Global Organizations Lab

Hosting a GO-Lab project

 

Each year, faculty and staff seek projects and hosts in advance to collaborate with GO-Lab teams of 4-6 EMBAs. Faculty mentors work with prospective hosts to design projects and objectives, and then to refine project scope. Each project will evolve from the initial stated problem or challenge to a more fundamental understanding and desired direction as EMBAs and mentors engage, to leverage their objective perspectives, skill sets, and tools.

Start an application here

Host application instructions

 Criteria for a successful GO-Lab project

  • An engaged, supportive executive sponsor. 
  • A clear, concise project scope that has been socialized with all corporate leaders who may become involved in the project.
  • Strategic importance: this is something that needs doing.
  • Two contexts: cross border people and data in a minimum of two locations.
  • Access to time, resources, data, and people. 
  • Focused attention during the international field study period, March 17-21, 2025. 

Project design questions

  • How could we configure our global supply chain to better address unpredictable demand and/or supply shocks? 
  • Where could we launch the next product or platform to best create and capture value?
  • As a foreign organization, what is our strategy for expanding into the United States? 
  • How can we align and improve our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across global regions? 
  • How can our organization become more global when most of our employees are located at headquarters, but many of our customers are abroad?
  • How could we improve learning across sites to leverage our presence, assets, and emerging opportunities? 
  • How could new products, processes, systems, or business models be developed with inputs from different entities in different countries?
  • How could we balance local independence and global standardization in specific businesses?
  • How could we improve the value of our growth by acquisition, focusing on the integration of a specific acquisition, ideally across different settings?  

Host timeline

  • November 22, 2024

    Submit a project proposal.

  • January, 2025

    Projects matched. Host, mentor, and EMBA team introductions.

  • February 7, 2025

    Host meeting with team at MIT or virtually.

  • Early March, 2025

    Teams prep and plan field study period.

  • March 17-21, 2025

    One-week field study period. This intensive visit to project sites is the center of the lab experience.

  • Mid-April, 2025

     Draft report to host. Sponsor sends comments/reactions quickly back to EMBA team.

  • April 25, 2025

    Project closes with executive presentation to hosts at MIT or virtually.

Crafting a GO-Lab project: 6 stages

Over the four month project period, EMBA students (along with faculty mentors) work through six stages:

  1. Map the organization’s global sales, production, and innovation footprint and its positioning in relevant competitive landscapes.
  2. Identify opportunities, bottlenecks, or gaps, including performing background research on these issues.
  3. Observe issues from multiple perspectives.
  4. Reframe the challenge; develop a vision/big concept to go forward.
  5. Develop specific tools and analytics to support and sharpen the directions of change.
  6. Present a strategic perspective, objective, and a road map to get there.

MIT Sloan's signature experiential learning model immerses more students in more of the world's under-resourced locales to translate knowledge into useful solutions. 

GO-Lab project deliverables

GO-Lab projects conclude with EMBAs delivering recommendations and actionable proposals, supported by a specific set of tools or "play books" built from their data-driven observations to offer a vision of the desired future state and specific areas for improvement. 

Interested in hosting a GO-Lab project?

To learn more about hosting a GO-Lab project, please contact actionlearning@mit.edu.