Action Learning
"Mens et Manus" — MIT's motto translates from the Latin to "Mind and Hand." This “learning by doing” mindset permeates the MIT Sloan experience. It fills the gap between what our students know and what they will need to know to make a powerful impact in their chosen careers.
Action Learning opportunities at MIT Sloan run a wide gamut. Our fully equipped, state-of-the-art trading room was the first-ever built on a university campus. MIT Sloan is the leader in Action Learning among top-tier management schools since introducing the Entrepreneurship Lab (E-Lab) in the late 1980s. The E-Lab pairs student teams with local startups for targeted consulting. These courses engage not only MIT Sloan faculty but also local entrepreneurs for their unique perspectives. In our more global Letter Labs, the learning environment extends into the villages, cities, commerce centers, and boardrooms of the international marketplace. Through Action Learning at MIT Sloan, students have the opportunity to travel to strategic global business regions as varied as Silicon Valley and sub-Saharan Africa and to consult with some of the world’s most respected industry, government, and high-tech leaders — and with leaders in the making.
“We’re very interdisciplinary. Among the faculty in the group are an economist, a political scientist, a sociologist, and an industrial relations specialist. We’ve always made a big effort to be open to a variety of perspectives, but also to go beyond being open to them, to want to bring them in, because it makes for a richer environment.”
“Our mission, along with the mission of MIT Sloan, is to both develop leaders who make a difference in the world, and also to make a contribution to thinking about the topic of leadership.”
“At MIT Sloan you have a lot of opportunities to explore entrepreneurship. Especially in a place like Kampala where you have a lot of development, entrepreneurship can be very exciting.”
“Because of the diversity of our backgrounds, when we hit the ground in Tanzania it almost was a natural play where different people assume different roles.”
“I love being in a place that is such a nexus of people and ideas — people coming to learn something new and to define themselves. Being a part of that process is a real honor and a real gift.”
“One of the reasons I came to Sloan was because I wanted to be at a top MBA institution worldwide. But I also wanted access to working with the latest innovations and the highest technology that was coming out of the MIT labs.”
“For 35 years, we’ve been studying how companies get value from information. … We try to help organizations take a more holistic view of what they are trying to do.”
“These companies are really excited to work with MIT students.They reach out to the community to set up these projects and are great to work with. They give us access to all their resources and are very open to us.”
“The conditions in the neighborhoods we were visiting were different than what we realized before getting there. Beyond that, what was surprising was that there weren’t surprises!”
“The assistant to the CEO was like our host mom while we were there. She arranged our housing for us, she took us out to her friend’s game farm, and we got driven around in 4x4s. She was just wonderful to meet, and we developed a personal as well as professional relationship with her.”
“I knew about American business, but not enough about what’s really become a global economy. … You can read about it all you want, but there’s no substitute for being there and seeing the context and seeing how completely different these [other countries] are.”
"After we gave our recommendations, the great part was that the very next day the CEO was in the boardroom implementing them with his top vice presidents."
“I came to Sloan because of its high rankings within the sustainability community, specifically the professors. The S-Lab class itself is part of what drew me to Sloan. And the reason I came to business school was to learn the business speak that really is what connects with people."
“It was really rewarding that they wanted to know what we thought. We left there being fairly certain that they will do some of the things that we suggested.”
“We’ve always made a big effort to be interdisciplinary and to be open to a variety of perspectives, but also to go beyond being open to them, to want to bring them in, because it makes for a richer environment.”
