Boston University MBAs Present Ideas to IBM

The students were selected from BU’s entire first-year class as winners of the IBM Business Challenge, a component of this year’s MBA curriculum.  After working on solutions to challenges IBM faces in big data, social business, and life science, the teams presented their answers to IBM executives, who picked three winning teams.  The teams then got to meet Watson, who probably had a lot of questions for them.

Watson is not a single computer, but a cluster of 90 IBM Power 750 servers.  Since learning to understand natural language and winning Jeapordy, Watson has been working on developing better diagnoses and treatments of cancer.

After touring the facility and hearing about Watson’s latest projects, the students met with Jeanette Horan, SMG alumna and IBM CIO. She explained how her experience at BU helped her become a leader at IBM.

The innovative collaboration between IBM and BU SMG was introduced this year to help students develop skills that extend beyond the classroom.  IBM meanwhile was hoping to benefit from seeing things from the fresh perspective.

The first of the three teams suggested a way for biopharmaceutical companies to reduce the risk of a “patent cliff.”  The second suggested a strategy to combat homelessness in Boston using big data.  The third suggested a new model for IBM’s social business platform.  Horan questioned each team and was ultimately impressed by the students’ work.

“Presenting to the IBM executives was a great experience to get feedback outside of the academic setting,” said one of the participating students, Liz Nerad. “The best part was that the IBM executives interjected with questions or comments along the way, which probably more accurately reflects how real-world proposals go. The instant feedback forced us to be quick on our feet to answer accordingly in that exact moment.”