Educating Entrepreneurs
Students on six new Masters programmes that were developed at Cambridge University with CMI's support are impressing companies with their skills while undertaking consultancy projects
Students on six new Masters programmes that were developed at Cambridge University with CMI's support are impressing companies with their skills while undertaking consultancy projects.
The MPhil programmes all combine a discipline base in science or engineering with teaching in entrepreneurship and management, and range in focus from BioScience Enterprise to Technology Policy and Engineering for Sustainable Development. Students on all six Masters programmes participate in a core module on the Management of Technology and Innovation - known as MoTI - taught at the University's Judge Business School. As part of this module, the students undertake a six-week consultancy project, working on a real business issue for a real business client.
To date forty companies, ranging from start-ups to multinational corporations, have worked with over 300 Masters students. BT's Innovation Central received five students from the MPhil Chemical Engineering Practice, and were delighted by the calibre of their contributions. "Everything they came up with was useful" said Gordon Wright, Innovation Consultant at BT. The MoTI students were drafted in to help assess how effective Innovation Central had been in creating and delivering BT's innovation strategy. "Because the students hadn't been involved beforehand," said Gordon, "their insights were completely new and fresh. The students built up comprehensive case studies on BT innovation projects, the quality of which was so high that I plan to use the case studies in the future to describe the work Innovation Central does to potential clients."
MoTI doesn't just deliver benefits to the participating companies - the students find the experience rewarding too. "MoTI is a chance to learn things that can't be taught, things that only come with experience," said Joanna Simms, a 2005 Masters student. "I have just got a job as a Consultant in Valuation and Strategy in PriceWaterHouseCoopers, and I think one of the reasons I was successful was because I was able to talk about MoTI during my interview. It's the kind of real experience that employers want." Joanna added.