MBA Consulting Project: Solving Foundational Problems for Future Growth with Boeing
The MBA Consulting Project (MCP) is one of the program’s most distinctive experiences—a bridge between academic rigour and real-world impact. It brings together talented MBA candidates and leading organisations to explore meaningful business challenges with fresh perspectives, data-backed recommendations, and frameworks grounded in research.
Beyond delivering recommendations, MCP sharpens how students think: it trains them to zoom out from immediate KPIs, consider long-term value and ecosystem dynamics, and work shoulder-to-shoulder with industry partners to co-create pathways for innovation and sustainable growth. It is experiential, applied, and deeply collaborative—designed to help students practice leadership, sharpen critical thinking, and learn what it means to create value in uncertain, fast-evolving environments.
A recent engagement exemplified this spirit of collaboration and learning. A team of NUS MBA students – Divyesh Karnavat, Suraj Rikhraj, Yusuke Yoshida, Debbie Foo, Danny Christian, and Thomas LaMonte —supervised by Professor Prem Shamdasani, partnered with the global aerospace leader – Boeing to explore a strategic topic over the course of the project.
The team at Boeing, being technical professionals from a development environment, wanted to tap into a diverse pool of business talent to approach complex aviation problems from fresh strategic and commercial angles. Their expectation was to accelerate learning from industry challenges by pairing students – and hypothesis-led analysis with Boeing’s operational context. This collaboration allowed the Boeing team to gain insights into the project scope, while offering students hands-on exposure to real corporate decision-making.
Having to take a step back from their commercial background, which was primarily driven by immediate P&L and operational KPIs challenged the NUS MBA team as the project demanded a mindset shift to appreciate the nuance of long-term strategic value. The team had to still lean onto their existing professional experiences, yet applying an academic lens to real-world complexity, balancing qualitative insights with quantitative evidence, and framing recommendations—not just immediate outcomes.
An unexpected ‘aha’ moment for the NUS MBA team was seeing the genuine curiosity from the Boeing team, which motivated the team to dig deeper, leveraging frameworks provided by the MBA program that helped the team to organise research, segment stakeholders, and evaluate scenarios.
Similarly, the Boeing team was pleasantly surprised by the NUS MBA team’s innovative mindset. Despite the niche topic without lots of structured data available, the NUS team managed to integrate data sources from nearly every country concisely and even came up with their own metrics to make different regions of the world comparable to each other.
This interaction reinforced the value of curiosity in leadership and showed the team that impactful work isn’t always tied to immediate revenue generation—sometimes it’s about solving the complex, foundational problems that enable future growth. The NUS MBA team was recognised for their professionalism, high quality and timely delivery, and their commitment to inclusive collaboration across internal stakeholders.
Advice from the team for future MBA candidates doing MCP with industry partners: Don’t underestimate the engagement. Even if you have prior consulting experience, every organisation has a unique heartbeat. Lean into the client’s curiosity—if they are engaged, it will drive your team to go further than you initially planned.
Partnering with a business school gives the Boeing Team the opportunity to conduct in-depth business research that goes far beyond what their team of researchers with technical background could achieve on their own. It brought fresh perspectives into the team’s everyday work and helped establish relations with potential future candidates early on. It proved that even in an organisation of that scale, there is a strong appetite for fresh, external viewpoints.
The NUS MBA Consulting Project is more than a capstone project – it challenges students to think expansively, collaborate responsibly, and deliver insights that matter. The Boeing engagement highlighted what makes the experience special: rigorous analysis, purposeful frameworks, and a shared curiosity that drives development and innovation.
