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A summer program in collaboration with Columbia Business School

August 14, 2014

A summer program in collaboration with Columbia Business School

From August 2- 8, SHSID hosted a summer program in collaboration with Columbia Business School. 15 SHSID students, divided into 4 groups, participated in this unique program which originated from a master course for postgraduate students at Columbia Business School. Professor Daniel McQuade from Columbia Business School came to Shanghai and spent 7 days with the students at SHSID. What did the students learn? Let’s see what Harry Chen and Tony Chen, two Junior students who completed the program successfully, want to share with us about the course.

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On the first day that we sat in that room in the annex, perhaps none of the fifteen students knew much about creating a business. Perhaps out of the fifteen students, some were even doubtful if they had the capabilities to learn the basics of entrepreneurship in a week. By the end of that week we were all surprised.

Throughout the seven days students got to learn how to define their own business in the market, how to analyze themselves and their competitors in the market, do financial reports, etc. No doubt, these are the crucial aspects to creating a successful business: it is only with these skills that a successful entrepreneurship is even possible. Yet, even more importantly, the mindset that the professor sought to instill in us was the element that would mark the difference between a mere plan and a flying success.

Professor McQuade would come into the classroom each morning and begin not with lectures, but with a simple, local newspaper. It was his approach to the various newspaper reports that amazed us: reading the news used to be a passive process, a process of taking in the information, noting the interesting bits, and forgetting the rest. However, with him, a simple action such as reading the news was a process of active, conscious examination and critical questioning. The smallest details in the news led us into deep insights about macro and micro aspects of the market and the world, and the logical, all-rounded analysis surprised us with its simplicity and boldness. Combined with his own personal experiences in entrepreneurship, his interpretation of these events reveals a questioning, probing attitude. It is this attitude that transformed the nervous, unsure students at the beginning to the confident and intelligent entrepreneurs at the end of the week long journey, and it is these entrepreneurs who proudly presented their innovation, hard work and learning in front of “investors” to draw an end to their entrepreneurship experience.