The Pioneer Employer Challenge
Open to: Graduates
According to the Hitachi Foundation, “Pioneer Employers” are firms that create their own sustainable competitive advantage by investing in the wages, careers, and education of their own lower-wage employees. Their win-win practices create pathways out of poverty for workers while improving the company’s overall performance. Over the past three years the Foundation and its partners have identified and profiled over 60 such companies, and are now looking to current MBA students to take these vital business lessons into the classroom.
In this year’s Pioneer Employer Challenge, there will be two action-packed rounds. First round teams will perform a case analysis on a case profiling a game changing Pioneer Empoyer. They will also submit an assessment on how to incorporate similar cases and related materials into their MBA curricula.
A select group of teams will advance into the second round and be accepted as finalists into the Hitachi Foundation Curriculum Change Corps. This cohort will develop and implement a curriculum change plan for their schools in collaboration with each other, The Hitachi Foundation and Net Impact. Cash prizes will be received for each goal met, with extra incentives available to teams that make extraordinary progress.
A total of $10,000 is up for grabs with finalist teams invited to present at the 2012 Net Impact Conference in Baltimore, MD. There, teams will meet face to face in an exciting final case competition presided over by a distinguished panel of judges.
Timeline*
- March 13: Intent to Compete form due
- March 16: Introductory webinar (mandatory)
- March 9-16: Teams receive Curriculum Change Assessment and case for Case Analysis
- April 15: Case analysis and curriculum change assessments due
- End of April: Up to five finalist teams are invited to join the Curriculum Change Corps
- April – September: Curriculum Change Corps documents progress
- October 1: Finalists submit final curriculum change report
- October 2: Finalists receive final case
- October 26-27: Net Impact Conference and final winners named
*Timeline is subject to change. Participants will be notified in advance of any changes.
