BUSINESS graduates are facing increasing demands in the workplace. Upon entering employment, they are expected to consistently produce effective results in an environment of constant change and complexity.
To be successful, business graduates do not just require specialisation and discipline knowledge, but a set of well-developed ‘generic skills’ such as skills for social and professional communication, teamwork and collaboration, analysis and critical thinking, problem solving, conceptual and technical competence, and personal integrity.
The Swinburne Business Capstone Programme is designed with this in mind. Consisting of two 12-week modules, the Business Capstone Programme requires students to synthesise their business knowledge to demonstrate competency in simulated and real business settings. It serves as a check point for all final-year business students to ensure that they are work ready and will make an impact in the workplace.
In the Capstone 1 module, also called the Advanced Innovative Business Practice, students learn to maximise their contributions to work teams by assessing their own strengths competencies and leveraging on the capacities of others. Working in small multidisciplinary work teams, they complete a series of simulated challenges to achieve the triple bottom line for a business venture.
Firstly, students generate ideas for an entrepreneurial venture for their teams. Based on their team profile, they select the best idea generated by team members and develop it into a viable business proposition. Finally, teams perform critical evaluation of industry and business opportunities to ensure that the project is marketable, financially sound and able to meet social and ethical obligations.
In the Capstone 2 module, also called the Industry Consulting Project (ICP), students act as consultants for clients from the industry. Working in multi- disciplinary teams, they manage a real-world project from initial client brief to fulfilment of project deliverables to clients.
In the past, students have worked on diverse business projects relating to market research, market analysis, strategy formulation, tourism, entrepreneurship, social sustainability, human resources, business modelling, and digital solutions.
In the final phase of these capstone projects, students present their work to a panel of academics and industry representatives.
These two modules require students to present their ideas to various relevant stakeholders through different modes of communication, including elevator pitches, team oral presentations, visual images and professional written reports. The assignments challenge students to think creatively and to deliver contextually relevant solutions to specific stakeholder groups.
Throughout the process, they engage in constant self-reflections to internalise insights learned from their experiences. They also conduct peer reviews to give feedback to each other so as to improve themselves and their teams.
To date, Swinburne business students in this ICP capstone module have worked with well-known local and international, profit and non-profit organisations such as Hilton, Nestle, X-Fab, Sarawak Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Cahya Mata Sarawak, Sarawak Forestry, Sarawak Convention Bureau, Sarawak Tourism Board, Astro, Yayasan Sarawak, tHe Spring, Plaza Merdeka, and Kuching North City Commission (DBKU).
The capstones are a unique component of Swinburne’s business programme in a number of ways. First, they enable students to integrate all aspects of their business education and to apply it in a synergistic way to real world scenarios. Second, they help students develop awareness of their own personal strengths and capacities, and cultivate their ability to leverage on the strengths and resources of others in their professional and social networks.
Third, they challenge students to be highly adaptive to changing environments and work demands, to thrive in unfamiliar situations and to constantly learn from their experiences. Finally, by emphasising the layer of generic skills on top of discipline knowledge, the programme caps a holistic business education that ensures our graduates are able to transition from the classroom to the workplace.
Though challenging, students have found the capstones to be a highly rewarding experience and are beneficial in giving them an edge in their business career.
Dr Rodney Lim is a lecturer in marketing and e-commerce at the Faculty of Business and Design, Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak campus.