Are you interested in doing a field study this fall? If yes then please read below and RSVP no later than this Friday, August 29. Gene Kakaulin and I have identified 3 exciting cleantech start-ups and need to form teams of students interested to work with these companies in the next few days.
Background
Over the last several weeks, Gene and I have reached out to a half dozen of leading companies located in Boston or the Bay Area. To our pleasant surprise, our efforts were so effective that we ended up getting 3 top-notch companies on board. For each company, we helped craft a great field study project through extensive dialogue with the company leadership. However, due to our own limited capacity we won't be able to work on all three projects, and, as such, need to build out teams 3-5 students for each of the following projects. Gene and I will be working on one project and helping transition the other projects to the other teams.
Companies
Project scope
The scope of all 3 projects is roughly identical and very comprehensive. Each project would initially involve spending some time understanding the company's current capabilities, technology and offerings. We would then focus on analyzing the market place and competitive landscape, mostly by talking to the companies' existing and prospective customers. The next step includes figuring out strategic recommendations to the company, specifically where in the vertical's value chain should the company be moving, what customers it should be pursuing, what new products it should be introducing and how all of these recommendations can best be achieved. Management teams are committed to providing access to the necessary information and people within the organizations to make our work easier and the final conclusions more relevant to its clients. The companies are really excited about these projects and view them as extremely important for their future growth. So we will be doing very interesting work on the cutting edge of clean tech, with high amount of exposure to top management team and likely their Board of Directors.
Next steps
Gene and I will reach out to you individually this Sunday once we've had a chance to assemble teams/projects. We are also reaching out to the MIT Energy Club to increase collaborations across the river and maximize learning opportunities. We apologize for the short notice but HBS asks us to finalize the projects by September 4 (for purposes of getting credit), which means that we need to put the teams together this week, conduct introductory meetings and get hard commitments from students and companies. Concurrently, we are talking to several HBS professors as well as E-lab at MIT regarding school sponsorship.
Look forward to hearing from you!
Marc and Gene
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Marc C. Oman
Harvard Business School | MBA candidate 2009
moman@mba2009.hbs.edu | 415-819-9110