Ideas with Impact
UNB Faculty of Management

This winter fourth year business students at the University of New Brunswick Fredericton had to apply just about everything they’ve learned in the BBA program by working with one of New Brunswick’s most innovative new companies, Resson Aerospace Corporation.

Using advanced technologies such as drones, high-resolution cameras, cloud computing and their own proprietary algorithms, Resson Aerospace works with large agricultural companies to measure crop health and identify crop stresses and epidemics such as virus, blight and pests, to provide agricultural operators with all of the information that they need to optimize their crop production and maximize their harvest. Two UNB graduates formed the company in 2013, Rishin Behl (MScE 2013) and Peter Goggin (MBA 2013), and in addition to attracting a number of investors, they have recently acquired one of the largest agricultural companies in the country as a client, McCain Foods.

Resson Aerospace has been looking for opportunities to expand internationally and saw an opportunity to learn about viable markets by working with strategic management students at UNB. Strategic management is the capstone course in the BBA program and requires students to work on a project that employs and tests all of the knowledge and skills they have acquired in the program. The students went to work for Resson Aerospace this winter by analyzing market opportunities in different countries.

Executives with Resson Aerospace met with the students at the beginning of the term to tell them about their operations and explain what they were looking for. The students worked in teams, each of which focused on a different country, and decided how they would proceed. The purpose of the project was for them to demonstrate their mastery of business skills, so for the rest of the semester the teams analyzed international markets, by looking at the opportunities, the competition, the legal issues, and the most viable agricultural industries to enter. At the end of the semester each group submitted their findings to Resson Aerospace and presented their recommendations on whether or not they should enter the international markets they explored.

The project was exciting for Resson Aerospace, said CEO Peter Goggin, because “we had over a hundred bright minds committed to our market project. They were completely outside our own bubble, so were able to deliver an unbiased assessment of what we should be doing. “ Another benefit Goggin noted was the fact that several students involved with the project were from other countries and had direct knowledge of those markets.

Dr. Martin Wielemaker, who teaches competitive strategy at UNB, said “I think this was a valuable exercise for students because they had to apply all their knowledge and skills to solve a real world problem without being hand-held throughout the process. These are the kind of challenges they will have to face in the real world when they graduate, so they got to test themselves in this project.”

The students liked the fact that they were asked to solve a problem that was authentic and that their client, Resson Aerospace, might actually take their ideas and implement them.

For more information contact Liz Lemon-Mitchell.