G-Lab has four goals:

1. To familiarize students with the issues and challenges facing global startups.
   
   
2. To provide students with the experience of working in a "global" startup. These companies are either based outside the US or are in the US and trying to go global at a very early stage in their development.
   
   
3. To allow students to build networks of contacts with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists around the world. We very much hope that this will lead to career opportunities in a wide range of industries and countries. We also hope your experience will help you decide whether, when and how you would like to work as a global entrepreneur.
   
   
4. To offer high quality advice for global startups. We would like MIT Sloan to become the first place that global startups look for advice and help. This is an important goal for you, the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and all future generations of MIT students.

The heart of G-Lab is an internship, for teams of 4 students, which will last at least three weeks in January. You will work with the senior management of a start-up on issues of primary importance to their company's success and growth. Information about G-LAB companies, projects and students backgrounds will be posted on MIT Server.

In lecture 2 a "mixer" will be organized to facilitate team formation.

Bidding forms will be distributed in lecture 1 and are due in lecture 2 at noon.

At the end of your internship, you will deliver a report to the company. In H1 of the Spring Semester we will discuss your experiences and talk in more detail with some of the companies. Your final deliverable is a report that reflects on what you have learned and makes further suggestions for the company. You will need to demonstrate your detailed understanding of the company and its business.

Course Requirements

1. Regular class attendance in both H2 Fall and H1 Spring. Participation in class and small-group interactions will account for 25 percent of the grade. We will cold call students throughout every session. Attendance at every class is expected. Please talk to us if you need to miss a class. We are willing to consider any reasonable explanation for why you can't attend class, but each unexplained absence reduces your grade by 5 percent. Missing 3 classes constitutes an automatic failure of the course.
   
   
2. You need to build a team with diverse and complementary skills. This is the key to success in your internship. Think carefully about the people you want to work with and how you will allocate responsibilities within your team. We will help you as much as possible, but ultimately team selection and operation is your responsibility. This activity is not graded directly, but it will have a major effect on your performance throughout the course. By lecture 8 you need to submit a detailed project plan for your work with the company. We will provide you with a template to be used to develop this detailed work plan. We will give you feedback on this plan, but it will not count towards your grade. The preparation work that you do for your project, however, will be graded and is a crucial part of your project (see below).
   
   Very Important: There will also be an intra-team evaluation at the end H1 Spring (i.e., you get to say who did the work).
   
   
3. Internship with the Company. We will help you find the company and define the project in general terms. One TA and/or one faculty member will work with each group to help on all aspects. However, you are ultimately responsible for negotiating all the details. Your diligence in dealing with the company, including all aspects of follow-up with them counts for 15 percent of the grade. Our evaluation will be based on our conversations with your group, the TA who helps your group and the company managers you work with.
   
   
4. Deliverable to the company. The goal of each internship is to produce written material (e.g., recommendations/advice) that is immediately useful to the company. This will count for 25 percent of the grade. This deliverable will consist of two parts of equal value. The first part consists of the preparation work you do before your internship (industry/country research, competitor benchmarks, etc.) and should be handed in lecture 8 together with your project plan. The second part will be the final deliverable to the company where you address the results of your internship. You are responsible for negotiating a set of deliverables that is as useful as possible to the company. Our expectation is that the January internship will take place outside the US. We have reached a general agreement with the start-ups as to the terms and conditions of the internship, but you are responsible for negotiating all the details with the company.
   
   
5. Class Discussion. Most of the H1 Spring classes will be structured around the companies you have worked with, possibly including (whenever possible) a live interaction with the CEO (by phone or in person.) The presentation and discussion of this report will count for 10 percent. Specifically, you need to do the following:
   • One day before the first class in H1 Spring, all teams should provide the TAs with the set of Microsoft® PowerPoint® slides that you would use to make your presentation to the class.
     
     
   • All teams will present either to the full class or just to the faculty. Given time limitations we will not be able to discuss all cases in class, so we will select those most useful for overall learning.
     
     
   • Each presentation should include the following: (i) the nature of the company and its current issues, (ii) how the team was able to help, (iii) what are the important open issues remaining for the company, and (iv) what team members themselves learned from this experience. Each presentation should take about 15-20 minutes, allowing 10-15 minutes for question and answer. Think of this as a mini-case discussion. One of the faculty will moderate the discussion of your case. Any additional background information that would be useful for these sessions will be posted on the server in advance of the case discussion.
     
     
6. Final Report. The written final report is due at the start of the last class of H1 Spring. The final written product will count for 25 percent of the grade. This report should focus on showing that you understand thoroughly the company and its value proposition. In addition, you should integrate material relevant to the four goals of G-Lab, as outlined on page one of this syllabus. For example, what specific issues does the company face because of where it is located? How exactly did you add value? How exactly have you added to your network of contacts? You should also provide reasonable forecasts for the future of the company, given your projections of the relevant macroeconomic and microeconomic environment. The final report should be 20 double-spaced pages of text, plus any tables and appendices that help the reader. One required appendix is the Resource Report, which is your team's compilation of all relevant resources on which you relied to get your project done efficiently. This will include not just bibliographical and standard research and trade industry data, but practical, networking and/or entrepreneurial resources you drew on. We will discuss the Resource Report and its content in class. Note that in previous years, outstanding teams have prepared their final report in a form that can be used effectively as a teaching case in MBA classes. We encourage this approach but do not require it.

Course Credit

Global E-Lab is a 12-credit course. You earn 6 credits in the fall and 6 credits in the spring. You should factor this into your overall fall and spring credit limits that apply to your program. You cannot allocate these credits in any other way and you cannot allocate any of these credits to IAP.

You will receive a "T" grade at the end of the Fall semester for the course. This is a continuation grade that appears for MIT administrative purposes. A final grade will be applied at the end of the Spring semester when you have completed all work. You must complete all the work in the fall, IAP and the spring to receive credit. Partial credit is not given. Registration for the spring semester will be done automatically. You need not re-bid for the course.

Other Important Points

1. The server has important information about the course as well as about the companies.
   
   
2. Information about the companies will be posted on the server. Each company will have one TA or one faculty member assigned to it. If you have further questions for the company (until the final matching of teams and companies is complete), please ask the appropriate Faculty or TA to ask the company. This is to avoid too many different groups contacting the companies.
   
   
3. Each group will work with a specific faculty member or with one of the TAs, whose job it is to make sure that the group functions normally. Faculty or TAs will meet with each group on a regular basis during H2 Fall.
   
   
4. To facilitate team building and to enable the companies to get to know you, please post your resumes on the server. It is very important that you register on the server as soon as possible, in order to see information about companies and other students.
   
   
5. Overheads and handouts will be posted on the server. Please check this regularly and particularly before each class. All the materials for each class should be posted the evening before class; but please check for late breaking items posted before noon on the day of class.

H2 Fall 2004

The primary goal of these sessions is to prepare you for the January internship.

There will be a moderate amount of reading for each session; please keep in mind that everything we ask you to do is designed to make your internship more successful from all perspectives. This part of the course will focus on a series of challenges facing most start-ups and tools/frameworks that you can use when working with them.

IAP runs for 4 weeks during January. Your internship should last between 3-4 weeks. The whole team should arrive at and leave the company together.

VERY IMPORTANT. You should provide your company with a written report or slide presentation of your recommendations BEFORE coming home.

Your slides for potential in-class presentation are due at noon on the last day of January.

H1 Spring

The primary goal of these sessions is to enable you to reflect on what you have learned from the internship, personally and professionally. Each group is expected to make a brief presentation of what it has learned at some point during H1, with a particular focus on understanding the company and its value proposition. A detailed schedule of the Spring H1 Sessions will be distributed at the beginning of Spring Term.