Digital for Impact Final Week: Reflecting on the journey

By Giri Kesavan (MBA2021)

Giri is the Co-President of The Tech & Media Club at London Business School. An MBA2021 student, he also chairs the degree & careers wide Technology Sector Steering Committee, working with the school, faculty, industry, alumni and Careers Centre on Technology education & careers. Giri works with The Wheeler Institute on content development, outreach and student-led collaborations. He is further involved with the school as an MBA Academic Representative and Peer Leader for Technology.

It’s hard to believe that we’re already in December! This week marked the end of our pilot course ‘Digital for Impact’ that connected us as LBS students with small businesses in emerging economies – to act as consultants focusing on leveraging technology for business development. It’s been quite the journey, both for students at LBS, our partners across Africa and the Experiential Learning team at the school!

Bringing together our work over the past few months, this week our student teams presented their recommendations to the client. My own team presented our key recommendations to Xente with key ideas on how to scale, expand and grow their business in Uganda. A truly international effort, our student team (across New York, London & Dubai) discussed the findings with Xente and engaged in a candid discussion. We talked through our ideas, went through sequencing, discussed key elements of our plan and truly had a 2-way conversation with the client on how to further their business vision.

The highlight of the week was our final plenary session, where we invited all clients, students and staff involved alike over one call! It was very humbling to listen to the stories of all our clients, the impact that student teams have had across the past few months and introspectively reflect on what we have learning through the process.

Across students, clients, faculty and staff, in one word – we reflected back on our own experiences in ‘Digital for Impact.’ To be honest, it was one of the very few times where we actually got a bit emotional in an LBS class. It was fantastic to see the impact that we had on our business partners and learn from each other. Check out our word cloud!

Reflecting back, this selection of words really struck a chord. We talk a lot about student impact at London Business School. It’s a key factor of all the degree programmes and the ability to create impact (both within the school and for the wider global community) is one of the key reasons I chose to do my MBA at LBS. The one-word reflections from the Digital for Impact course embody the key values of London Business School and what we mean by student impact.

Across the past 2 months, we worked in a global, cross-functional team of MBA, EMBA, Sloan, linking with small businesses, creating impact, discussing ideas, working across the school and learning through experience. Digital for Impact has undoubtedly been the highlight of my MBA programme at the school so far – and I’m very excited to see how such initiatives from Experiential Learning progress in the coming months!

A huge thank you to our wonderful faculty members Rajesh Chandy & Costas Markides, my fellow students and the whole Experiential Learning team at LBS for truly creating something special this year.

1 comment on “Digital for Impact Final Week: Reflecting on the journey”

  1. Nader Tavassoli Reply

    Thank you for sharing this Giri. It makes me immensely proud of LBS — our students, alumni, staff and faculty — to see this pilot/experimental elective have come together so quickly and with such wonderful results.

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