• Identify and formulate a management question in response to a corporate problem
• Select, define and apply appropriate research-based tools and analytical methods
• Identify and present the firm implications – challenges as well as opportunities – that may be derived from the analysis.
• Suggest decisions and actions that may help the firm in question to address challenges and benefit from opportunities.
• Design and implement a project plan and comply with the related deadlines and deliverables.
• Manage the relation with the company partner, including, for example, communication flows, and company partner expectations

The Business Project aims to provide the students with a real life learning experience. International student project teams solve a real business problem as a one-semester part-time activity in consultation with the partner company and an academic advisor in parallel. The Business Project is a consultancy-like project that aims to make a contribution to the partner company with analytical results and advice.

Even though the Business Project course includes a number of fixed deliverables and a tight schedule, students have full responsibility to manage the project process, the analysis, reach conclusions and present these in a clearly communicated way. The students are dedicated to work with a company and will be assigned a company contact person and an academic advisor from CBS.

The implementation of the Business Project will therefore help students develop a range of competences, in terms of analysis, communication, project, and process management – in other words, competences that are in high demand in the corporate world.

The Business Project forms a substantial part of the workload in the spring semester, and each student is expected to allocate approximately 400 work hours to the project.

The main part of the Business Project consists of the student group’s project work process and the group’s interaction with the case company. In addition, a special session on consulting work will take place shortly after the project kick-off. 

CBS will divide the students into a number of project teams of approximately 5 students each. Each company team will be assigned to a company partner firm, a company contact person, as well as an academic advisor from CBS. Each team will consist of a mix of both CBS–CEMS students and visiting international CEMS students. The teams are composed to ensure the best possible match between the project topic and the students’ educational background as well as other qualifications, and to create diverse teams in terms of nationality, home university and gender. The teams will be announced prior to the kick-off.

The project team will work on a business problem/challenge/opportunity, as provided by the company partner.

It is the responsibility of each project team to establish an internal project organization and structure to be able to handle the process of coordinating tasks, communicate efficiently and effectively with the company partner, and ensure that the milestones and deadlines in the process are met.

The kick-off for the CEMS Business Project is scheduled for Friday 3 February 2017. The kick-off will be held at CBS, where the company presents the case and meets the student project team for the first time. The aim of the kick-off is to:

• Create an initial understanding of the topic and the situation in the project team
• Establish a shared understanding of the project task
• Set out the framework for the work process towards the first deliverable, the Briefing Note on the project approach

Before the kick-off students are assigned to specific company partners. It is expected that the students prior to the kick-off have done some initial information search, e.g. via the company partner’s website, annual reports, or through consultation with other sources for industry insights.

The kick-off and the following initial project work will lead the project team to produce the first deliverable in the Business Project, the Briefing Note.

The Briefing Note must be submitted to the group’s academic adviser at CBS and to the company contact person. The purpose of the Briefing Note is to outline the project’s purpose, the management question, research-based foundation, methodology and expected outcome at an early stage of the process. The Briefing Note should thus ensure that there is alignment between the expectations and approach of the team and its academic and company contact person – regarding purpose, process, methodology and expected outcomes – at an early stage of the process.

The Briefing Note should form the basis of a meeting with respectively the academic adviser and the company contact person. The Briefing Note should be no longer than 5-6 pages and should address, as a minimum, the following topics:

• The company problem and the related management question.
• Research-based framework and related analytical methods.
• Scope and nature of the data required, including:
  • Primary data, in terms of company interviews (approximate number, with whom, purpose/main theme(s) of interview), or other data (e.g. market research data).
  • Type/amount of secondary data provided by the firm, e.g. industry data possessed by the firm, or from external sources.
• Number, purpose and timing of progress meetings with respectively the academic and company adviser, including agreement on the date for the mid-term status meeting and the presentation of the findings to the company: Note that the number of consultation hours with the academic advisor is limited and should therefore be used wisely.
• Deadlines and milestones specific to the project.
• Anticipated limitations and risks, if any.
• Expected outcome: Note that while the actual content of the results and advice will be developed later, the project team should at this stage try to specify the type/nature of results and advice that the project aims at in response to the needs of the company.

Although changes may naturally occur later in the process, due to e.g. unexpected circumstances or the insights emerging from the work, the Briefing Note should as precisely as possible outline the content and steps in the work process up until the submission of the final report.

The deadline for the submission of the Briefing Note to the project adviser/company partner is 20 February 2017, and it may of course be submitted earlier that this date.

While it is recommended that the project team consults with the CBS academic advisor and the company partner as part of their preparation of the Briefing Note, the company partner and the academic advisor must formally approve (via email to the project team) the Briefing Note before project work proceeds. As the meetings with the advisers may result in changes in the project approach, the project team can chose to revise the Briefing Note after the meetings to reflect the changes, or it can state the agreed changes in an email exchange that summarizes these changes after the meetings.

The Briefing Note (and related emails, if relevant) must be enclosed as an appendix to the final project report and will be included in the grading of the report.

Re. B: Mid-term evaluation

The project team must arrange one mid-term evaluation meeting with the company which is the second deliverable in the Business Project. While the mid-term evaluation meeting is mandatory, the format for the meeting is flexible and the most convenient format for the specific project may be determined by the project team in consultation with the company partner. The mid-term status may be reported in the form of an email, a short note, or a power point presentation. What matters is that there is some written documentation, that the meeting with the company partner takes place (either as a face-to-face meeting or a virtual meeting, e.g. via Skype), and that the outcome of the meeting is reported in the minutes of the meeting. The written documentation used at the meeting and the minutes of the meeting must be enclosed to the full report and will included in the assessment of the project team’s performance.

Re. C: Reporting findings and conclusions

The content and structure of the report will naturally vary according to the company case and management question investigated. The report writing process will lead to the two final deliverables – the company presentation and the final report – which are described in the following.

Prior to the submission of the report the company must present the preliminary results to the company. At this stage, the report does not need to be finalized and the project team is not expected to send a draft report to the partner company. Instead, the project team must orally, on the basis of a supporting slide presentation, communicate the main findings of the project and the derived suggestions. The meeting with the partner company should give the project team feedback at an advanced stage of the work process. This presentation meeting is scheduled to take place between 1 – 19 May 2017, so that the project team has sufficient time to incorporate the feedback from the partner company into the final version of the report. As noted above, the exact date for the presentation seminar should be agreed upon in connection with the Briefing Note.

There is no general course curriculum, as each project is expected to select and draw on a more specialized portfolio of readings that relate to the project’s topic and management question. The student project team is expected to consult with their academic adviser in order to identify relevant academic literature. For example, projects may draw on diverse literatures in strategic management, operations management, marketing, etc., or a combination of these literatures. The selected academic literature, and other sources, used in the report must be referenced in accordance with established standards for academic works.