Shana Penna, GMBA Class of 2016

The China Lab, a program that facilitates the collaboration of students from Tsinghua University and MIT Sloan, provides students with a China-focused project. The program concluded in April ’16 at MIT’s Cambridge, Massachusetts campus. Students who participated were able to attend classes while visiting MIT, and one of these classes was Professor Kurzina’s Managing in Adversity. The class was just one of the highlights of the week at MIT, as it showed Tsinghua students the significance of being a “Sloanie”, as Professor Kurzina called MIT Sloan students, in addition to letting them interact directly with business leaders and students, all while introducing students to the strength of the MIT Sloan teaching method. 

Professor Kurzina began his class with a recap of the prior lesson, provoking students to think about their take on the class. Students cooperated, reaffirming the lesson’s content. After the review, the professor picked a random student to present the new case. The cases for the two classes focused on Crane & Co. and Verizon, New England. Both companies went through challenging times, with Crane & Co. ultimately serving as a success story, and Verizon seeking assistance with a current challenge. As the student explained the case, as well as the corporate decision process, the business leader looked on, listening intently. Current Crane & Co. CEO Stephen Defalco was present, while board member and BCG female pioneer Sandra Moose looked on during the Verizon, New England case discussion.

After the student presented the case, the CEO/BCG Partner stood up and gave their takes on the respective situations. In both instances, they turned it back on the class, asking students to give ideas on what they would do to solve the issues. Crane & Co. was a luxury card manufacturer from the Berkshires (western Massachusetts) who also made paper for government-issued currencies; their dilemma: losing money in the card manufacturing plants. Stephen Defalco, former McKinsey consultant, had an ingenius solution. He contacted Hallmark Cards and acquired them for a mere 5 million dollars, thus diversifying Crane from exclusively luxury markets. Once that division was no longer operating at a loss, he gave the card division of Crane & Co. directly to the employees, with the company only to maintain the currency plant. He may have diverged Crane & Co. from their initial product, but in so doing he also saved the company for the family, who retained a 49% stake.

Verizon faced many challenges in the United States, from fierce competition to a lack of infrastructure in cities for its FIOS product. FIOS is a fiber optic solution for phone, internet, and cable. Verizon introduced this into the market and soon realized the infrastructure of many older cities, like Boston and Philadelphia, was not conducive to the product. In turn, Verizon focused its efforts in the suburban residential areas. Just recently, Boston announced that to continue to be an innovative and technological leader it must overhaul its infrastructure, meaning Verizon could now enter the Boston market. The problem was that Boston is a diverse city, and Verizon did not know how to attract its low income users, so Sandra Moose was at MIT asking for advice. Students provided insights from their own experiences into what would attract low-income users to Verizon FIOS, while the BCG Partner also made attentive note of their perspectives.

Professor Peter Kurzina welcomes China Lab students to an immersive Sloan case experience.

Professor Kurzina’s class provided an understanding of the Sloan method of teaching, while also introducing Tsinghua students to the resources and strengths of an elite U.S. business school. Watching the interactions amongst the students helped us to understand the thought process developed by an MIT Sloan education. In the end, it also made us as Tsinghua students proud to be affiliated with such a sister program and, ultimately, thankful to be enriched by both the Tsinghua and MIT dimensions of the China Lab experience as a whole.