The SMU-X course “Business Consulting” is jointly offered by SMU and the University of St.Gallen. It is designed to allow students to translate classroom knowledge into professional experience. It is a unique opportunity to learn more about consulting services and apply theoretical knowledge to a real business project. The core focus of this class rests on a group work built around a real-world business project offered by one of our corporate partners. For each session, we are collaborating with more than ten different corporate partners, with each student group benefiting from an exclusive relationship to their own corporate partner. The corporate projects cover different industries and different topics. Students are invited to share their preferences with which corporate partner (and thereby in which industry or on what topic focus) they wish to work and gain experience. This SMU-X course is a combination of advanced in-class learning, AI-powered project work, and practical interaction with the business world via project work and guest lecturers who work/have worked with major consultancy companies such as McKinsey, BCG, or Bain. The lectures introduce the world of consulting by teaching the basic steps and tools used during the consulting process. You will learn how consultants frame, analyse and solve problems. You will experience how they use software, artificial intelligence, and how they present their solutions to their clients. You will obtain tools and frameworks to reduce complexity and structure a project. Several mini cases, mi-cro workshops, and lived situations with your corporate partner will help you to develop an understanding of how to approach a business project and manage the relationship with your corporate partner as a client. Guest lectures will provide you with industry insights and hands-on experiences about the day-to-day business of a consultant.The unique opportunity to explore, learn, and directly apply competencies in a real-life, multidisciplinary, team-based consulting experience with a company/organization is the distinguishing feature of this course. You will be working in teams for (large) corporations or smaller startups, acting as student consultants working on real challenges the organisations presently face. The solutions you develop will be presented to the senior management of the companies. In previous semesters, our corporate partners included Bentley (Automotive), DBS (banking), Adidas (sports apparel), Dell (IT hardware), WWF (wildlife NGO), Nestlé (nutrition), SingPost (logistics), Lufthansa (airline), Capita-Land (real estate), Sygnum (fintech), Lazada (e-commerce), and many more.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Formulate a clear-cut description of the problem a client wishes to address
• Frame the problem, break it down into sub-problems, and identify interdependencies
• Analyse the formulated problem by using an appropriate problem-solving approach
• Simulate possible solutions with AI-enabled techniques
• Present and communicate their results to the clients
• Work in a multi-national and/or multi-cultural team, appreciating specific strengths of each team member
• Interact with corporate representatives on a professional level
• Prepare a proposal that persuades a potential client to adopt it
• Understand how consultants use their expertise to win engagements
This is an SMU-XO course which focuses on an advanced understanding of the theoretical and empirical work on the psychological studies of the relationship between culture and creativity/innovation, as well as relevant areas. Integrating theoretical and applied solutions, students will visit a country in Asia to study the specific psychological topics in real-life contexts. The pre-trip preparatory sessions will lay the foundation for the components of the course that will be carried out in the form of solution-generation project or case study in the visited country.
This course aims to enhance students’ understanding on how people can utilize their cultural knowledge to generate creative and innovative ideas, by means of integrating different
perspectives, theories, strategies, and technologies
The Social Science Practicum (SSP) is a compulsory module for all BSocSc students. The goal of the SSP is to encourage the development of students as creative and curious learners ready to adapt to the challenges of a complex world. Every SSP section will be organized around a specific real-world question or problem. Within this issue, students will have license to shape a team project around what they think is interesting and important. The SSP will culminate in a showcase where student teams share their findings with the SOSS community.
This course is designed to explore knowledge in various disciplines.
The goals for this class are threefold:
1. Absorb knowledge from social issues presented by invited speakers
2. Foster confidence in disseminating information and interacting with speakers during the knowledge communication process
3. Use the knowledge you acquire in this class to identify critical societal issues and offer solutions from a perspective of choice architecture
This SMU-XO course takes students to a country in Asia to study the cultural, economic, social and political life of the country at first hand. Each course will be designed around a theme or a set of issues to offer students an overseas experiential learning opportunity. Students will be given a number preparatory sessions in SMU in which they will discuss research materials and related literature centered on the chosen theme. This will lay the theoretical foundation for the parts of the course that will be carried out in the country they will be visiting. The purpose of the course is to allow students to unify theory and practice by combining what they have learned in the class room with on the ground empirical studies and fieldwork in a foreign country.
By the end of this course, participants should be able to:
• Understand and articulate the complexities of social change initiatives.
• Exercise interdisciplinary thinking in examining and addressing social change issues.
• Evaluate social change messaging and campaigns.
• Apply research skills through study design, data collection and data analysis.
• Understand the sociocultural nuances of working with local individuals and organisations