Project Summary by Chris Anderson
Kelley MBA 2022 Candidate
This past spring, the Master’s in Business Administration and Master’s in Health Administration students collaborated on a project for the Kelley Business of Life Sciences Global Events and Trends Impacting the Life Sciences Industry course. Teams consisted of six to seven members – two MBAs and the rest being MHAs – where each team was tasked with providing a strategic recommendation for Reckitt’s Mead Johnson brand.
Mead Johnson, a division of Reckitt, infant formula, Enfamil.
Reckitt, a global leading consumer health, hygiene, and nutrition company, added infant nutrition brands to their portfolio by acquiring Mead Johnson in June 2017. The company aims to give access to high quality hygiene, wellness, and nourishment to as many people around the world as possible and aiming to do so by remain a firm commitment to product quality and scientific excellence. By acquiring Mead Johnson, Reckitt began taking steps in a direction to provide high quality infant formula to its wide-ranged market, hovering around $2.3 billion.
Teams were asked to help Reckitt further penetrate this market by increasing its prevalence among consumers with special diets – either for lifestyle or medically-driven purposes. The demand space for this market is very high, and teams had just four weeks to present a deliverable that would underscore the strategic benefits/risks of their recommendations, construct robust financial analysis of the options, and firmly address the needs of consumers within this market.
Soon after the project launch, my team of six quickly arose to a recommendation and quickly began working on the strategic summary to substantiate our position. We were confident that not only our decision would be most simple to execute, but also provide Reckitt with the highest return-on-investment. Nevertheless, we were faced with challenges in other areas. For instance, the team had little experience with constructing a convincing financial analysis, as none of us were finance majors or had a background in this area, even the MBAs. However, we reached out to past students who had completed this project, who guided us through this process to present financial projections that were precisely reasonable. The team ultimately learned from the experience that every successful team asks for help and tackles problems with determination and grit even when they are unsure how to initially solve them.
The presentation included 20 minutes of delivering our final recommendation to the Reckitt team, as well as engaging in a short Q&A session to deeply investigate a few portions that stood out. Our team felt very confident that we supplied ample amounts of information to defend our recommendation, but we were surprised to find out that we had won the case competition
All in all, our team learned how challenging it is for companies to make strategic recommendations pushing for growth with imperfect information. This is what makes competition such an exciting aspect of business, but there are many risks that come into play and are critical factors when making these decisions. We also were able to learn more about the growing changes in consumer needs based on the growing popularity of special diets amongst adults. The shift in these lifestyle choices not only have drastic affects on the adult foods market, but also children and infants, and we quickly learned from our investigation that changes in one area branches off into many other markets.
The Kelley Business of Life Sciences Global Events and Trends Impacting the Life Sciences Industry course is a part of the Certificate in the Business of Life Sciences program. Learn more by visiting the Student Associates section of the Kelley Center for the Business of Life Sciences website.
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