Cross-uni organization helps companies create happy elderly communities and sell ugly vegetables
A construction container by the old police station in Frederiksberg is home to Millennial Consulting. This organization encourages students with different academic backgrounds from a range of Danish universities to come up with ideas on how to improve life for elderly people and how to sell ugly tossed vegetables.
Millennial Consulting is a student-run consulting organization that connects students from different academic backgrounds from various universities all around Denmark, uniting them with a common goal: To create impact and change for small and medium-sized enterprises.
The organization is a part of Student & Innovation House on Howitzvej in Copenhagen, which is currently experiencing a major transformation. So right now, Millennial Consulting is operating from a construction container parked on the building site.
“We and the construction workers have separate containers on the site, but every day we talk to the workers about their progress, and sometimes we borrow some milk for our coffee,” Director of Student & Innovation House, Maria Flora Andersen says laughing.
To achieve their common goal of creating impact and change, the students at Millennial Consulting use their academic, scientific and theoretical knowledge from their studies to provide companies with useful consulting.
Since the organization is based on unity between students from different academical areas from various universities, they can solve a range of corporate problems.
“Our forthcoming projects are very diverse. One of them involves the company Stenlille Udvikling Aps, which wants us to explore the scope for developing an elderly community in Denmark that will improve the residents’ quality of life,” CBS student and Team Leader at Millennial Consulting, Luis Mariscal says and continues:
“Another project is the company GRIM, located in Copenhagen, which sells vegetables discarded due to cosmetic flaws. They want our help to make a marketing expansion plan spanning other European cities.”
According to Luis Mariscal, the diversity of the students’ theoretical skills, and the assignments they solve are advantageous for Millennial Consulting.
“I think that one of Millennial Consulting’s greatest strengths is the diversity of the students’ academic backgrounds. We’ve not only worked with students from CBS who have knowledge about business. We’ve also worked with students studying sociology and anthropology,” he says.
“So, through the diverse skills and different academic backgrounds, we can make a change and move towards the same common goal.”
“We know something else”
Although Millennial Consulting provides all sorts of theoretical and academical guidance for different enterprises, the consultants are still students. Therefore, they might not have the same practical experience as a company’s owners and employees.
But according to Maria Flora Andersen, this is not a problem.
“We don’t pretend to know more about the company’s operations than they do because, of course, we don’t. But we know something else,” she says and continues:
“Many small and medium-sized companies don’t have any academics employed, and they struggle a great deal with some of the more strategic and analytic cases. They have ideas on how to create growth, but they don’t have the capacity, the knowledge or the talent to realize these ideas themselves. That’s why they request our assistance.”
It is safe to say that Millennial Consulting is not the only management consultant organization in the market. But according to Luis Mariscal, plenty of parameters differentiate the student-driven organization from the professionals.
“Many small and medium-sized companies do not necessarily have the resources to hire professional consulting firms. But they only have to pay a small fee to use our services,” he explains.
And in return, the companies get four part-time student consultants to help them during a 10-week project while they focus on solving urgent issues to stimulate corporate growth and expand company visions.
A win-win situation
Millennial Consulting was conceived within Student & Innovation House, and Luis Mariscal has been a part of the organization since its very beginning.
He had always wondered what being a consultant would be like, so last year he started as a student consultant, and now he’s a team leader in the organization, taking care of the communication associated with new clients.
In other words, Luis Mariscal now knows what consulting is like and precisely how student consultants can benefit. And according to him, it seems like a win-win situation.
“As a student consultant, you get to attend different challenging hands-on workshops presented by experienced consultants, and we also assist the students by giving them mentors who help them with their various projects,” he says.
“Therefore, not only can they use their theoretic knowledge in practice, they also learn what being a consultant is all about.”
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