Developing new ventures through the Lancaster MBA
Published 10 December 2008
The New Venture Challenge is the first of three live consulting opportunities that students face on the Lancaster MBA. In this video story, students and their clients describe how each will benefit from the project.
The aim of the New Venture Challenge is for students to develop a business plan for their client. The eight-week project involves researching a market, developing a marketing strategy and specifying how the business might be organised and financed in the future.
The 2008-09 Challenge got under way on the 3rd November 2008, when over 20 small businesses and social enterprises met their students teams for the first time at Lancaster University Management School.
Course leader Frank Cave describes the client organisations taking part in this year’s Challenge: “There are absolute start-ups here, where one or two people have come together with a concept, and that’s about it. Then there are others who are further down the line – they may have premises or be half-way through developing a product – to social enterprises, whose object is not necessarily to make a profit, but to deliver an output. And then there are one or two experienced businesses who want to try something completely new, where they don’t have the skills or resource to do it themselves.”
Sandeep Sanyal, Projects Officer in Lancaster’s Institute for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development, has the job of putting the businesses in touch with the students. “It’s a very fruitful experience,” says Sandeep. “Clients, especially start-up companies, get so much out of this intervention, and value the work that the students do. And the clients are getting assistance at no cost. It’s a great bonus for the regional economy.”
“Many of the people here come from big companies, and for us to go and look at a small start-up, it’s a really good experience,” says Louise Sorensen, an MBA student from Denmark.
Frank Cave teaches the class, and supervises them on their projects, but each team is also given a business practitioner as their mentor for the duration of the module. Both the client companies and the students find this particularly valuable.
“We’ve got our products manufactured now,” explains Ken Cheung, Managing Director of BEEcycle, “so everything is made and ready, and what the company is looking for is the marketing strategy. And the discussions today with the students have proved really useful. They’ve got the whole concept pinpointed just perfectly.”
Frank Cave explains that at the end of the module the students have to present their proposal to a panel that includes MBA teaching staff, the client and representatives from external investors. “The students are grilled thoroughly on all the details of their proposal – and they’re assessed on it.”
Louise Sorensen sums up the experience: “I hope that when we come back in a year’s time, maybe we’ll hear from the company that they’ve actually achieved some of the goals they set up in the brief they’ve given us.”
