grandinetti in an earlier Hult article. When asked what being a mentor means to him, he makes no hesitations to his answer. “It’s a role I cherish,” he says. Having served as a trusted advisor for students, he also creates events that complement and reinforce Hult’s practical curriculum.
During the orientation on the day of the Hackathon, Grandinetti paces around the Fenway Bleachers. His booming voice demands authority, attention. "It takes a village to make a Hackathon happen," he explains. Aside from the students who signed
up to take on the challenge, Grandinetti also meant the mentors.
Dedicated Mentors clearly made the difference between a good day and a great success! More than 30 mentors -from San Francisco to New York, Toronto and even Egypt and Germany - flew in for the Hackathon and Pre-Hackathon day. Mike Grandinetti engaged his network of former alumni as well as his North American Startup and Venture Capitalist Network to build a jury that is able to judge based on their own experiences but furthermore able to guide great ideas to the next step.
Grandinetti reminds them of their roles: to strike a balance between independence and mentorship, between letting the students think for themselves and giving them as much information on the NGOs as possible. Aside from trying to drive sustainability, he wants the mentors to “leave them [the students] at a focal point, give them plenty of space to get to a solution.”
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