Companies would buy ideas from ISM students

In February through May, the best first-year students at ISM University of Management and Economics were engaged in their first practical training activities. The final task of the students was to present to 14 companies operating in Lithuania their ideas about how to solve topical marketing, client communication, internal communication, and even business strategy-related issues. After listening to the students' presentations, business representatives reflected on them and made plans to present them to their colleagues. Some even hinted that they would be ready to buy the suggested ideas.

 

‘For our company, the students developed a plan to make the Maggi brand stand out among the competitors in the Lithuanian market. First the students performed an in-depth analysis of the case and the target consumer groups for the product and then came up with a creative positioning idea aimed at one of the consumer groups. We have agreed that the students will come to the Nestlé Baltics office and introduce their idea to a bigger group of the company’s staff. The future specialists were surprisingly creative, especially knowing that they are only in the first year of their studies. In our opinion, mutual cooperation of this kind is extremely beneficial for both the students and businesses’, Vilma Kapočienė, Nestlé Baltics marketing manager for gastronomy, said.

 

Darius Jasinskis, director of the Product Management Department at Danske Bankas, said that specialists at the bank wanted to understand the way students perceive their services and to get innovative ideas and suggestions about what kind of products and services private clients expect from the bank. ‘One out of the three solutions that were suggested was really interesting. We invited the students to come for a meeting with the staff of the bank and to discuss the ideas that they presented, including the way they could be implemented. In our opinion, following further discussions and assessments, we will be able to make an offer to our clients. The students approached the task in a very creative manner. We were impressed by their original ideas and presentation skills’, Jasinskis said.

 

The representatives of the bank stated that they perceive students as their advisors, useful partners, and potential employees. ‘We want them to find out more about us and about working for a bank and to show interest in our practical operations. Later, when they have finished their studies, we want them to show interest in our job offers and see us as their potential employer’, Jūratė Dacienė, director of human resources at Danske Bankas, said.

 

According to Dr Nerijus Pačėsa, rector of ISM University of Management and Economics, for businesses this type of practical cooperation is a long-term investment into the education of highly-conscious specialists who have a proper sense of the current market situation, and for the students it is an excellent opportunity to unleash their creativity, continuously improve, and gain invaluable experience.

 

‘I am very happy that the programme that offered our first-year students an opportunity to deal with the real tasks that businesses face has served its purpose. The model applied by Stanford University formed the basis for the programme and suited it really well. We were pleasantly surprised by the high level of skills that our first-year students demonstrated. They came up with many ideas that have the potential of being implemented in real companies’, the rector stated. According to Pačėsa, the student-business cooperation may be continued if the companies decide to offer the students opportunities to undergo practical training or temporary employment for the summer.

 

The students that have engaged in the practical activities are the best ISM students, whose studies are financed by the university and businesses operating in Lithuania based on the ISM Excellent 100 programme. The following companies participated in the programme and submitted their cases for analysis: Nestle, Kauno Grūdai, Danske Bankas, DNB, Mirror, Aviva, Arvi, Lindorff, Sony Ericsson, Arginta, Grigiškės, Vikonda, Alna, and ISM Fondas. The students were searching for ways to strengthen business brands, utilise the potential of social networks, improve the presence and the image of respective companies among youth, promote cooperation between different departments within a big company, suggest measures to mitigate the activities of competitors, etc.

 

ISM University of Management and Economics offers the practical training to its first-year students. The practical activities are based on the design thinking method developed by the Institute of Design at Stanford. At the centre of the model is the interconnection between creative and analytical thinking and the cooperation of students studying in a number of different subject areas, including engineering, design, social sciences, business, etc. According to the model, students learn by engaging in different practical activities. They have to both find solutions to a respective problem and be able to define the problem itself, i.e. to identify the actual needs of consumers that a respective service or a product will meet, to offer as many feasible solutions as possible, to develop prototypes, and to test them.