student Opportunities
The Enterprise Management Consulting Practice offers all Fox MBA students opportunities to hone their fast-developing leadership and management skills through structured strategic projects for firms. MBA students have the opportunity to integrate their MBA training as consultants in the EMC consulting courses and may also apply for competitive, supervised implementation internships and occasional faculty-student action research projects.
In all EMC projects, students serve business clients, work with seasoned clinical or research faculty who act as coaches and project managers, and are supported by a growing network of senior business leaders who act as advisors and mentors. All EMC projects provide students the following learning, training (skill-development) and professional development opportunities.
Learning opportunities:
- Understand the dynamics of entrepreneurial wealth creation, notably the roles of and interplay between opportunity recognition, team building and resource assembly.
- Comprehend the role of strategic renewal and entrepreneurship in modern organizations, as well as the factors that promote and hinder change.
- Appreciate the roles of competitive intelligence and environmental scanning in strategy formation.
- Grasp and apply the basic components of strategy formation, implementation and control.
- Recognize the interplay of culture, vision, leadership, information systems, and incentives in strategy implementation and control.
- Understand the role of budgeting and financial modeling in strategy formation, implementation and control.
- Weigh the pros and cons of alliances in implementing strategy.
- Appreciate the complexities of the deal-making process, including the critical role of the interests that motivate each player such as each sort of investor.
- Gain insight into the dynamics of management consulting, including the cycle of engagement, the potential and limits of consulting for influencing the direction of firms, and the art of change management from a position of influence instead of control.
- Understand in depth the structure and needs of a given client’s industry and market.
Skill-development opportunities:
- Project management – including defining, managing, carrying out, and evaluating a research-oriented strategic consulting project.
- Managing the expectations and input of multiple stakeholders, including clients, bosses/faculty and business advisors.
- Client management – including specific engagement, relationship management, communication and influence skills.
- Team management, including the negotiation of roles and expectations.
- Research design and practical research techniques including interviewing, simple surveys, and secondary research.
- Critical thinking, including the critical evaluation of data and “stories” told by informants or pieced together from a variety of sources and the testing of (strategic and other) assumptions through research, discussion and modeling.
- The use of specific strategic consulting tools useful for organizing, understanding and presenting data, including proficiency in at least four such tools.
- The use of pro-forma financial models to test the logic of strategic recommendations.
- The transformation of research and analysis into strategy and strategy into detailed plans for implementation – including a sales plan, marketing plan, business plan and financial projections.
- The building and presentation of business cases including organizing the case, writing the case, and organizing and making the presentation.
- The art of business networking, especially for research and business development purposes.
Professional development opportunities:
During each project, clinical faculties work with each student to identify and improve on specific, career-related skills or knowledge needs. Students have used EMC projects to practice presentation skills, hone research skills, practice client management, learn about target industries, enhance career networks, and more. About one quarter of all EMC students report that their EMC experience has contributed to their finding a job after graduation.
