Lab Courses

At Booth, you’ll have a variety of experiential learning opportunities to take what you’ve learned in the classroom and apply it into practice. Through our Management, New Venture, Private Equity & Venture Capital, Social Entrepreneurship and Clean Tech labs as well as our Marketing Research and Consumer Behavior courses, you’ll challenge yourself by trying to find solutions to real-world problems. Often collaborating in teams, you’ll work together to identify the best ideas and make these recommendations to your client.

• Management Labs - You'll tackle consulting assignments that focus on strategic thinking, management, and research skills. Working in teams with executives at major companies, you'll work on new product development, business strategy, and operational research. Recent Management Labs teams have traveled overseas for extended periods of time to manage projects on site.
• New Venture and Small Enterprise Lab - You'll work closely with senior management at early-stage companies on strategic and operational projects. You'll be directly involved in helping them take their ideas to market. Students have worked on market research, strategy development, consumer studies, pricing models, and marketing messaging for:
  • Bias Power, an angel-backed technology company that has patented low-wattage power supply technology.
  • Cleversafe, a Chicago-based new venture that aims to store the world's data.
  • Orion’s Mind, a Chicago-based educational company that designs and executes after-school tutoring programs where students learn by playing games and participating in creative activities.
  • TVCompass, a venture backed start-up developing an exciting new consumer electronics product and content services platform for the broadband, WiFi mobile messaging, and interactive TV markets.
  • Windy City Harvest, a transitional jobs program and urban horticulture production business in the North Lawndale community of Chicago.
• Private Equity/Venture Capital Lab - You'll intern for 15 to 20 hours a week on projects ranging from evaluating new market/business opportunities to specific issues and opportunities for portfolio companies. The classroom component features guest lecturers from private equity and venture capital companies. Companies who participated several times in the lab include Sterling Partners, Dunrath, Duchossois, OCA Ventures, Lake Capital, Essex Woodlands, Roundtable, WHI, Seneca Partners, Arch Development, and Prism Capital. Obtain more information about the Private Equity/Venture Capital Lab. Sample projects include:
  
  • Chicago Booth students have helped Dunrath identify the different segments of the security industry and focus on specific opportunities.
  • They have helped Essex Woodlands research investment opportunities in health care in China and India.
• Social Entrepreneurship Lab - You will explore social entrepreneurship firsthand by working with local nonprofit enterprises and for-profit ventures that have a social mission. Students make strategic recommendations to the participating organizations and firms after careful analysis in order to leverage greater growth.
• Clean Tech Lab - New for the fall of 2010 is the Clean Technology Lab, designed to provide you with a strong foundation in clean technology through a hands-on learning experience. Throughout the quarter, student teams will work on a project with a leading clean-tech firm or research laboratory, such as UChicago Tech, IIT, Argonne, or the Chicago Energy Initiative. Work may include solving a major issue the company is facing in operations, marketing, strategy, etc., or developing a commercialization plan for a clean technology the company has developed. Augmented with classroom instruction, lectures, and discussion will focus on issues faced by entrepreneurial organizations; core principles and technologies shaping the clean-tech industry; guest lecturers from industry experts; and more. Learn more about the course and current research projects at chicagocleantech.com.

We also have courses that that provide experiential learning opportunities. These courses incorporate assignments from outside companies which will allow you to put your classroom learning into practice.

• Marketing Research - This course will provide you with a toolkit of market research approaches and techniques to help them define key research questions that underlie strategic marketing decisions. You will collect and analyze data and develop the strategic implications of the research findings. View sampling of past sponsors. Under faculty supervision, you will work with their client sponsor on a project and present their final analysis to management. Past projects have included:
  • Estimating market potential
  • Segmenting the market to identify target customers
  • Improving advertising and pricing policies
  • Designing and positioning new products
  • Identifying opportunities and obstacles in current market performance
• Consumer Behavior - You will learn about the psychological underpinnings of consumer decisions to buy or consume a product or service. By employing a variety of research tools and techniques, you will help uncover deep insights about consumer attitudes and motivations. View sampling of past sponsors. Past projects have included:
  • Uncovering consumer perceptions and attitudes toward a brand relative to competitors
  • Understanding consumer experiences with a product, service, or inside a facility
  • Uncovering the underlying motivations and unmet needs for new products
  • Understanding the drivers of brand loyalty and advocacy