Today’s Fridays from the Frontline comes to us from an Indian-born MIT Sloan School of Management MBA student currently in Thailand. Partha Sharma, now in his second year at Sloan, is taking part in the MIT Sloan Global Entrepreneurship Lab, or G-Lab, an experiential learning opportunity in which students spend three months working remotely from MIT with a host company headquartered elsewhere in the world and then three weeks on site at the company’s offices during their January break from classes. This year, Sloan students are in 13 different countries—Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Peru, the Philippines, Spain and Thailand—and many have been blogging about their adventures along the way.
Since its debut in 2000, G-Lab has sent student teams to more than 375 companies—from startups to established firms—to work on more than 500 projects in 50+ emerging markets around the world. Business problems the students help their host companies tackle have ranged from strategic growth to new market entry, fundraising to financial strategy—and plenty in between.
In this latest dispatch from Bangkok, Sharma shares a little of what he and his team are doing with government-owned oil and gas company PTT and how the months of research beforehand at MIT helped them prepare. He also offers a taste of what being in Thailand is like. Our thanks to Sharma for sharing his experience with the Clear Admit audience.
The following post has been republished in its entirety from its original site, MIT Sloan Student Blogs.
Thai Adventure
By Partha Sharma, MIT Sloan MBA ’17
Bangkok is a lively and energetic city; a city of competing realities, the old markets and opulent temples stuck in time dot a city with wide roads and modern sky scrapers. The people are friendly even though communication is a challenge. With the demise of the beloved king, the city is in a period of mourning. The people all dress in black or white, and posters of the late king can be seen at every turn.
Having settled in our service apartments, we eagerly look forward to beginning work on our project with PTT. The team will work with the largest corporation of Thailand in its pursuit to set up its Corporate Venture Capital (CVC). PTT is an oil and gas company that is government owned and publicly traded. With the rapid evolution of the world energy landscape, the corporation is making all efforts possible to stay ahead of the curve—the formation of a CVC is a step in that direction.
Our preparation has included detailed research on the CVC landscape and best practices, both primary and secondary. We are equipped with the ideas we were able to gather from industry experts, academics and investors we had the chance to meet in Boston. G-Lab has given us the opportunity to work in the incubation stage of a project in a small wing of a large corporation. We expect to have autonomy and be free of the red tape typical of a large organization while having a meaningful impact.
We begin work tomorrow, feel prepared and excited. Working with a large successful corporation in a business culture none of us is familiar with will be a challenging and rewarding experience. We are also excited about all that Thailand has to offer; the cities, the beaches, the culture and the cuisine.
P.S. As we sat in a Tuk-Tuk today, something not out of the ordinary for an Indian used to “autorickshaws,” it was amusing to see Alex exclaim, “This is an adventure.” Hopefully, this is just the start of the “Thai Adventure.”
Learn more about G-Lab on the MIT Sloan Action Learning website.
