Under the support of partnership between School of Management at Fudan University and MIT Sloan School of Management, as many as 8 Fudan international MBA students joined their USA peers to deliver a mid-term report at a recent meeting on Shanghai campus, on how the China-Lab Program is progressing.

They are part of 32 Chinese students and 24 MIT students in total for the program. In addition to Fudan University, three other prestigious universities in China, that is, Tsinghua University, Sun Yat-sen University and Yunnan University have contributed to the Chinese number.

The program was officially launched in early January of this year, and it is focused to provide consultancy services for small and medium-sized enterprises in Chinese mainland.

According to the program, the 56 Chinese and USA students were divided into four teams, and each team was dispatched to stay and survey in a pre-selected enterprise for 4 to 5 days.

The mid-term report, which was recently delivered in the school by Fudan IMBA students and MIT students, marked an end of their survey on three companies, that is, eastmoney.com, Garment Management Technology Co. Ltd. and PharmaSky (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd.

Actually, those three firms were chosen out of 7 candidate ones from pharmacy, housing decoration to online video services and basic medical facilities, among other industries. Those various issues, like transport conveniences, high-tech applications, and possibilities of knowledge enrichment for students, had been factored in before the final pickup.

MIT instructors for the China-Lab Program said on the meeting that, backed by tens years of cooperation between MIT and Fudan’s School of Management, the students from both schools have done a wonderful job in the corporate survey, in some aspects even better than professional consulting firms.

What follows up is that, Fudan students are going to spend the next two months working via Internet and telephones with MIT students, who are then back to USA, until they find out solutions for the companies in survey.

Ahead of their corporate surveys, Fudan IMBA students, as well as those from three other Chinese universities, had stayed in USA for a one-week visit.

Davies Yates, a MIT student in the program, said that he appreciated it very much that, through this great opportunity, he was able to work shoulder to shoulder with outstanding Chinese students, and at the same time broaden his own vision on Chinese business reality.

While ZHANG Kedan, a Fudan IMBA student in the program, concluded that the corporate survey was a nicely fitted supplement to in-class training, and that they had put into practice the various ways they look at corporate operations, like pricing strategies, marketing and human resources.

Also, the multicultural interactions which happened along with the program have drawn Chinese students and USA students closer than ever.