MIT sloan students bring unique insight to corporate challenges

Doi Kham Food Products, Sumipol, Advance Packaging, i+MED Laboratories, and the Institute for Small and Medium Enterprises Development (Ismed), are the hosts of the so-called Global Entrepreneurship Lab (G-Lab), the flagship international internship course offered at Sloan - a top-ranked business school in the US - which is being held in Thailand for the first time this year.

M Jonathan Lehrich, an MIT lecturer, said many G-Lab projects conducted elsewhere in the world have produced remarkable results. Among the beneficiaries was Speleto, an upscale Italian restaurant firm in Brazil, which succeeded in expanding to the US market as a result of its joining the G-Lab programme. Please with its success, Speleto has been a customer four times already.

Also benefiting from the programme was a Chinese company, which has grown rapidly and was chosen to become among one of a few online providers of the Beijing Olympics last year.

Another firm, Peacesoft, assigned the students to help it achieve its dream to become "the eBay of Vietnam" and two years later broke through to become a partner of eBay.

Asked what are the differences when compared with using professional consulting companies, Lehrich told The Nation the G-Lab students are highly motivated and they are focused on a single project assigned to them. They also receive guidance from faculty mentors, access to MIT resources, and networks. In addition, the MBA students take a fresh look at the project with uncontaminated eyes, he said.

"The cost for the host company is only that they pay for economy-class round-trip tickets and clean and safe accommodation, which adds up to US$9,000 (Bt315,000) to $10,000 for each company. This is a couple of days' expenses for hiring a McKinsey consultant," said the MIT lecturer.

Doi Kham assigned the G-Lab team to suggest how it could make inroads into international markets - the US and the Middle East in particular. Lehrich said the students have taken a look at Doi Kham products and packaging from their international perspectives and also made calls to US supermarkets to evaluate their response and then come up with appropriate strategies.

I+MED's managing director Komkrit Sajjaanantakul said the G-Lab team was tasked with mapping out a concrete plan to help the firm market its HIV test kits in India, and to write up a complete proposal to attract equity partners.

"A bonus we expect is to include ourselves on the entrepreneurial firms' database of MIT," he added.

Managing director Chirapan Oulpathorn of cutting tools provider Sumipol said his company had asked the G-Lab students to look at how it can strengthen itself amid fierce competition, and to consider the viability of its plan to enter the "tooling supermarket", a new business for both the company and the country.

Ismed's project development expert Wanwipa Ouiyamaphun said G-Lab was assigned to come up with a strategy to consolidate small and medium enterprises in Thailand to trade carbon credits in the global market as a single entity.

Since 2000, the G-Lab programme has engaged more than 200 companies around the world.

After finishing the selection process in September, the students begin project work from their campus from October to December, devoting the equivalent of one workday per week on their G-Lab projects. They then work intensively and full-time on site for 3-4 weeks with the host company in January (when classes are not in session at MIT).

pichaya@nationgroup.com