BOSTON, Mass., March 31, 2009 - ;Hult International Business School, the world’s first global
business school, is partnering with blue-chip companies to significantly enhance
its MBA curriculum. The new initiative asks student teams to compete to develop
a major innovation for a real corporate client as part of their MBA degree requirements.
Dr Hitendra Patel, Professor of Innovation and Growth and
a former innovation thought leader at Monitor Consulting, says, “The market capitalization
of many large companies cannot be explained solely by their current earnings and
reasonable organic growth assumptions. This means that the market is pricing in
an expectation that these companies will innovate their way to higher profits. At
Hult, our students help companies find their most promising growth opportunities.”
Each client corporation is assigned five teams of students. The teams compete to
develop an innovation that will drive the company’s revenue to the next level. They
present their proposals and the business case to the leadership team of the client
at the end of the project. Each team is assigned a mentor, often an experienced
strategy consultant. All students participate in the project before receiving a
business degree.
Dr. Makarand Chipalkatti, Head of Corporate Innovation Management at Osram Sylvania,
one of the participating companies, says “The winning proposal detailed a novel
business concept in a non-traditional, yet adjacent market. When you get smart,
diverse, business-minded people unimpeded by conventional thinking looking at your
problem, you get very interesting and fresh outcomes.”
Hult, which started life as the first corporate university in the United States,
places a strong emphasis on delivering a practical business education. The majority
of its faculty has spent years in industry as well as academia. This ensures that
students are taught concrete skills that apply to real companies.
Dr Patel concludes, “This corporate academic partnership returns enormous value
to companies because they have a lot of clear-eyed talent focused exclusively on
a key issue they face. It also represents a fantastic opportunity for our business
students to leverage the knowledge they have accumulated over the course of their
MBA program. It
reinforces what Hult’s MBA school is all about.”
For further information or comment on this release, please contact:
rosathea.nardelli@hult.edu
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