What do thirty second-year MBAs know about automotive technology? When it comes to communications and infotainment systems, more than you might think. That’s why Ford Motor Company executive vice president Mark Fields (MBA ’89) welcomed six teams of five students each to participate in a Winter Term project designed to help the automaker advance its delivery of consumer-friendly electronics.

“We call the project Cars 2.0,” says Fields. “We’ve had to change the culture here at Ford from ‘not invented here’ to taking ideas from wherever they come from,” he explains. “And we’re no longer just a car and truck company, but also a technology company.” Accordingly, the teams focused on out-of-the-box approaches to enhancing the way passengers experience mobile communications and computing.

Unlike most field study projects, this one was a requirement of HBS assistant professor Karim Lakhani’s second-year Managing Innovation course. He assigned all 105 students in his two sections to field projects with Ford, General Electric, NASA, and Nike. “Since the course is about innovation, the projects all involved areas in which the companies sought innovative solutions to new problems,” he explains.

At GE, students worked on developing a plan for shifting from large-scale energy generation projects to smaller-scale ones to take advantage of solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources. The NASA project challenged students to figure out ways for private firms to use the International Space Station for commercial research. Nike sought help with an innovative plan to involve more people in active lifestyles.

“MBA students are really good at analysis,” says Lakhani. “By the time they get to my class in the second year, they’ve read over 400 cases. These field projects give them a chance to experience real innovation problems firsthand and to go from analysis to creativity.”

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