The MAP Program

the MAP Program:

What are MAP Projects?

Through the Multidisciplinary Action Projects (MAP), the  Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan offers select businesses — both domestic and international — an opportunity to benefit from the talents and knowledge of MBA students. The successful combination of critical thinking, multidisciplinary connections and real-world applications has led to solid recommendations and innovative solutions for organizations throughout the world.

Through the program, students work full-time with corporations and nonprofit organizations on projects that test students’ skills, produce valuable information for project sponsors, and stimulate exchanges that benefit business practitioners and scholars alike.

The program provides a capstone opportunity for a diverse team of talented MBA students to integrate the concepts they’ve acquired in their first year of graduate school. With teams of 4 to 6 students working together, the project scope is considerably broader than that of a typical internship.

If you are interested in participating in MAP this coming year, please visit the Ross MAP webpage.

Students will develop growth and go-to-market strategies in some re-engineering sectors. The students will consider factors such as product offering, pricing, location advantages and regulatory issues. They will also identify and profile potential business acquisition targets in order to support growth targets. Students will travel to Danbury, Conn. and New York City.

For this project, students will perform a market assessment for nutrition products that are manufactured in Cambodia’s Mekong region. The student team will profile the market in terms of the type of producers, their marketing schemes, the consumer base, distribution channels and other market elements

Students will develop a financial reporting and tracking model for the hospital in Fort Portal, Uganda. This is one in a series of projects involving MBA students and students from the University of Michigan Medical School to help the hospital become self-sustaining. For this project, the student MBA team will identify gaps in the current checks and balances. They will then recommend changes that will facilitate the transparency and comfort level of the accounting procedures.

The eye care system, with 8 hospitals across India, is frequently approached to partner with other institutions. And for Aravind to grow, the pace of partnerships has to increase. For this project, the student team will provide a blueprint for a separate group within Aravind whose sole function is to start up managed care (partnering) operations.

The MBA team will conduct fieldwork and interviews in major manufacturing regions of China to prioritize critical water issues, scan current resources in China, understand the leverage of global brands, and benchmark factory water management. The students will put a set of recommendations into a report for 3,000 corporate practitioners in the Business for Social Responsibility membership.

For this project, the students will assess the potential for agricultural sector investments in Tanzania and identify potential investments for Acumen. The report by the students will help Acumen as it begins to explore how market-based solutions can support small-scale farmers in Africa. The nonprofit, based in New York, thinks strategic investments in the agriculture sector can yield huge social impacts across Africa.

For this second Acumen project, the student team will study the disposal process of old computers in India that could be used in rural kiosks as part of an Acumen-funded for-profit company. The students also will find sustainable sources of computer hardware at the best price and work out a distribution strategy to the rural areas. Finally, the team will develop a servicing strategy for these computers.

The goal of this MAP project is to improve the distribution of insecticide treated bed nets to the base of the pyramid, particularly in rural areas. The students, who will travel to Ghana, will recommend operational improvements in terms of support and distribution. They will also develop recommendations on specific partnerships or innovative distribution models that local partners might employ in order to extend their reach into rural areas on a commercial basis.

 There are three goals for this project. The MAP team will help Scojo, which provides affordable reading glasses in developing countries, understand the market for eyeglass distribution and primary eye care in rural India. The team also will refine and enhance the foundation’s strategy to refer customers in need of comprehensive eye care to local clinics. And the students will begin an initial analysis on expanding Scojo Foundation’s product line to include rural optical shops.

The MAP team will work with two base of the pyramid ventures in the middle to late stages of incubation in rural Honduras. For each venture, team will evaluate its current status and make recommendations regarding the key next steps and the resources needed for these ventures to grow and flourish. The team also will evaluate what role CARE can play in facilitating future enterprise growth.

In order to achieve rapid growth, Scojo Foundation is exploring how best to design and implement a franchise model that leverages the infrastructure of existing organizations. Using this approach, Scojo Foundation sells its reading glasses distribution model to partner organizations, both in for-profit and non-profit sectors, which currently serve the Base of the Pyramid (BoP). By providing training and by serving as a source for quality, affordable reading glasses, Scojo Foundation enables partners to launch their own Scojo Foundation franchise, selling reading glasses to those in need.

The goals of the MAP project would be to analyze and evaluate this strategy for Scojo Foundation, develop an ROI for partners who might purchase this franchise model (which would be used as a marketing tool when selling this model), and provide recommendations for Scojo Foundation on the development, pricing, and strategy for the model. MAP team members will spend time in India to analyze the franchise partner model and will synthesize these experiences and the analysis into recommendations for Scojo Foundation.

Link to Proposal >>

HLL has identified rural areas as a strategic priority for its business and is focused on building a distinct competitive advantage in this sector. In order to achieve that company already developed a unique win-win initiative in the form of Shakti (launched in 2001). Shakti is an entirely new model designed to reach small villages, create livelihood opportunities and enhance the quality of life in communities that are not part of HLL’s traditional market reach.

The company is interested in building a business model for the same so that the same can be rolled out along in conjunction with the other components of Shakti’s network. This will help the company strengthen its offerings in the community and will also enable effective and focused communication in these otherwise media-dark areas.

Link to Proposal >>

The broad premises that underlie this project include: 

• CARE is committed to evolving its current non-profit NGO model to a model that incorporates both for-profit (revenue generating enterprises) and non-profit entities.
• CARE Central America believes that several of its existing projects have the potential make up an initial for-profit program portfolio.
• CARE Central America currently has some investment/venture capital with which to pursue the start-up of new or the enhancement of its current set of potential RGEs.

Expected Outcomes of this project is to provide greater detail on the key structural and operational issues that need to be explored as CARE develops an entity (most likely a holding company) to manage a (growing) portfolio of RGEs and to develop a set of criteria for evaluating the suitability of existing RGEs to be included in the CARE’s holding company entity

Key questions include: What does the management structure for the holding company and for individual RGEs look like? What steps does CARE need to take to transition from its current state to the proposed new entity? How would this structure manage the development of a robust portfolio of RGEs, including creating economies of scope and scale across existing RGEs, allocating funding to start-ups, and designing a process to divest mature or non-performing enterprises? What is the appropriate set of financial and societal criteria that can be used to evaluate new RGEs? This will be used to guide future investment decisions. 

Link to Proposal >>

Rwanda Formula - Clinton Foundation

The World Health Organization recommends that HIV-positive mothers bottle feed their infants. This is important for the infant's health, but creates a variety of challenges in a developing country like Rwanda. Some challenges are cultural. But others involve the current need to import formula (which creates balance of payments pressures) and lack of clean water supplies with which to mix powdered formula. CHAI, Partners in Health, and the Ministries of Health and Agriculture would like to develop a locally produced, non-water-based, infant formula solution for Rwanda. The MAP team will work with these local constituents to evaluate the feasibility of various options, work out logistical and financial issues, and develop a business plan to support this initiative.
2006 MAP Proposal

Aravind is the world's leading eye care hospital with over 225,000 surgeries in India in 2004. Aravind's mission is to eradicate needless blindness. This project is focused on a new method of expanding Aravind's reach: a management contract model in which someone outside of Aravind owns the hospital and Aravind supplies the management. The student team will focus on this growth strategy, and design methods for transferring Aravind's reputation, HR practices, and general work culture to a distant affiliate.
History of WDI and Aravind
2006 MAP Proposal

In response to the malaria epidemic in Ghana, and the current lack of effective malariaprevention and control methods, S.C. Johnson Wax donated 40 Mosquito Magnets® to the Cocoa Research Institute Ghana (CRIG) in Tafo, Ghana. It was demonstrated that the Mosquito Magnet®, a device traditionally sold to upmarket consumers in the US, significantly reduced the incidence of malaria in CRIG over the course of a three-year trial period. Such promising preliminary results have prompted SC Johnson to consider the viability of introducing the Mosquito Magnet® to the Ghanian market. In turn, SC Johnson sought the assistance of several students from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan to do market research about this base of the pyramid opportunity.

Nonprofit Enterprise and Self-sustainability Team (NESsT) is a non-governmental organization dedicated to finding lasting solutions to systemic poverty and social injustice through the development of social enterprises - mission-driven businesses that increase the financial sustainability and social change impact of civil society organizations. The project will evaluate the NESsT Venture Fund’s efforts in enabling NGO social enterprises through technical assistance and small grants. Two students will travel to Chile and two students will travel to Hungary to conduct case research on NESsT Venture Fund organizations. The teams will refine, implement, and analyze a social enterprise case questionnaire developed and tested by NESsT in their Case Study Series. The team’s research will form the foundation of four case studies to be edited by Nicole Etchart and Lee Davis of NESsT and Bob Kennedy and Kelly Janiga of WDI.
2006 MAP Proposal: Chile
2006 MAP Proposal: Hungary

Ideas and approaches to economic development and poverty alleviation continue to evolve. An increasingly important strategy employed by a number of NGOs involved in poverty alleviation is the use of revenue-generating enterprises (RGEs) to achieve social goals in a more economically sustainable manner.
During the Summer of 2005, CARE USA and the University of Michigan’s William Davidson Institute (WDI) partnered to examine the use of RGEs by NGOs to determine whether participation in such ventures will aid in accomplishing CARE’s mission to alleviate global poverty. The student consultancy team created a report to investigate the possible advantages and disadvantages to develop an RGE strategy in CARE USA.

In the past decade, donor priorities for development have shifted and in certain parts of the world securing funds for international development has become more difficult. Many organizations are facing budget cuts and seeking alternative sources to fund their programs. Programs that can sustain themselves are recognized as achieving a greater impact for their initial cost then those that need continued funding. Many non-profits are currently looking to achieve their social mission through the use of revenue generating enterprises (RGEs).
The summer internship team was in charge of elaborating a report in collaboration between the William Davidson Institute and CARE Central America and to explore different model structures to manage CARE’s ongoing efforts to both further programming and generate alternative sources of funding for the organization.
Internship Proposal

The aim of the project was to develop a framework and recommend a process for measuring the community-level impact of two BoP enterprises in India: Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL)’s Project Shakti, and the Scojo Foundation. Despite growing assertions surrounding the poverty alleviating effects of Base of the Pyramid (BoP) enterprise strategies, little has been done to actually measure the impacts (both positive and negative) of these strategies on the BoP consumers, entrepreneurs, producers and communities.
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