There is always value in talking to clients, and clients are more open when MIT students come to talk to them than an employee does.

- 2005 PROJECT SPONSOR

Program Overview

China Lab is an exceptional new program, combining traditional classroom learning with intensive real-world experience in entrepreneurial Chinese firms. The program builds on more than a decade of fruitful collaboration and partnership by five of the world’s great institutions: the MIT Sloan School of Management, Fudan University School of Management, Lingnan (University) College at Sun Yat-sen University, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, and Yunnan University School of Business and Tourism Management. The partnership has included research, teaching, and course development by faculty of the five schools, as well as an annual visit to the Chinese universities by MIT Sloan MBA students as part of Project Team China.

In 2008, this partnership enters a new stage with a new opportunity – China Lab. From March through May, 32 Chinese International MBA students and 24 MIT Sloan MBA students form international project teams to work with 12 Chinese entrepreneurial firms.

Each internship is essentially a mini-consulting project. Focusing on internationalization, product development, and other critical issues of entrepreneurship, the student teams collaborate in three-month internships, featuring week-long visits to MIT Sloan and to Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming, and Guangzhou. Companies set the project focus and negotiate with their teams to agree on the scope, schedule and deliverables. That is, our teams work on the problems host companies want to fix.