“Education That Moves With You”: Adapting Education to Every Student’s Journey
This blog was co-authored by the following MBA'26J students: Aniol Pujol Vila, Emily Hilton, Jean Liu, Nonye Nnewuihe, Shahzen Khan, Sofus Koba of Team Fourmis
Learning at INSEAD is an unparalleled experience where theory consistently meets real-world applications. Master Strategist Day (MSD) is perhaps the clearest expression of this. Twice a year, 500 MBA students put their minds to providing real-world guidance to social impact organisations as part of INSEAD’s deep commitment to giving back to society.
This year, we had the opportunity to help Brave Generation Academy (BGA) expand its transformational approach to education into two new geographies.
The case
BGA taps into a long-ignored challenge. Most education systems rely on rote learning (memorising information) – an approach developed during the Industrial Revolution that has become outdated, inflexible, and does not suit everyone.
Recognising that this applied to their own children, Tim and Lidia Vieira took a leap of faith and created BGA, a modern, hybrid learning programme that now has international accreditation, where the individual student’s interests and motivation are the driving force behind the curriculum.
Now with more than 60 hubs around the world, its students craft their own schedule, integrating their interests (arts, science, music) into an internationally recognised curriculum, learning at their own pace. BGA alumni have been awarded prizes such as the World’s Highest Mark (2024).
Eager to expand its footprint and increase its impact globally, BGA reached out to INSEAD to craft a market entry strategy for Brazil and India. This was the challenge of this year’s MSD.
The process
As for any consulting assignment, preparation is key to success, so we began by coming together as a team to conduct an in-depth market assessment. Questions like “Who are the potential students?”, “Where can we find them?”, “What alternatives are available in today’s market?”, “How do parents choose a school?” and “What is the willingness-to-pay?” were thoughtfully investigated and answered. The result was not only an extensive market research report, but more importantly, a foundation of understanding on which we could collectively build coherent solutions.
When the big day started, all students were briefed by the BGA founding team and had the opportunity to hear first-hand the founders’ vision alongside their “non-negotiables”.
After this insightful debrief, we kicked off a long brainstorming session fuelled by late-night coffee and snacks.
We ended up with the outline of our recommendation:
A self-sustaining operation where profits could be reinvested in higher social impact opportunities that were not sustainable on their own.
We saw BGA’s key value as flexibility and customisation – meeting each student’s unique needs – and coined the tagline “Education that Moves with You”.
With hard work and some guidance from our mentor (Thanks, Ed), the concept evolved into an actionable plan from a collection of thoughts to a structured storyline. The plan to charge students who could afford fees while helping as many as possible who couldn’t was pitched first to our section class and later to the whole MBA cohort, BGA’s key team members and a panel of judges from Bain and INSEAD, who ultimately saw it as the way to go.
Our team
INSEAD is known to bring together people from different backgrounds, nationalities and work experience, and our group was no exception.
Sofus (Danish) and Aniol (Spanish) brought structure, storytelling and frameworks from their consulting experience, as well as hyper-efficient slide design skills. Shazhen (Indian), with an engineering background, provided rigour and number crunching as well as first-hand experience of the Indian education system. Nonye (Nigerian) and Yu Chun (Taiwanese), coming from a VC/finance background, were our financial modelling magicians. Last but not least, Emily (American), with her NGO experience, made sure we didn’t lose sight of the heart of BGA: social impact.
Looking back, we are incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to experience the value of a diverse high-performing team and witness how different views and backgrounds, put together, help achieve great results, not only for INSEAD assignments but in real-world scenarios.
What we learned
There were three big takeaways from Master Strategist Day.
- Diversity is a multiplier: Working with teammates from six nationalities and vastly different professional backgrounds proved how heterogeneous thinking accelerates problem-solving. The best ideas came from the collision of perspectives, not from an easy consensus.
- Ask the right questions to get to the right answers: Understanding who the students are, how families make decisions, and what constraints matter most fundamentally shaped our market entry strategy. Strong initial analysis helped us focus and saved hours of time.
- Communication is key: A winning recommendation not only needs to be feasible and transformative but also properly communicated. MSD reinforced the importance of narrative flow, visual clarity and compelling messaging for a high-stakes pitch.
MSD was a rare opportunity to turn classroom theory into real-world action while contributing to something genuinely meaningful. Above all, it was a gift to experience the joy that comes with changing the world – one strategy at a time.
We are very grateful to the donors of the Hugo von Berckel award for their commitment to advancing social impact; to Tim, Lydia and the BGA team for the opportunity to work on such an impactful project; to the Bain & Company mentors and judges for their time, guidance and feedback; and to Chengyi Lin, Alison Hanisko and the entire INSEAD team that organizes this transformational event for every MBA cohort.
INSEAD is grateful to the donors of the Hugo van Berckel Award, the Moondance Foundation, and the Andrew Land Fund, for their generous support.
