The first project of Australia-China Lab, an action learning program collaborated by Fudan University and the University of Queensland(UQ), concluded successfully earlier this month with satisfaction of students, mentors and the client.
The international consulting project was conducted between January and June this year by five Fudan MBA students and another five from the MBA program of the University of Queensland in Australia under the guidance of four faculty and industrial mentors from both countries to generate valuable consultation for Place Design Group, an Australian company with the intention to expand in the Chinese market after being here for 15 years.
The Australia-China Lab was the latest intentional subprogram of Fudan MBA iLab, an action learning program given within the Fudan MBA curriculum. Established in 2005, this unique program is designed to cultivate experiential and dynamic learning as the iLab teams work on the real problems companies want to fix and help them grow their businesses in China or other world markets.
“Compared to traditional MBA programs, the consulting project is quite unique,” said Tim Kastelle, senior lecturer of UQ and mentor of the Australia-China project.
“The huge advantage of experiential programs like iLab is that students work much more closely with the companies than they are able to in the normal kind of business case studies,” he said, “And that allows them to understand the issues confronting the businesses much more deeply. And that makes much deeper experience for the students.”
“And when you add the international collaboration on top of the direct experience with the companies, it makes very unique teaching experience and learning experience for everyone involved.”
Kastelle said UQ is satisfied with the first cooperation with Fudan and is looking forward to more projects like iLab.
Mentors spoke highly of students' performance and improvements achieved in the Australia-China project.
“I think the team has done an excellent job. The different views of the market based on the Australian company and the Chinese information they were able to research, and the analysis the ten students have done gave the client very clear recommendations,” said Chris Henderson, a mentor from the Venture India business consulting company.
He also praised that the students have improved their capacity of working in unfamiliar situations with unfamiliar people in this international project.
“In the project, students were not fulfilling tasks assigned by their bosses, but had to organize their team structure, design the whole process and work as a team with their own different backgrounds,” said Song Yiping, an associate professor specializing in marketing and a mentor of the Australia-China Lab project, “Those are all new challenges for them and useful for their future work.”
“They started with vague ideas about the company, but they overcame all barriers and spent at least ten hours a week to generate reports well accepted by the company. Their improvements are obviously great,” she added.
Team members of the project said the most difficult challenge for them was the run-in period at the very beginning as it was their first time to work with so many members from various countries with different cultural and industrial backgrounds.
“Everyone has a different understanding about the program,” said Sam Shiao, an Australian MBA student from UQ, “So we have to spend much time to understand each other and reach consensus about the assignment. After that we operated well.”
“But the frequent and in-depth exchanges also helped us learn different ways of solving problems from each other, which are really precious experiences for all of us,” he added.
Kuo Kai Wei, an American student of Fudan MBA, said the project had taught him how to manage a program or a company as a leader with real practices.
“It urged us to look into the company structure, to learn how to manage a company and how to turn the tables in plight from the angle of the overall company,” he said, “All these could not be learned as an ordinary employee or from other school curricula.”
Mao Hong, a Chinese student at Fudan, said the project had developed her strategic thinking.
“As a former accounting major at university and a financial professional, I used to consider problems only from financial perspectives,” she said, “But this project taught me how to find out potential problems the whole company faced and how to solve it with cooperation of different department, such as changing the company structure to maximize its benefit.”
She also said that she would consider consulting as one of her options for her future career as she found it was interesting in the project and the experience also brought her advantages in interview of an internship in a foreign venture.
Prof. Song said one of the purposes for Fudan to establish the iLab program was to offer its four-time students chances of utilizing what they have learned from MBA program before getting back into workplaces.
“An MBA program can help students tease their working experiences and unsystematic knowledge. The action learning program helps them test their advanced knowledge with real business environment,” she said.
Song pointed out that iLab also gives students glimpses of industries they had not experienced.
“Many of our full-time MBA students actually quit their original jobs to come here to seek career changes,” she said, “They can choose iLab programs related to their interested industries to have a try before deciding whether they really would like to work in the industries or not.”
There are 11 intentional iLab projects and 9 local ones in Fudan, offering diversified opportunities for its MBA students.
Fudan MBA officials said the iLab program is popular both in students and client companies.
“The iLab projects are interesting to students because they provide not only experimental learning opportunities, but also multicultural exchanges,” said Song.
“One terrific value of the Australia-China project add to our client is diversity,” said Chris Henderson, the Australian mentor.
“Because the students come from different countries, different companies, different industries and different educations, the opportunity for inspiration is much higher.”
Meanwhile, companies can also get accesses to rich resources of Fudan via the small program, such as its alumni and experts.
“We have invited experts to meet up with our iLab clients and our alumni, who run their own companies which are their potential partners,” said Song, “Such added value is very attractive and difficult to get in other ways.”
iLab is also a high-level platform for recruitment and job hunting, said iLab officials. Several companies have recruited ideal talents from iLab projects after on-going communication and evaluation, which enable them to know better about students' comprehensive skills, while participating students can also have deeper understanding of the companies than from info sessions.
As some MBA graduates would start up their own businesses, Fudan MBA also encourages and funds students to initiate their own iLab projects, such as seeking consultation on market analysis or looking for partners for their own businesses.
iLab is also important for Fudan MBA program as it is helpful in cultivating students' capability and promoting its own brand awareness and influence, Song pointed out.
“Competition is very fierce in MBA programs run by different universities,” she said, “Many schools are trying to add more value to their own programs to attract students. Merely class teaching can no longer satisfy students.”
“With increasing number of local and international iLab projects, Fudan MBA has successfully improved its popularity in China and abroad,” she said.
Kastelle also believes that action learning projects like iLab should be the trend of all MBA programs in the future.
“It's hard to justify only book learning in an MBA program,” he said, “Management is a practice and so to become a better manager, you have to engage with that practice. And the only way to do that is to work on real business problems. Combining good practice and good theory creates substantially better managers. So programs like iLab, in my view, is essential to help us do that as a business school.”
