Management Consultancy in Practice

Benefits for your business

• A succinct report and short presentation outlining ideas for solving your innovation challenge
• Analysis of current approach and identification of future options for innovation
• Gain valuable insight into growth opportunities for your business
• Use our students for a project you may not have the resources to tackle in-house

Why work with our MSc Entrepreneurship and Innovation students?

Our Entrepreneurship and Innovation MSc attracts students with a wide range of backgrounds, many of whom bring insights from their prior working experience in a variety of academic, business and regional contexts.

Before this project takes place, the students will have developed their knowledge of the contexts and complexity of innovation in different size organisations and in entrepreneurship, and issues associated with the growth of new ventures.

What kinds of project are suitable?

For innovation projects we seek established organisations with a project, service, process or activity, technology or business model where the company seeks to explore avenues for creating new value through incremental or radical innovation. Example projects can include:

• What kinds of new products should the company pursue?
• How can existing services be redesigned to better fit the needs of consumers?
• How can the firm harness digital technologies in changing existing products or services?
• What is the scope for innovation in the existing business model?
• What are the key disruptive trends for the company for the next 20 years and how can you capitalise on these?

For entrepreneurship and venture growth projects, we seek companies that are relatively new startups (primarily targeting 5 years old or younger) with products or services facing venture-based growth issues. In teams, students will explore a growth-related issue facing a host organisation to develop workable solutions to present to management. Example projects can include:

• How can the company develop a business model and create new value propositions as it grows?
• What are the best ways to recruit new staff and how might organisational structures change?
• What are the best routes to reach overseas markets?
• How should the company expand physically?

Companies should:

• Openly share information on the business
• Provide time to brief and engage with the students
• Have physical premises which can be seen and experienced by the students
• Be located in Edinburgh and accessible by public transport

Timescale