The Endeavor MBA Fellowship

Data science and research projects require fellows to collect, clean, and analyze data. Research projects can include collecting consumer feedback through interviews, surveys, and observation. With the information and data collected, fellows will be expected to provide recommendations for how companies can better reach their customers and improve their products or services. In addition, the fellow can be involved with data visualization, building models, and fine-tuning algorithms. Fellows who are applying for a data science project should have strong analytical skills and be familiar with data analysis tools. Research and development fellows should have strong verbal and written communication and analytical skills.

While some expansion and growth strategy projects are involved with new market entry, others require fellows to focus on the product/service offering of the company. For example, some companies may be looking to launch a new product in an existing market or implement a new product into their company (i.e optimization/automation) to improve efficiency. Expansion and growth strategy fellows should have the skills to conduct market analysis and assess consumer expectations. Fellows can be expected to collect and analyze data to draw conclusions and make recommendations about new products or new markets for a company. Fellows should be flexible, as these types of projects can deal with a variety of topics.

Financial strategy projects deal with company issues like efficiencies, data analytics and profitability. In the past, fellows have worked on analytical projects, including developing profit and loss models that account for costs through a product lifetime and tracking efficiencies using an economic dashboards. Fellows who work on financial projects should have knowledge of financial statements, strong analytical skills, basic statistical skills, and extensive problem solving capabilities.

Market entry projects require fellows to analyze all aspects of a potential market, including the political, social, economic, legal, and competitive environments. Fellows will likely be asked to determine how a company can adapt their product positioning, marketing strategy, cost structure, pricing, and logistical operations to enter a market as efficiently as possible. To do this, fellows will identify potential opportunities and threats to entering the new market. Fellows should have strong research skills, an understanding of how to conduct market research, and be able to develop a market entry framework.

Marketing projects can range from topics like developing a marketing plan and analyzing product positioning to developing a marketing budget and improving conversion rates. Fellows should be able to help a company in defining a marketing strategy for new markets, new products, and new platforms (such as online advertising). Experience with SEO, CRM, SEM (Google Ads and Facebook Ads) is preferred. Fellows can also be expected to collect feedback, analyze data and assess consumer perceptions.

Operations projects combine a variety of business areas, such as research and development, market entry, financial strategy, business modeling, data analytics and logistics. Operations projects require fellows to be flexible and have knowledge in multiple business areas. In the past, some operations projects have included determining how a company can improve profitability and customer satisfaction, developing a 5-year business plan, determining how to reduce company waste, and creating a future demand forecast.