TI:GER Integration with MBA program

Our TI:GER team is still hard at work interviewing potential customers and industry players. We have found some early success in reaching out to these decision makers and influencers but still have several more to go to complete our customer discovery assignment. 

For this blog post, I'd like to talk about the TI:GER program as a whole and how it fits in with the MBA program. We're about to start the 2013 recruiting season and having spent a semester and change in the program, it seemed like a good idea to reflect about the experience. 

I see the TI:GER project as an integrative complement to my other classes. Many business school classes are case-based which provide an excellent opportunity to analyze how companies addressed various subject specific challenges. The TI:GER project is different in two main ways. First, the project is entirely new. Instead of critiquing an unsuccessful plan or praising a successful idea, the project requires more imaginative thinking to create an answer when none exists. Similar to the difference between multiple choice tests and short answer, this is an alternative way of thinking and helps reinforce concepts learned in core classes. For example, we have spent time in our Marketing class critiquing other company's plans and advertisements. This information has been used fully with our TI:GER project as we generate target segments and value propositions for our product. 

Secondly, the TI:GER project reaches across subject area. Between IP law lectures, finance valuation practice, and the economics-of-cost, we are learning the basics of all facets of a start-up company. Using a single core idea and seeing how each of the concepts relate to it allow us to understand how all the pieces fit together and influence each other. Very few jobs are "finance" or "operations" and require an integrated understanding that is often hard to learn in core classes. 

So far I have really enjoyed our project, the team dynamics, and the learnings of the TI:GER class. It provides a nice complement to the more subject specific core classes in addition to the entrepreneurship content.