Deliverables

Course Deliverables

Company Overview

Students will be assigned for each of the trip days that have company visits. These students will be responsible for:

  • Producing a 1–2 page summary of their assigned company before Class 5. The summary must cover key factors related to innovation and posit at least 5 questions that would subsequently be relevant to ask during the in-country visit.
  • Briefing students right after breakfast reminding them about key elements of the companies being visited. You can run these briefs in whatever format you choose. These briefs should last for no longer than 10 minutes and cover the following:
    • Connection with the overall course—which REAP stakeholder is the company?
    • What is the company’s current contribution to the NZ innovation ecosystem?
    • What are good questions for us to ask during the visit?
  • Debriefing students during the evening to capture key learnings for that day and connect them to the wider themes of the course. We’d love to hear your personal take on things. What did you like? What did you not believe? What do you wish you’d learned more about?

Essay

Eight-page (double space) essay on the following prompt:

Based on your experiences both in class sessions as well as company visits, assess the strength of the 5 REAP stakeholders in New Zealand and offer recommendations that could be instituted to improve New Zealand’s innovation ecosystem. Recommendations should identify the relevant stakeholder(s), the collaboration that would be required to implement the recommendation, and the challenges that may arise. One or two substantive recommendations will suffice.

We recommend you identify potential recommendations prior to departing for New Zealand and use the company visits and MIT networking happy hours as opportunities to question stakeholders and gather valuable primary research. You should complement your primary research with your own secondary research on similar initiatives (this is also an opportunity to compare New Zealand to another country or area of interest). Your recommendations may be forwarded to the relevant host companies.

SIP Deliverables

In groups of five, students will be responsible for the following deliverables:

  • News Brief
  • Key Takeaways: These will be combined and sent to companies in preparation for our arrival
  • Poster: Each group will create a poster on the overall study tour experience.

Blogs & Tweets

Each person is also responsible for writing at least 2 blog posts on MIT Sloan Student Blogs and publishing 3 Tweets. For at most 2 of these tweets, you may choose to link to a blog post.

Note: This MBA study tour took place over the first half of the 2016 Spring semester (H1) and the Sloan Innovation Period (SIP). SIP occurs at the midpoint of each semester providing students with an intensive week of experiential leadership learning, and allows students to engage in intellectual exploration outside the classroom.

Deliverable Details

News Brief

Submission

  • Slides due the day before class
  • No slide limit, but can only be up to an 8 minute presentation (you will be cut off after this point)
  • Due to time constraints it is not compulsory for all 5 members to speak during the presentation

Format

  • Presentation should be completed in PowerPoint
  • News articles referenced should be listed in the notes underneath the slide

Recommendations

  • The more recent the news the better! But relevance is the most important factor – we want to all be up to date before departing
  • Set a news alert for “Innovation New Zealand” or companies we are visiting to showcase developments related to our trip

Key Takeaways

Submission

  • Submit by the Wednesday following your class
  • File header must include all teammates’ names

Format

  • Word document (no PDF)
  • Half page in length, size 11 font

Recommendations

  • Remember that the companies that we visit will use this guide to inform their lectures and presentations

Poster

Teams created a poster for each project that was presented at the MIT Sloan Action Learning Poster Day at the end of the term.

Poster Dimensions and Specs

  • Paper size: 24" x 36"
  • Matter paper
  • Color printing
  • Portrait (vertical) format only

File Format

  • Save your PowerPoint file (including embedded fonts) as PDF
  • Name you PDF as “Company Name - XX-Lab 2016”

Contents

  • At the top or bottom on your poster, include the following text:
    • XX-Lab 2016
    • Host company name, city and country
    • Team members’ names
  • Do not include confidential company information on your poster; be aware of any confidentiality restriction in the NDA with your host company.
  • Use only photos take by your team or image provided by your host. Do not “borrow” images from the internet.

Course Info

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Spring 2016
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