Entrepreneurial spirit across borders

MIT Sloan School of Management is known for its entrepreneurial ecosystem and spirit of innovation, and those qualities are now being deployed to help small businesses in China overcome critical challenges.

“The entrepreneurs we work with [in China] are as brilliant and driven as any we find in the world, yet they face obstacles to success,” says John C. Grant, senior lecturer in global economics and management at MIT Sloan.

So, for a seventh spring, MBA students are spending a week working on-site at Chinese firms to help them tackle business issues like market entry, commercialisation, financing, and finding overseas partners. Students engage with and advise the firms between January and March from their US campus in Massachusetts and then visit in late March to implement their proposed solutions.

The action-packed week is part of the “China Lab”, a practical component of a course which compares the economies of China and India. It was introduced in 2008 and, since then, has grown in terms of student participation, the number of projects at Chinese firms, and partnerships with Chinese business schools. Of the mainland firms involved, 75 per cent are small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). They represent diverse sectors, ranging from credit lending to furniture, e-commerce technology and organic vegetables. Most are selected by the Chinese business schools, whose own MBA students collaborate as a team with those from MIT Sloan.

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The firms pay nothing to participate, though some may cover flights and basic costs for the week students are with them.