The Small Business
Institute Program and Your Firm
The NJIT SBI Program is part of a national
program of small business consulting services designed to match graduate
students' interests with small manufacturing firms' needs for assistance in
management, marketing, and business analysis through individualized consulting
services.
To participate in this program, you must make
an application. Each application for consulting services combined with those
from other firms and presented to the entire class in a meeting where the
students make decisions on which firms they want as consulting clients.
Within one
week, the students that selected your firm will contact you and arrange for a
first meeting. This first meeting and subsequent meetings within the next two
weeks will be designed to reach a defined statement of work to be performed.
This statement will constitute the contract between you and the students.
The students will then proceed to carry out
the work required and prepare a final report of their efforts. The final report
will be reviewed and graded by the SBI director and, if it is satisfactory, the
students will give the final report to you as both an oral presentation and a
written report. A copy of the report will also be given to the NJMEP and your
NJMEP field specialist. All of these copies are kept in locked files to
assure confidentiality.
The SBI program operates within the structure
of the normal work schedule of New Jersey Institute of Technology's graduate
management education program. What this means is that all projects begin and
reach completion within the period of a one-semester course. Since the academic
schedule has two semesters each year, the cases are begun either in September
or January and are completed in December or May respectively. Although there is
a degree of inflexibility in the start and finish dates, at least you can be
guaranteed that the work will be completed by the end of the semester.
Your primary contact with the SBI program
will be the students that contact and work with you. They will give you their
names and telephone numbers and provide a signed confidentiality agreement.
Additional information about the national SBI
program can be found at: http://www.smallbusinessinstitute.org.
If you have any additional questions or
comments regarding the SBI program, please feel free
to ask your NJMEP field specialist or contact Bruce
A. Kirchhoff, Director at:
Kirchhoff@njit.edu.