CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MIT Sloan's new Enterprise Management (EM) Track enters its second year with reflection on the pilot and celebration around the success of its Management Practice Hackathon for second year MBAs. The track is designed to develop interdisciplinary management skills in MBA students interested in careers in large organizations. Seventy-one students, nearly a quarter of the MBA class of ’15, enrolled in the Track this semester.
The Track is being introduced at a time when many big companies are trying to promote a collaborative working environment where employees work cross-functionally sharing ideas and resources. According to a survey by McKinsey, the consulting group, only 25% of senior executives describe their organizations as effective at sharing knowledge across boundaries, yet nearly 80% acknowledge that such coordination is critical to growth.
“At a time when the global business world is so interconnected, companies need workers who have a holistic perspective,” says Sharmila C. Chatterjee, who is the academic head for EM. “They need employees who have a deep understanding of how to work cross functionally. They need people who are able to form creative, collaborative alliances with other business units. They want workers who think strategically about how to achieve the organization’s goals. These are exactly the skills we’re trying to develop for students in the EM track.”
The curriculum includes elective courses, networking activities, and two special action learning-based projects. In the first one, students work in small, cross-functional teams on consulting projects at a variety of large U.S. organizations. With the guidance of a faculty mentor, student teams come up with a business solution that integrates best practices from different industries, functions, and units.
During EM’s pilot program last fall, students worked on twelve large enterprise projects for leaders in the space of technology, consumer products, healthcare, and entertainment. One team worked on a project for Cisco. The students were tasked with studying Cisco Powered services—a program the company delivers through its key partners—by looking at ways to build demand for the program, producing an analysis of partner programs offered by competitors, and also coming up with new ideas for partner co-marketing.
“The project gave students the opportunity to see how a very large, enterprise company works to solve big problems,” says Scott Wieder, Partner Marketing Manager at Cisco.
Wieder, who is also an MIT Sloan alum, says that the EM program’s emphasis on action learning enables students to develop real world skills they’ll use in their professional careers. “These kinds of projects reinforce the concepts that students learn in the classroom,” he says. “They make the lessons tangible so that students can see how all the elements of business come together.”
A second team of students worked on a project for P&G’s Global Shave Care business. Their assignment involved identifying and evaluating the impact of possible joint ventures or mergers between any of the company’s major competitors.
“The students did a fantastic job at figuring out all the ways in which these scenarios could play out,” says Paul Flaherty, Associate Director of R&D, who is based at P&G’s South Boston Innovation Center campus. “They thought about it from many different angles—they considered product design and branding; they looked at financial considerations; and they weighed supply issues. Most important: they looked at this issue from the consumer perspective. We have a saying around here: ‘The consumer is boss.’”
Nike provided a project to evaluate potential ways of driving the apparel business. Students on the Nike team had a diversity of backgrounds: one, for instance, had been a member of the Israeli armed forces; another had worked in theater production. “I admit I was initially skeptical but once the team started working I was impressed by the passion and the thoughtfulness that the students brought to the project,” says Sitora Muzafarova, Demand Planning Director at Nike.
“They immediately grasped what Nike was missing and they analyzed our strengths and challenges—and those of our competitors—in a new and fresh way. The recommendations the team presented to Nike senior leaders really resonated.”
Another team engaged on a project for Nokia that involved coming up with new ways to engage app developers on Nokia’s mobile platform, Windows Phone. “Enterprise management challenges like this one are so complex that we needed an interdisciplinary team of people to come together to collectively and collaboratively come up with solutions,” says Dean Andrews, Senior Manager of Business Development.
“The MIT Sloan team achieved great results and delivered ideas that we are going to implement.”
In the second year of the track, students participate in a capstone action-learning event: the Management Practice Hackathon. During the competition, which takes place over a fast-paced four days, students work in teams to solve a real business problem. On the final day, students give a presentation with their recommendations before a panel of judges. Last month, twenty-one class of ‘14 MIT Sloan students spent four days crash-studying transformation opportunities from the Internet of Everything (IoE) for Cisco, the multinational networking solutions corporation.
“We want to see that students have developed a capacity to apply different management perspectives and practices in their respective roles,” says Chatterjee. “This is the mindset that we believe is crucial for successfully managing the risks, complexities, and challenges of today’s business environment.”
