The purpose of the tour was for us to work in groups to create our own start-ups and present a pitch at the end. The aim was to be as realistic to a real start-up incubator as possible in the short time frame we had. To facilitate this, the tour incorporated studying at some of the best US universities and meeting industry experts. Before the tour even started, we went to Boston Consulting Group Digital Ventures in Sydney and learnt how they create start-ups and disruptive ideas for some of the largest businesses in the world.
In New York, after we spent time eating the food and exploring the city, we spent time studying at NYU Stern Business School. We learnt about how to gain inspiration and create a start-up. Afterwards, we talked to the industry – for example, we went to the New York Tech Meetup and watched start-ups pitch to investors, and we went to the Natural History Museum to learn about how they gain consumer intelligence. Universities often talk about mixing theory with practical experience and this tour does it in spades. There wasn’t a single thing we learnt that wasn’t directly corroborated either by talking to start-up founders, or seen through our workshops at Boston Consulting group.
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| Visiting the Australian Embassy in New York |
In terms of the course content, it is a course on design thinking, which is essentially a methodology about how to solve complex problems. Design thinking is particularly useful for start-ups due to the difficulty in conceptualising and implementing a new product. However, this course’s breadth is far beyond just start-ups. It sounds cliché, but studying design thinking really does introduce you to a new way of solving problems. The high-level approach to problem solving really makes it appropriate for just about any business school student, and it is really divergent from any traditional unit.
This experience is an easy sell for anyone interested in start-ups or entrepreneurship. Just the experience of going to New York and DC, going to visit Wall Street, the 9/11 Museum, the Met, the Museum of Modern Art, the Capitol building and millions more makes it all worth it. New York has so many things for anyone to enjoy, from the food to the entertainment to the history. It isn’t a cliché that you really learn so much from travelling. I can barely speak to the emotion you feel in the 9/11 museum and memorial, or how beautiful The Starry Night is in the Museum of Modern Art, or how great the waffles for breakfast were. I can barely remember all the things I did!
This was the University of Sydney’s first time running this tour, and I think I speak for all of us who attended that it was a resounding success. The opportunity to do a business elective and get credit points to your degree, study and experience the US, and meet some very talented people was a very rewarding experience.
Written by Joshua Rizk
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