Education Into Action

Real-world learning opportunities have long been a foundational experience for Wisconsin School of Business students. In the Wisconsin Full-Time MBA Program, specializations offer applied learning projects that tap into executives’ knowledge and expertise while setting up students for future success.

A new cross-disciplinary experience further enhances learning opportunities for full-time MBA students, better integrating core classwork and preparing them for corporate leadership roles. This capstone consulting course and project—the Integrated Company Analysis (ICA)—comes through a partnership now in its second year between WSB and Medtronic, a global leader in medical technology.

Philanthropy enabled faculty and staff to redesign the ICA, thanks to support from WSB’s Innovation Fund and the Lehman Distinguished Chair for Inspired Learning in Business held by Associate Professor of Management and Human Resources Martin Ganco, who played a lead role in restructuring the ICA.

The result has been an impact for students that goes well beyond the classroom.

“The ICA course provides first-year MBA students the opportunity to solve a real-world business challenge presented by a corporate partner,” says Blair Sanford, assistant dean of the Wisconsin Full-Time MBA Program. “Students use insights and data from Medtronic along with other resources to provide recommendations to executives.”

Prior to the Medtronic partnership, student teams used only public data to identify a theoretical problem and find a theoretical solution.

“Providing recommendations to a real organization takes the learning to a new level,” Sanford says.

At the end of the semester, all student teams present to faculty. Four of the MBA teams advance to present their strategy to Medtronic executives, who travel to WSB and also participate remotely from across the globe.

A collaborative experience

Four to five students from a variety of specializations make up each ICA team. Medtronic executives come to campus in January to present their strategic challenge, giving students time to learn more about the company and each other before the ICA class begins in February. Once the class begins, students have access to core faculty who are familiar with the challenge and set aside consulting time for the ICA. Faculty also incorporate ICA-related topics into their curriculum.

“There’s a group that spends about four months working with the partner before students are involved,” says Steve Boeder, director of the Erdman Center for Operations and Technology Management and the course manager for the ICA. “There’s a lot of effort with our core group of faculty and our partner to create this project.”

Medtronic presented its 2019 challenge to students in January: Develop a three- to five-year business model and implementation plan for a cardiac device in one of eight assigned countries. During the Spring 2018 semester, students worked to solve a different international challenge: Find innovative solutions to diabetes care in sub-Saharan Africa.

“There are no best practices for such a complex problem,” says Patrick Lueck (MBA ’19), who worked on the 2018 project. “You have to break it down and prioritize outcomes before you can decide what to tackle. Once we decided on the most valuable problem, coming up with a solution was the fun part.

“Those who got the most from the project were the ones who really leaned into it and said, ‘This is a real-world application, so how can we bring something to the table that is smart and impactful?’” Lueck said.

Drawing from class to manage uncertainty

Students draw from core classes they’ve already taken in marketing, finance, data, operations, accounting, team dynamics, leadership, and business strategy. Right away, they get to put their education into action.

“It brings in the elements of innovation and ideation to study a problem and find a possible answer,” Boeder says. “It’s like running an experiment for a company, and that’s what strategy is. It’s how a company moves forward.”

The biggest challenge is the uncertainty within the project. It isn’t like a math test where there is one right answer; this is working toward one of potentially many solutions.

“The MBA students can be overwhelmed at first because they have to think deeply about the broad strategic question,” Sanford says. “They have to deal with ambiguity; they have to be self-starters. People who advance in organizations are often the people who can deal with ambiguity.”

A head start in the job market

For Lueck, learning how to wrap his head around a big, meaty problem and find a solution within a set amount of time gave him an advantage during his summer internship at Intuit in 2018.

“It definitely eased the transition for me because my summer project also involved exploring a new business in an emerging market,” he says. “I had already done that in class, so that reduced the learning curve for me.”

It impressed his supervisors at Intuit—Lueck was offered a job there after graduation.

The ICA’s learning outcomes are set up to help students get that offer. The goals go beyond learning, challenging students to analyze an organizational challenge and develop a solution while working as a team, dealing with uncertainty, and communicating effectively with the client.

“This is what executives hope to gain from someone who has an MBA,” Boeder says. “These students will be working on these kinds of projects and eventually overseeing them throughout their careers. This is a really good way to expose them to that now.”

Undergraduate students in a business strategy class present their proposed solutions to a real-world strategic challenge. The strategic question came from Executive MBA students who provided the class with situations from their organizations.

BBA Applied Learning

Applied learning―integrating classroom work with real-world experience―isn’t just a staple of graduate education. Applied learning projects are also a key element of many BBA classes.

• Two classes in the Department of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics developed concepts for affordable housing in Green County, Wisconsin, as part of UW–Madison’s UniverCity Year initiative.


• Students in the applied equity market research course learn from industry professionals who teach methods in researching and analyzing equity securities. Students then create investment recommendations and pitches aimed at portfolio managers.


• In digital marketing classes, student teams build a digital marketing strategy for real-life clients, such as the Girl Scouts, Special Olympics, and other local nonprofits and entrepreneurs.


• Undergraduate students taking business strategy work with Executive MBA students taking graduate-level business strategy. MBA students share real challenges within their organizations, and teams of BBA students research, analyze, and offer solutions.


• Business analytics students use a company’s data to analyze its global forecasting team’s performance. They also use WSB classroom and enrollment data to analyze facility utilization, identify inefficiencies, and assess growth potential.