Integrated Capstone Experience

I wanted to take a moment to write about Kelley’s “Integrated Capstone Experience” – it’s a class unique to the Kelley program. For some business schools, the first year requires students to take classes related to business fundamentals – sometimes called business “foundational” or “core” classes. At Kelley, we have the required core classes but what really pulls it all together is the integrated capstone class – the goal of the class is to integrate our learnings to make meaningful and impactful business decisions. The class is structured so that you study several business cases (each case has a theme!) and then students are required to engage in a case study discussion and then there’s an optional debrief.

What’s unique about the class is that students are required participate during case study discussions and they are cold called on while in class (if no one volunteers to chat). While this seems daunting for some – this encouraged everyone to partake. Everyone in class comes from varying levels of work experience and different business backgrounds so the contributions that were made were invaluable for all of us to learn from.

One of my favorite case studies was about a startup-up referenced as “SafeLens” – this case was about two entrepreneurs who enter the farming market with their technology that would help reduce farmers from having to debeak chickens, allow them to have free-range chickens, and theoretically, increase egg production. Some classmates quoted this tech as a “contact lens for chickens” and in the class, we had a ton of rich discussions about the value proposition and how to approach pricing a new product that has not been used by the market, and more! 

By the end of the quarter, I was amazed by the experience, and I thought it was a great way to get students to exercise all that they’ve learned in their first year. If you’re in the Kelley Direct MBA program and in your first year, you have this to look forward to! 

That being said, I can finally say I’ve completed my first year at Kelley and am excited for the second and final year!