Dragon project at university gives MBA students real-world experiences

The Antai College of Economics and Management at Shanghai Jiao Tong University is offering placement programs to help its MBA students gain industry experience.

"It has been the most rewarding experience of my year," said Glenn Budhi Santoso, a Indonesian student currently enrolled in the international MBA program offered by Antai College. He participated in one of the placement programs called the Dragon Team project and served as a team leader.

The Dragon Team project is a consulting program where participating students solve partner companies' business needs by applying the knowledge acquired from their MBA courses.

Participants of the months-long project are jointly selected by the school and the partner company through resume screening and interview, according to Santoso.

Each Dragon Project team is paired with an industry partner. "A Fortune 500 fast-moving consumer goods company in my case," he said.

Santoso, the team leader, and three team members "worked together with the partner company's project champion toward the strategic goal of the project defined at the beginning", he said.

Santoso found the three-month experience "nothing but very rewarding".

"It was the perfect opportunity to use the knowledge I've learned through the course material," he said. "This project is not a simulation－rather, it is true strategy generation for an ongoing vision of our industry partner. "My team had applied knowledge gained from multiple courses including operational management, strategic management, business communications and business analytics to approach our industry partner's vision for sustainable supply chain," Santoso said.

In addition to having been able to apply classroom knowledge, Santoso said he was also able to learn how to communicate effectively with different stakeholders, which is "extremely important for personal development", Santoso said, adding "I am utterly pleased with how this project has transformed me into a more professional individual".