The Business Project is an important part of the CEMS programme, and every year CEMS honours the best project amongst all 33 member schools. From a pool of over 200 projects, this year’s winning team came from NHH Norwegian School of Economics.

Higher education can create an impact

CEMS Responsibility Week was kicked off at NHH this week with a panel discussion on how the Higher Education Sector impacts global efforts to meet the SDGs and the Paris Agreement.

ABB - Knowledge Management

The team winning the CEMS Business Project of the Year Award 2020 consisted of students from three different CEMS schools, who spent their CEMS semester abroad at NHH in the Spring term 2020.  Theresa Lindorfer (WU - Vienna University of Economics & Business), Zuzanna Cegielska (SGH Warsaw School of Economics) and Sara Gieb (Nova School of Business and Economics), won the award for their considerable efforts to address the challenges and expectations set out by CEMS Corporate Partner ABB for their ABB – Knowledge Management project.

Took a prestigious international master’s degree – now PR officer

A record number of students are taking an international master’s degree at NHH. Sunniva Adam took a CEMS master’s degree and landed a job as PR officer for Norway’s contribution to the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Their winning project was undertaken in close collaboration with their ABB corporate mentor for the project, Oliver Lawrenz. He is Group Vice President, Marketing and Sales Performance Management from ABB’s Zurich headquarters. The academic mentor was Julio C. Goez from the Department of Business and Management Science, NHH.

‘It was a very nice experience working with Oliver and Julio, who were excellent mentors, and fabulous teammates on a project which at first was very challenging to us. It definitely kept us busy during quarantine time but it’s nice to see the work has paid off,’ the students say.

Outstanding job

The ABB brief required the students to review a business case for creating a new online community for customers of Smart Home solutions from its Busch-Jaeger brand, based in Luedenscheid, Germany. The aim was to collect market insights and data, and turn that data into actionable items. The team proposed a knowledge management framework including measures and KPIs.

Oliver Lawrenz, corporate mentor of the project, said: "We believe in working with next generation thinkers and place great importance on adopting an ‘outside-in’ viewpoint to transform and ensure we deliver the right solutions for our customers."

The real win

Taking a double degree in finance

‘It is perhaps the best way to acquire as much knowledge as possible in a master’s degree,’ says Sabrina Maria Erlacher. She and Beatriz Soares Magalhães are taking a double degree at NHH and Nova.

Oliver Lawrenz says that ABB are looking forward to conducting more projects in 2021 with CEMS NHH and other CEMS schools.

Theresa Lindorfer, Zuzanna Cegielska and Sara Gieb praised Oliver and ABB for involving CEMS students in addressing important company challenges. They also expressed appreciation for the job satisfaction they have experienced through working on their winning ABB project.

‘For us the real win was to see ABB appreciate our solutions as we always wanted to create something of a real value. Apart from that, the project allowed us to develop a friendship, which stayed beyond the final presentation of the project’.

Contribution to global prestige

NHH is very proud of their CEMS students, Jan I. Haaland, CEMS Academic Director at NHH, says.

Yara joins CEMS – the Global Alliance in Management Education

With Yara onboard as a CEMS Corporate Partner, alongside Equinor, NHH has now secured two very strong Norwegian multinational companies as partners in the CEMS alliance.

`To win the CEMS Business Project of the Year Award, in fierce competition with teams from top business schools around the world, really shows the high quality of the students’ work. It also demonstrates how relevant such projects can be for the corporate partners.  Students from NHH have made it to the final round before, but never to the very top´.

The winning team’s high quality of work was also praised by the global Chair of CEMS, Professor Gregory Whitwell from the University of Sydney Business School, in his congratulatory message to the students and their mentors:

`Your project has been chosen by the Academic Directors of the member schools to be an outstanding example of excellence, contributing to the global prestige of our Alliance, and giving a shining example of what our community is delivering in terms of academic distinction´.

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