Upcoming session:

The upcoming strategy session is for SCE members only. With the help of EUREOS, Port of Rotterdam will provide the SCE members with cases of strategic challenges they are dealing with right now. The Port of Rotterdam is forced to be innovative in order to stay ahead of the modern technologies in the logistics world. They are always dealing with future issues and they encourage innovativeness and creativity from students. At the beginning of February 20 SCE members will challenge themselves to write a consultancy report for the Port of Rotterdam based on a case assignment. Two weeks later they will present their report to the Port of Rotterdam.

In March the following session will take place, which is also exclusively for the current SCE members. Berenschot will provide real life cases and judge the way the students deal with consulting for a company while they only have basic knowledge and information available about the company. This often happens in the consultancy world and it is extremely challenging to work with a certain amount of information in a short period of time.

Previous sessions:

In November 2011 Paul Pietersma from Berenschot provided the highly exclusive SCE members with a masterclass on strategy consulting. We were hosted at their headquarters where we could take a look at their offices and get a preview inside the world of consultancy. In the afternoon an interactive masterclass took place based on the ‘Berenschot formula’ to prepare the students for a year full of consultancy. At this intensive kick-off, the consulting skills of the students were sharpened and the start of the SCE year was a fact.

Earlier this year there was a strategy session cycle on behalf of Fairsupport which is known for the ’wereldwinkel’ and ‘waar’ shops. They are a business selling only fair trade products. Taking part in the fair trade sector, they have a couple of challenging strategic issues they are dealing with, mostly because of the reputation of fair trade products in the Netherlands. The session was for ESE master students only since they could gain extra points for their exam. The strategic issues were challenging for the students which saw to it that the presentations varied a lot from one another. Some of the cases were really interesting for Fairsupport and they were pleased to see the input of the students and the creative reports some teams had written.

Joris Blankers came to the Strategy Club of Erasmus on behalf of one of his companies, called ‘De Ondernemerstafel’. He is currently doing research on what is essential to know if you are an entrepreneur right now, his ultimate goal being producing the Entrepreneurial Canon. Joris Blankers asked our SCE members to update his entrepreneurial principles with today’s knowledge and challenged them to come up with the best way to connect this knowledge to entrepreneurs.
Our members went to work, they consulted entrepreneurs, EUR professors and consultants (amongst others Berenschot and Accenture Strategy Consulting). At the end of the project the teams came up with differing presentations based on their reports: their recommendations ranged from producing a book with a carnival theme to using a railroad-shaped framework for the principles. Needless to say, our client was rather pleased with the reports and is currently processing the input into the ‘Erasmus Collegereeks’ taking place later this year.

Hendrik Halbe, the director of HOPE (Holland Program on Entrepreneurship) approached the SCE with a strategic assignment. He requested the SCE members to find out what the best strategy was to launch a new platform called ‘Get Challenged’. More specifically, he asked us: “How can we connect entrepreneurial top students to growth companies?”. So the SCE members brainstormed and went to work out their concepts with their teams. The SCE members put in a lot of effort and after two weeks they presented some great ideas wich were well received by HOPE.