An+Experimental+Business+Lab

=**Business Laboratories:**=

At Guangya, we are continually seeking and developing innovative educational methodologies and strategies to create the most effective and exciting educational environment and experiences.

In Director Rich's IB Business & Management course, he has introduced the concept of "business labs". Which are designed to "put theory into practice", and permit the students to discover management concepts through exploration.

Below are some photos from two recent business laboratories:

**Innovation & Marketing:**
In this series of labs, Rich adapted some workshop materials from the Stanford University Design School, supported with TED.com videos of IDEO design professional Tim Brown, and innovator Caleb Cheung, inventor of the famous "Furby" and currently of the interactive robotic dinosaur "Pleo".

Initially, the students followed the famous d.school "wallet" Introduction-to-Design exercise, but then adapted the result to become an advanced form of marketing research. From this research, the students prototyped "cutting-edge" new products, finely tuned to their "target" customer market. Interestingly, the students description of their ideas shifted from description of product attributes at the beginning of the lab, to one of highlighting customers benefits of their innovative designs during their final presentations.

Photos from our innovation & marketing business lab:





Operations Management:
In this business lab, the students formed teams and took on the roles of pen assembly business managers and operations engineers. The goal was to find ways to optimize the daily production of assembled pens and win contracts as the most competitive supplier. Many different approaches to maximizing productivity while minimizing cost were explored. They were introduced to professional tools such as BPMN (business process modeling notation) and BizAgi software, as well as layout and work-flow process design principles. Each team was in competition with the others and were required to "bid" for different assembly job contracts.

Photos from our pen assembly business lab:



Learning about how to describe operations processes, and experimentation with pen assembly learning curve.



Students experiment with different ideas and methods.