By: Amanda Yiu

On Friday, January 25^th, a group of five Schulich students entered the DuPont Canada corporate headquarters located in Mississauga. After four months of intensive research and incredible usage of “brain juice”, they were confident and enthusiastic about delivering the final presentation to the project managers at DuPont. But how impressed would a multinational company be by the work of university students?

It all started in Summer 2007, when Schulich alumnus, Marnie Gawronski contacted the Bright Ideas Group (B!G) and asked if it would be interested in taking on a market assessment  project for DuPont Canada. Without any hesitation, B!G gladly accepted this challenging task. Marnie and her colleague, Rod Perry, took a visit to the Schulich School of Business to meet the team of students they would be counting on for the next few months. The Bright Ideas Group consists of a diverse team of 30 MBA and BBA students. Its purpose is to provide unique marketing consulting services for a new client each semester through its PR, Advertising, Research &Analysis, IT and Copywriting departments. 

When asked why DuPont enlisted the help of B!G, Marnie and Rodprovided three reasons:

1. It was an opportunity for us to support academia and student learning by providing a real life project to work on
2. We wanted unbiased and objective opinions regarding a potential business venture that DuPont was interested in learning about
3. We believed that we would benefit from new and fresh perspectives from students that were diverse in cultures, skills, and educational pursuits

In response, B!G President, Ana Bakhsyhan said, “We appreciate the opportunity and are delighted  that a multinational multi-billion dollar corporation is interested in our ideas and has confidence in our ability to deliver professional-level results. We aren’t called the Bright Ideas Group for nothing!”    

DuPont, known as a leading science company, has increasingly shifted its focus to “greener technologies,” as outlined in the company’s 2015 Sustainability Goals. DuPont’s Vision is “to be the world's most dynamic science company, creating sustainable solutions essential to a better, safer and healthier life for people everywhere”. 

The company has recently expanded its efforts by offering  environmental solutions  for the oil and gas industry  through a new business called “DuPont Clean Technologies” – this is the area in which the B!G team would have to develop expertise throughout the course of the project. More specifically, the Research and Analysis (R&A) team was challenged to step out of its business-area comfort zone and fine-tune its knowledge about the technical aspects of the oil and gas industry. The project request required that B!G identify unique technological opportunities that would enable DuPont to provide energy-efficiency and environmental sustainability solutions to oil producers in Alberta. So how does B!G compare with professional consultants? The resulting feedback B!G received from DuPont was a rewarding one: “The team was very professional and took the work as seriously as professional consultants would.  They delivered a high quality report and presentation and met all deadlines.” 

Looking back on this experience, R&A’s team leader Max Billings said that, “it was great to apply myself outside of the classroom and learn more about a dynamic and growing industry with a team that I loved!”As an associate member on the R&A team myself, I found that this was truly an enriching and practical opportunity where I learned not only how to produce professional work quality, but also how to function in team dynamics when you are working with people of different ages, work experiences and areas of expertise.

Finally, when I asked Rod why he liked working with Schulich students, he said “The Schulich team was very professional, provided excellent information and a quality report that was detailed enough for DuPont to make decisions and plan future actions.  Through the B!G team, we were able to tap into quality students that have a strong understanding of business and strategy.” With such a wonderful testimonial, the Bright Ideas Group will be sure to attract new clients thereafter who will offer fresh, new challenging projects for the team to tackle. This winter, for the first time since its inception, B!G is working on three different projects for three new clients. Busy semester? I should say so! But speaking for each of the B!G members, the rewarding feeling of having successfully completed the job is most definitely worth it!

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