Learning Through Industry Interface Projects

Abstract

Industry interface projects are an integral part of the curriculum of the Global Masters of Business Administration (GMBA) program at S.P. Jain School of Global Management, which has campuses in Singapore and Dubai. The GMBA is a one-year full-time residential program, where students spend six months each in Singapore and Dubai, completing one project at each location. The first project, which is undertaken in Singapore, is called the Applied Research Project (ARP) and is an “inquiry based” field research project. It provides an opportunity to the students to apply their knowledge of market research, quantitative techniques, and other subjects that they learn in the first semester. This is an independent project without any involvement of a client organization. The second project, which is undertaken in Dubai, is called the Action Learning Project (ALP). Fresh teams are formed to undertake this client-based project, and there is no relationship between the topics and teams of ARPs and ALPs. Over a period of the last seven years, more than 250 students have undertaken about 100 ARPs and 100 ALPs with 50 client organizations in the areas of logistics and supply chain management. In this paper I discuss the structure of these projects and learnings from undertaking these projects at two locations.