ISB, NUS, Tsinghua Students Team Up For Global Learning Opportunity

Even in times of “global markets”, local needs come into play and three business schools in India, Singapore and China came together to provide their students an insight into how companies are set up in each of these markets.

The Asian Innovation and Entrepreneurship Immersion Programme by three business schools–the Hyderabad based Indian School of Business (ISB), NUS, Singapore and Tsinghua, China– had participants come up with their ideas on setting up a company in either one of the markets.

With a stated objective of transcending physical borders, cultures and economies, 20 students each from the business schools formed the Tri-Uni contingent, spending one week each in the three campuses.

The Asian Innovation and Entrepreneurship Immersion Programme by three business schools–the Hyderabad based Indian School of Business (ISB), NUS, Singapore and Tsinghua, China– had participants come up with their ideas on setting up a company in either one of the markets.

The first week at NUS was on understanding disruption in modern markets. The students were asked to frame a business model for an idea which solved a pre-existing problem.

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Emergenetics International, an organizational development company,   helped sort the students into groups, based on psychological profiles to ensure parity.

The session helped the students identify the strengths, drivers and possible barriers while working together.

Meanwhile, to provide the students with details of start-up thinking, NUS lined up visits to IDA Labs, Impact Hub, Blk71, and the NUS Entrepreneurship Society over the course of the week.

The session concluded with a presentation by the students on their learning and a mock-up business model of their idea.

At THU, China, they took this idea forward by means of the SPRINT methodology of getting to a Minimum Viable Product. Visits to Tsinghua’s XLabs, the Zhongguancun Innoway and SEM Accelerator gave the students understand the difference in market strategies of Singapore and China.

The students were treated to a game of business simulation centered around the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ to test how much of group dynamics had been worked on since the previous week.

The teams visited the start-up sphere, represented by Sensetime and Apply Square and full-fledged companies (SinoSteel and ChemChina).  They were able to acquire a working knowledge of the Chinese market.

The inputs were later showcased in the presentations for that week. Their ideas in week one got restructured to cater to the Chinese market.

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At ISB, students were taught about innovation and also to use creative destruction to disrupt the markets. Taking the idea of their start-ups forward through multiple modules helped students understand the importance of being able to monetize an idea and to capitalize on it in time.

Sessions at the Technology Hub, India’s first start-up accelerator, fostered the seeds of innovation in students, while visits to Bharath Biotech and Microsoft India showcased how Intellectual Property Management and Offshore Innovation need to work in tandem for a company to achieve success.

The trend of innovation, IP rights management and offshoring/outsourcing solutions was continued in the presentations, with the groups analyzing their ideas as potential start-ups and deciding the path forward for each of the ideas. (Image Courtesy : pixabay.com)