Business Consulting

In this course, students explore the art of using expertise in a given field to advise client organizations on high-level strategic issues and provide them with management counsel. Through a combination of class discussion, guest lectures, and project-based work involving business cases, exercises, and a team assignment based on real-life consulting challenges, students work on solving executive-level problems and simulating consulting activities and situations. The class environment is highly interactive and participative. The course culminates with a Team Project Competition, in which students are organized into consulting teams such as Strategy Consulting, IT Consulting, Marketing Consulting, Human Capital Consulting, Operational/Process Consulting, and Organizational Consulting. While elaborating the course project, students receive coaching and guidance from the professor including two Consulting Labs to provide students with a mentored on-the-job training experience. The consulting proposals are presented in the last class and judged by a guest consultant.

The goal of the course is to provide students with a hands-on experience of management consulting. Students are taken on a journey that replicates what business consultants do, whom they work for, and how they spot consulting opportunities, develop proposals, perform business diagnostics, develop solutions, create an effective implementation plan, and skillfully present to the client. Through this process, students have the opportunity to meet and learn from practicing experts - a management consultant from a large consulting group and an independent consultant - who share information about their firms, their professional experience, and their particular expertise in the profession.