A landmark collaboration between QUT Business School and the MIT Sloan School of Management is immersing MBA students in a ground-breaking entrepreneurship and innovation program.
In an Australian first, 60 QUT MBA , Executive MBA, and Digital MBA students have the opportunity each year to participate in a two week immersion program with the prestigious MIT Business School.
The learning experience is facilitated by MIT Sloan’s top-ranked faculty and aims to develop awareness and best practice capability in innovation, entrepreneurship, and digital transformation.
While the program was held remotely this year due to the pandemic, the intention is for students to be immersed at MIT Sloan’s Cambridge campus at Massachusetts in the United States in the future.
Graham Fellows, a Senior Lecturer at QUT’s Business School, said the collaboration was an exciting opportunity for both schools.
“The collaboration is mutually beneficial and allows each institution to advance their management education,” Mr Fellows said.
“MIT Sloan are leaders in their field and QUT’s Business School is learning from them about the content they focus on and the manner in which they deliver it.
“In return, MIT Sloan gets a unique global perspective on the delivery of their program and how to iterate and innovate for the future.
“For students, it’s an awesome culmination where they can apply all the theory they have learned across different units in a challenging context, overseen by MIT.”
During the immersion program, students access academic coaches and entrepreneurship mentors to support their learnings from MIT Sloan and QUT.
QUT collaborates with the MIT Sloan faculty to cover a range of contemporary topics based around key areas including:
- Entrepreneurial practice
- Adaptive Leadership Framework
- Digital Platforms
- Data Analytics and Data Driven Decisions
- Sustainability / Circular Economy
- Business Model Transformation
- Future of Work
- Innovation Process
- Digital Transformation Tools.
Upon completion of program and graduation from QUT Business School, students gain access to the coveted MIT Sloan Affiliate Network.
For Zoe Davies, the QUT MIT immersion program delivered key entrepreneurial insights. Zoe is the Deputy Chief Executive Officer at Digga, a family-run company specialising in manufacturing heavy earthmoving equipment.
“I never thought I could be an entrepreneur in my business because I wasn’t the one who founded the business,” Ms Davies said.
“There is a misconception in business that the founder is the entrepreneur, and the following leaders just continue their legacy.
“I learned that being an entrepreneur is less about a title and more about a frame of mind.
“I now look at entrepreneurship as being capable of changing the scope of a business to meet challenges or seize opportunities in the future.
“For Digga, we can use the legacy of the family business as a platform to continue down other paths and potentially create a new business or a new product.
“The QUT MIT immersion program gave me cutting edge skills and insights that allow me to be an entrepreneur within my own business.”
Fellow QUT MIT immersion program participant Francis Carroll is an asset manager for APA Group, a leading energy infrastructure company.
Francis said the program involved developing a start-up concept and pitching it to the MIT lecturers.
“You had to learn by doing and that’s really important to then be able to apply it in the real world,” Mr Carroll said.
“The lecturers had incredible experience, they had launched and scaled start-ups in their careers and so the quality of the program was really high.
“MIT and QUT delivered a really good program that featured different speciality areas like entrepreneurship and innovation that was integrated with the real world.”
MIT Sloan School of Management and QUT Business School have jointly presented a global webinar series, The Future Enterprise, which explored the future of business, enterprise, and entrepreneurship.
In this three-part webinar series, experts in business, leadership, transformation and entrepreneurship examined current attributes, challenges, and opportunities. You can watch The Future Enterprise webinars online.
Meanwhile, the next QUT Executive MBA program begins in January. Visit the QUT Business School website for more information.
