Lang business students had the opportunity to pitch their creative business solutions to industry representatives last week, as part of their fourth-year capstone course.
In the course, students were placed into teams and received a business challenge submitted by one of three industry partners: Loblaw Companies Limited, General Motors Canada, and PepsiCo.
The exercise wrapped up with last week’s poster competition, where students presented their final solutions to industry representatives from their organization.
Strategic problems ranged from single-use plastic reduction to the commercialization of intellectual property.
“Our particular challenge was less defined and more ambiguous, and what impressed me the most was how well the teams took an ambiguous problem statement and refined it into something direct, actionable and meaningful,” said Norm Weigert, Engineering Group Manager at General Motors, as he addressed the crowd of students. “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.”
The capstone course, Strategic Management (MGMT*4000), challenges students to draw on analytical tools from other courses in order to analyze comprehensive business problems and establish viable strategies to implement plans of action. It leverages experiential learning throughout the semester to enable students to apply their learning to the real world.
“In this course, students benefit from experiential learning activities where they can integrate the core business knowledge acquired throughout their program,” said Dr. Nadège Levallet, Assistant Professor at the Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics. “Through projects like this one, students have the unique opportunity of developing solutions to real business problems developed by industry partners.”
The industry representatives had the chance to judge each presentation and announce the winners for each. Congratulations to the winning teams!
