In recent years, the importance of sci-tech innovation in promoting economic and social development have become increasingly prominent. Sci-tech innovation has become a national strategy as well as a hotspot of entrepreneurship. Since June, Dr. Erin L. Scott from the MIT Sloan School of Management has been delivering a course entitled Entrepreneurial Strategy to Fudan IMBA students.
In 1996, Fudan University School of Management (FDSM) and MIT Sloan School of Management jointly launched the Fudan International MBA Program. Over the past 26 years, the two world-renowned business schools have worked closely together in curriculum development, business practice programs, second degrees, professor exchanges and alumni network sharing. In recent years, the cooperation between Fudan School of Management and MIT Sloan School of Management has been further upgraded. In 2021, Fudan IMBA introduced two of the most popular data and innovation courses at Sloan School of Management for Fudan International MBA students, "Data Analytic" by Professor Robert Freund and "Financial Innovation" by Professor Hui Chen.
From June to July this year, in the spirit of closely following the current global market hotspot, the Fudan IMBA invited Dr. Erin L. Scott from MIT Sloan School of Management to deliver a new course "Entrepreneurship Strategy" to the IMBA students from the Class of 2023.
In the curriculum of Fudan IMBA program, in addition to the universal modules such as analysis tools, management functions, business application research, leadership, business environment, etc., two specilized electives "Investment and Entrepreneurship" and "Business Analytic and Management" have been designed to meet MBA students' needs for their future career development, each with its required courses, elective courses and action learning projects, so as to help the students be prepared in terms of knowledge, skills and vision.
Dr. Scott emphasized that this course is not intended to provide strategies suitable for all startups, but to focus on how entrepreneurs make key strategic choices when starting or expanding a business. “It'll be very illuminating for the students, especially for those that are entrepreneurs themselves or those considering an idea in the back of their mind,” said Dr. Scott.
Get in the Seats of Entrepreneurs at their Decision-making Momtents
“The central thing that I want students to take away from this course is that there are multiple paths to commercialization, to create value from great ideas,“ said Dr. Scott. “There's no single right path.”
She pointed out that what the four-week course provides is just a structured framework to guide strategic choices for entrepreneurs so that they can translate their ideas into impact, give those ideas the best chance of success and really creating that value that they want to see out in the world.
“Ultimately entrepreneurship is about leaving behind some good alternatives to actually choose the best path and move forward,” said Dr. Scott. “Even if you know that you have a preference to go one direction, by stepping back and surfacing those multiple viable paths, you learn more about your idea, and the opportunity as well.”
In this course, students are gaining tools to make the most critical choices that entrepreneurs do to decide which customer to serve? How to organize resources? Who to co-found with? With whom and how to compete? And then these critical choices need to fit together and reinforce each other.
Previously working in Bosch, Fudan IMBA student Robin Loeschel from Germany highly values this emphasis put on decision-making. Though he has no experience in entrepreneurship, he believes that decision-making is crucial to all kinds of business activities. Robin really likes the materials used during the course, which is from a textbook co-authored by Dr. Scott herself. The cases are written in a way to capture the key decision-making moment in the entrepreneurship, allowing students to relive the dilemma faced by the entrepreneurs in the classroom. “The course inspired me to be more sensitive to my own decision making and look more carefully for entrepreneurial opportunities. In my opinion, this mindset will foster innovative ideas,” said Robin.
The fact that Dr. Scott often publishes researches on authoritative magazines such as Harvard Business Review made Sherry Wang from Canada look forward to learning from her long before the course started. She thinks the most insightful concept she has learned from the course so far is that a company would constantly — not just during the initial startup phase — be faced with the problem of resource constraints. Therefore, responsible business leaders need to consider at all times how to allocate the limited resources so as to maximize returns. Sherry has had the opportunity to observe start-up companies during her current internship. ”I am currently not in the process of running or starting up my own business, however it is definitely something I would consider in the long run, in which case I would definitely remind myself to apply what we have learned in this course,“ said Sherry.
As an entrepreneur, Zhou Yuheng from class of 2023 Fudan IMBA has been looking forward to systematically learning entrepreneurial strategies and applying them to solve practical problems encountered in his own business. One of the most inspiring ideas for her from Dr. Scott's course is that choosing customer can affect the development curve of the enterprise, and beachhead users may directly speed up or slow down the development speed. Now halfway through the course, she has already begun to re-examine the strategy of team formation and the current direction of marketing.
Previously a consultant at Ernst & Young, Chen Haoyu is keen to learn the ways of thinking from the entrepreneur's perspective. From this course, she clearly sees that entrepreneurship starts with a hypothesis about how we might create value. And the challenge of innovation-based entrepreneurship is not only about coming up with great ideas but also choosing how to implement that idea in a suitable way. ”Innovative technology is not enough for the long-term development of an enterprise,“ said him. ”It must be combined with effective marketing strategy, organisation structure, etc, to find the most suitable way and market segment for enterprise development.“
Business Schools: Fertile Foil for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Dr. Scott believes business schools have been increasingly taking a leader’s role in entrepreneurial ecosystems. They provide a rich community for entrepreneurs to meet and find people that have that same crazy idea, or same passion for a customer group or a certain technology.
"That environment where we're all like free electrons running into each other is a great environment for innovation and entrepreneurship,” said she. “Professional education business schools are a valuable resource for people who want to broaden their skill set or go deeper in one domain. And certainly for entrepreneurs, who need to do everything from soup to nuts. The core to the MBA education is that you can get that breadth of knowledge, even as you focus on the specific area to gain depth and expertise.”
Dr. Scott explained how MIT has been supporting its students in entrepreneurship, including a series of innovation and entrepreneurship courses, action learning projects, students and alumni with a high proportion of entrepreneurs, as well as comprehensive help provided by the Martin Trust Center.
Similarly, Fudan University School of Management has also been providing all-round support for MBA students' innovation and entrepreneurship. Aside from entrepreneurship courses, the Fudan MBA program also regularly organises entrepreneurship competitions, innovation and entrepreneurship forums, as well as sci-tech enterprise visits and overseas study opportunities, all especially designed to help students broaden their horizons and inspire entrepreneurial thinking. The Fudan MBA Program has built an entrepreneurial community in order to strengthen the communication among students and alumni in the innovation and investment scene. In addition, one-on-one consultation with professional tutors are provided. Meanwhile, start-ups at the sci-tech incubation parks beside the Fudan campus are entitled to benefits offered by national policies. Altogether, these resources come together and form an interactive ecosystem for entrepreneurship.
Another important part of the support from the FDSM is the "Join Cup" Entrepreneurship Competition, which was created in 2004. As the most historical and prestigious entrepreneurship competition hosted by business schools in China, the Join Cup competition has a prize pool of one million RMB, and the winning projects will gain angel investments as well as training and consulting provided by the FDSM. The 2021 Join Cup Entrepreneurship Competition gathered together 173 projects from elites from more than 150 Chinese and nearly 40 overseas higher education institutions, which has attracted major attention from investors and funds.
Sci-tech Innovation Empowered by Management
The participating projects of the Join Cup" Entrepreneurship Competition focus on innovation on or related to big data, artificial intelligence, high-end equipment, energy conservation and environmental protection, biomedicine, information technology, advanced materials, renewable energy, healthcare, consumption upgrading, education and training, and cultural and creative industries. Among them, sci-tech innovative projects accounted for more than 60%, and the eight finalists were all such projects.
Dr. Scott also noticed that in recent years, many MBA students are very motivated by the power of the innovations to create a greener environment, to create opportunities for healthcare, to make the world more dynamic and a better place. Meanwhile, many entrepreneurs are also seeking talents with deep expertise on the business side to help them navigate the commercialisation or the marketing process. “Business schools, especially action learning courses, can be of great benefit to both types of people, helping them work together to achieve common goals,” Dr. Scott emphasised.
With the idea of "empowering sci-tech innovation with management" as the guideline of its development, FDSM seeks to make sci-tech innovation and management work together to promote the development of an enterprise just as a pair of engines, which also coincides with Dr. Scott's point of view. Just as the Dean of FDSM, Professor Lu Xiongwen said at the final of the 2021 "Join Cup" Entrepreneurship Competition: "Entrepreneurship can hardly last without sci-tech innovation included in its ingredients nowadays. This has become the consensus for everyone in Fudan University School of Management, as well as for the investors and the entire society... The future for Chinese industries lies in the joint force of sci-tech innovation and management.“
