Coming from the Middle East, I was drawn to CJBS by its promise of high-quality projects and hands-on experiences. The first of these during the Cambridge MBA is the Cambridge Venture Project (CVP). I was eager to use my Finance and Startup background to solve new problems for our client: Jaguar Land Rover.
Fast forward to the CVP Client Meeting event. 18:10, that was the time at which I was asked to pick our client and mentor up from Lecture Theatre 1. I was feeling both nervous and excited. Upon entering the room, it became so real as I saw tens of client-mentor couples sitting together. I approached Sadia, she asked who my client was. “Jaguar Land Rover” I said. “Alright, call for them with a loud voice” she replied. After introducing myself to the client and mentor, we proceeded to our meeting area on sixth floor. We took the stairs as the elevator wasn’t working – that’s a lot of time to kill. I cracked a lame joke about the Judge Business School ceiling and I am pretty sure our client laughed out of politeness.
Soon enough, we made it to the meeting booth where I quickly shifted the pressure to my awesome colleagues of Study Group 15: Filipe Ayash, Irina Chen, Katherine Rock, and Kyle Wen. Our backgrounds range from Finance, Entrepreneurship to Legal Services, and Consumer Goods. As a team, we are pretty highly ranked on the “cappuccino team” spectrum, a status that is native to our Management Praxis course. We kick off the weeks with the usual café meetup. More recently we bonded quite well as we attended a Formal Hall at St John’s college. Intelligence at CJBS is a given but maturity and humility are the two characteristics I continue to notice in my colleagues as we work together. Thanks guys!
Tasked with researching whether a market exists for an Amphibious Electric Vehicle, our project scope was quite broad. We spent the afternoon before our meeting brainstorming ideas and made sure to address the most basic questions and assumptions – “What does the client really want?” – something we learned the hard way in Management Praxis. We defined our scope and made a realistic assessment of how we will be able to research and provide meaningful results that Jaguar Land Rover can actually use.
Personally, I think my pre-MBA experience has set a good foundation for me to work on projects such as the CVP. I am quite accustomed to being in client-facing roles and formulating new strategies and ideas. The feeling of working on something new excites me.
As a team, we managed to impress our client and mentor with the amount of question-preparation we had done. We showed lots of interest and tried to understand as much about the project as possible.
To my classmates: as you all go through your own study group and CVP experiences, I’d like to wish you all the best of luck and thank you for an amazing Michaelmas term!
