Action Learning

Host an Action Learning project

Action Learning hosts are integral members of a two-way educational journey; students gain real-world experiences while hosts gain sophisticated insights, custom-tailored to their unique business challenges. By guiding students through a well-scoped project, hosts receive access to motivated, hard-working future leaders eager to make their mark on your company, and the world. 

Benefits for hosts include:

  • Opportunity to explore critical business concerns with student teams in 20+ Action Learning labs covering multiple regions, industries, and interdisciplinary topics
  • Fresh perspective from students with a wide variety of educational, professional, and cultural backgrounds
  • Access to world-class MIT expertise
  • Actionable solutions to business challenges
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hosts have worked on projects with our students since 1999.

Interested in becoming a host? click here

Learn from the best

Over a thousand organizations, ranging from startups and nonprofits to Fortune 500 businesses and industry leaders, have served as hosts for MIT Sloan Action Learning projects. Recognizing the unique value proposition this program provides in both MIT’s pool of exceptional students and the guidance of MIT’s world-renowned faculty, our host companies receive holistic and actionable recommendations from their student teams. 

Hosts have the opportunity to work with students in a variety of degree programs, including:

  • Executive MBA (EMBA)
  • Leaders in Global Operations (LGO)
  • MBA
  • Master of Business Analytics (MBAn) 
  • Master of Finance (MFin)
  • Sloan Fellows MBA (SFMBA)
  • Undergraduate

Action Learning teams can also include students across MIT, Harvard, and Wellesley.

Explore critical business concerns

MIT Sloan Action Learning labs prepare students to take on a wide range of challenges, including strategy, marketing, growth, operations, social responsibility, and more. Hosts can choose among labs grounded in specific geographies, functional areas (such as finance or analytics), or interdisciplinary subjects (such as entrepreneurship or sustainability). 

Explore our labs and find the right fit 

Gain perspective 

Professional, grounded, and inventive, MIT Sloan Action Learning students objectively assess the challenges hosts present and provide specific, actionable solutions. Hosts report gaining value both from specific projects and from the connections they make, to MIT’s cutting-edge business community.

Kari Mailloux | Director of strategic initiatives, Hutchinson Community Foundation
The students’ outside perspective and curiosity validated some of the ideas that have been on the table for a while around housing, illuminating new gaps and potential for progress and collaboration.

Take action

Interested hosts should have a commitment to mentoring students. Companies are expected to scope a project with both business impact and learning potential—supported by top executives—and to designate a project leader to guide the student team. Past hosts have effusively confirmed that the benefits are well worth the investment. 

For more information, please contact actionlearning@mit.edu  - we would love to talk to you.

Guidelines for host organizations

Action Learning projects are not consulting projects, and they are not internships. At their core, these opportunities provide students with an experiential learning opportunity; a chance to put into practice what they’ve learned in their professional lives and through their MIT Sloan coursework. The hosts gain valuable insights and often, an actionable recommendation.

Hosts are expected to:

  • Provide project sponsorship at the executive level; involvement from senior leadership is required.
  • Develop a project tailored to the area of study, scope and time constraints of the class.
  • Ensure the participation of sponsors and stakeholders in project milestone events, such as team presentations.
  • Select a project lead who is invested in the success of the project; this person should:
    • Engage with student teams on a regular basis
    • Facilitate introductions to key internal and external stakeholders
    • Provide relevant data, documents, and information
    • Deliver timely feedback to student teams

To get started:

  1. Identify what business challenge you would like MIT students to address
  2. Review the portfolio of Action Learning labs and identify the ones that seem most relevant
  3. Contact actionlearning@mit.edu to learn more

We look forward to working with you!

Neel Patel | Senior vice president for public-private strategy and partnerships, Citi Ventures
Working with the students at MIT Sloan was an engaging and enjoyable experience. We greatly appreciated their thoughtful analysis of how City Builder could be deployed to aid investors in identifying investment opportunities that align with ESG criteria and goals.

Frequently asked questions