There was a class that incoming seniors could apply for to take in the fall called product development project. This class consisted of being placed in teams of five or six students and assigned to a local organization in order to help design a new product for them. These organizations were able to mentor a group of up-and-coming college students who were aspiring business and engineering students. In return, the company received wage-free work that could only help the future of their company considering we worked on this project fives days a week, 2 hours a day, for an entire semester. Basically, it was a win-win situation.
I was thrilled to be put on the Johnson Controls team with four other intelligent and eager classmates of mine. Johnson Controls "creates intelligent buildings, efficient energy solutions, integrated infrastructure and next generation transportation systems that work seamlessly together to deliver on the promise of smart cities and communities" (Johnson Controls website). Directly after being assigned to our various teams, we were given a team leader who was a representative from our respective business that would mentor and guide us through our product development process. We met with this representative every Friday morning for updates on our progress as well as to receive any new information about our particular task at hand.
Our group leader was a business man by the name of Anthony Pacheco, a Sales Account Manager for the battery division of Johnson Controls. After talking through the details, we were asked to deliver a pitch at the end the semester involving a design, target market, and uses for a new lithium-ion portable battery pack.
One of the first steps we did as a group was take a private jet from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to their battery department headquarters in Flint, Michigan. This, in a sense, could be a transaction cost as we were spending an entire semester on a research and product development project, and they decided to pay for a private jet ride and somewhat of a luxury day at their headquarters. This was really the only "gift" Johnson Control gave us all semester besides the organizational experience. Anthony showed us all of the different steps involved in putting their batteries on the market and introduced us to some higher ups in the Johnson Control Organization.
After the trip, Anthony talked with us individually about our aspirations after school and our specific strengths and skills. From that point, Anthony, as well as all of the members of our group, discussed how to assign specific tasks amongst our team. Me personally, I was first put in charge of creating the design for the product. I was the only one who had a taken a course called CAD or Computer Aided Design where we are able to actually create virtual designs.
We went on doing our individual tasks with Anthony checking in on us every Friday for months. It took me about a month and a half to get done and feel completely satisfied with my design of the product. After I got the green light from Anthony, I moved over to our "target audiences" team, which already consisted on two other team members. We did some online research and some local surveys to help further our target market and potential uses for the product.
Once all of us finished up gathering the research, forming the data, finding our target audience and coloring the design, Anthony told us to put a 15 min PowerPoint presentation together to show a team of employees higher up in the organization than Anthony. We pooled all of our knowledge as a team and put together the powerpoint in about a week. We showed Anthony the first draft, and the only thing he wanted to change was that he wanted a bit more emphasis on the fact that the battery pack is lithium-ion which means it is more of a green solution to battery waste.
At the end of the semester, we presented our presentation for new product. The board's response was extremely positive. After our presentation, they had us sit down in the conference room and we listened to the board as they bounced ideas around the room for how to really make money off of this product.
They actually came up with a different idea on how to make millions off the product. They wanted to sell the product to the army and have it small enough to fit in the average cadet's backpack. We never really thought of that, but the idea sounded brilliant at the time. Either way, it was hard to really judge if they were being completely honest with us considering we were just seniors in high school, but I would say they did considering they launched a very similar product just over a year later.
That's a very interesting story. I hadn't heard of such a thing before at the high school level. Here at the U of I there is something called Illinois Business Consulting, which does something similar with students acting as consultant to companies, but is done outside the course structure.
ReplyDeleteLet me ask a few different questions about this that you might provide answers to in response to my comment.
(a) Were students pre-screened to take this class or could anyone sign up for it? It sounded like you had the right skill set (knowing CAD) to be part of this project. What about the other students? Did they have the requisite skills for doing the work they were assigned to?
(b) You said there was no pay. Could you discuss your own motivation for doing the work? What about the motivation of other students? It sounds like everyone put in a lot of effort. It is less clear why that happened. Could you elaborate on that?
(c) Where did the individual work and the group work take place, at your high school, at the offices of Johnson Control, or elsewhere? How much of the communication between you and your supervisor was face to face and how much done online?
(d) Did the company make any attempt to get members of your team to become interns with them when those students went to college? In other words, was this one and done or was there a possibility it might carry over after the class you took was concluded.
(e) Did the class have a teacher from the school? If so, what role did the teacher play?
(f) Do you have any sense of what happened to the project later? Was it implemented or shelved?
There are probably other questions one might ask as well. This should be enough to get you started.
It is very cool that you got the opportunity to work with this company and interesting to look at how this program helped their organization. It seems like a great way for the company to not only receive free feedback, and assistance, on the development of the product, but also provide a great opportunity to reach out to the local community. In a blog post by another student he mentioned that a small business that he worked for was given more leniency by the customers when the business committed small errors because the owner of the business was from the community and hired local labor. This, presumably, bigger business saw an opportunity to create a similar level of leniency by, essentially, "making the larger business appear small" and connecting with the local community.
ReplyDelete