Give Them Something That Belongs to Them

A personal project can do more for a student than any case study ever will.

Business schools keep giving students problems that have nothing to do with their lives. They work on cases about companies they do not care about, in markets they will never set foot in, solving challenges that belong to someone else. Then we act surprised when the learning does not stick. It’s simple. You cannot develop real judgement by role playing someone else’s job.

Here’s the fix. Every student should start school with a personal project. Not a passion manifesto or a dream board. A concrete problem or idea they can investigate, build, test, and refine over the entire degree. It does not need to be brilliant. It just needs to be theirs.

This project becomes the one place where everything they learn can land. Strategy forces them to make choices. Marketing forces them to explain themselves. Finance forces them to stop hand waving. Leadership forces them to own decisions. Over time the project turns into evidence of who they are and how they think. And when it comes to job hunting, evidence beats résumés every time. They can put it on their portfolio site (I do a lot of out of class clinics on job search and this is a cornerstone), send it in a cold email, walk a recruiter through it, and say here is the work that proves I am worth your time.

I have started introducing this idea quietly in my own classes. Nothing formal, no banners, just a simple rule: link the assignment to something that actually matters to you. The impact is immediate. Students stop decorating answers and start thinking. They argue with themselves. They push back. They take risks. And from a teaching standpoint, it is a relief. You finally get to see their instincts, not their compliance. When the work belongs to them, the learning does too.