During our year in the Copenhagen Business School Full Time MBA we are assigned (as teams) to local companies who feel that they could use the advice and recommendations from a team of MBA students to help grow their businesses. This is the short story of success that our team has achieved in the Advisory Board program.

The team we were assigned to has a diverse background, I come from finance and business management, one of our members comes from an IT and management background, another from Shipping and Logistics, and our fourth member came from work with the United Nations. We have been working with a team of artists who have started their own networking site to work with amateur artists who are serious about connecting with opportunities in the art world. They are themselves artists who have great vision into the life and struggles associated with trying to make it in the art world.

These two artists started a website that allows artists to connect to open-calls as well as exhibit their work to others in the art community. This was meant to be a sincere place where the owners and employees of the company have a true interest in the artists who become part of their community.

Our team has been meeting with the founders of this start-up to gain insight into their vision and dreams as artists and for their company. They have seen the need to bring more of the “business world” into their company to help it grow at a rate which will allow them to devote their full time to the company and interacting with the artists within their community. We then brought to the table some of the extensive knowledge that we have gained during the CBS FTMBA program, not just theoretical, but practical knowledge as well. We brought true analytical expertise to the table to help explain why certain courses of action should be taken and how to do it.

Two of the many recommendations we made were that they split their site into an artist area and an art institution area as well as that they have highly personalized contact with the artists in their community. The development of split sites for artists and institutions is being accomplished in conjunction with their web designer and many of the clients to ensure they provide sites that will create real value for their members and clients. So far they have had great feedback and are very encouraged that their clients will find increased value for their money with this new design.

We recommended highly personalized contact in order to help attract high quality participants in their community. This would also attract art institutions because of the site’s high quality members. Upon implementation of this model with their employees sending these highly personalized communications they saw somewhere on the range of a 10 times increase in the new signups for their community which was already 15,000 strong. They have seen increases in revenue as well as community participation by the artists. They were extremely happy with the results and although this is a work in progress we predict a great future for this sincere artists community and will strive to provide them with the knowledge, advice, and analysis that will help them become a global competitor.