Inside the University of Arizona EMBA experience where students worked with biotech company CynosBio to develop actionable solutions to a real-world business challenge.

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University of Arizona Eller College of Management Executive MBA (EMBA) students partnered with Tokyo-based biotech leader CynosBio, Inc. during an intensive experiential learning hackathon in Seattle. Tasked with developing actionable U.S. expansion strategies under a strict two-hour deadline, students created cross-cultural operating models and communication workflows that CynosBio leadership is actively implementing.

The summer experience was part of MGMT 561: Leading Organizational Change, taught by Dr. Paul Melendez, University Distinguished Outreach Professor.  

CynosBio is a growing biotechnology company developing live human cell therapies. As the company expands its operations into the United States, its leadership is navigating a complex organizational challenge: how to bring Japanese and American teams together to operate effectively across cultures, countries, and a 16-hour time difference.

Rather than approaching this as a hypothetical business case, the EMBA students were asked to work with CynosBio's actual challenge and develop recommendations that could support the company's U.S. expansion.

The teams explored several areas of the business, including operating models, talent and people strategy, cross-cultural integration, change management, and business risk.

For Alex Damiano, an EMBA candidate at the Eller College of Management, the challenge offered an opportunity to draw on her experience in biotechnology while approaching the industry from a very different perspective.

As Manager of Venture Development for Physical Sciences and Software at Tech Launch Arizona, Damiano works at the intersection of scientific innovation and commercialization. Her previous experience in biotech startups had given her a strong understanding of the technical and business challenges involved in bringing new technologies to market.

But the CynosBio challenge asked her to look at the company through a different lens. Her team was assigned to People and Culture Strategy, shifting the focus from the science itself to the people and organizational structures needed to support CynosBio's international growth. For Damiano, it became an opportunity to apply what she was learning through the EMBA program to a challenge that sat outside her usual area of expertise.

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A Challenge Beyond the Technical Expertise

Damiano’s team was tasked with examining how CynosBio could create greater alignment between its Japanese and American teams.

The challenge involved questions around communication, trust, organizational structure, decision-making, and cultural integration. Rather than developing recommendations around the company's scientific technology, the team had to consider the structures and practices that would allow the company to grow internationally.

"I was excited about this being the topic of our hackathon," Alex noted. "It was a great way to blend my experience working in early-stage biotech and tech transfer with everything I am learning in the EMBA program. For me, it really showed that while science is really important in biotech there is so much more to consider for success. The international element with two different work cultures needing to blend together, collaborate and efficiently share knowledge is critical to making it all come together and have the biggest impact on patients."
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Solving Complex Organizational Challenge in 120 Minutes

The hackathon required student teams to analyze cross-border operational friction and deliver executive-level recommendations within a strict two-hour window. Compounding the pressure, an unexpected last-minute team restructuring forced students to form new group dynamics instantly.

To maximize efficiency under deadline pressure, Alex Damiano’s team abandoned traditional group debate in favor of a targeted execution framework:

• Deconstruct the Challenge: The team split the cross-cultural integration problem into discrete sub-domains: communications protocols, decision-making matrices, and talent retention.
• Individual Ownership: Each member assumed responsibility for one sub-domain based on personal professional strengths.
• Synthesis & Alignment: The group reconvened after 45 minutes to stress-test individual recommendations and unify them into a single executive deck.

"For me, I was more focused on what my team could control, which was the specific topic we were given," Alex recalled. "Figuring out how to have us all share our thoughts and ideas and then synthesize them together for recommendations that would actually be beneficial was challenging under the time constraint which did not leave much time to worry about others. It was more of a challenge to get the team to align and use the time we were given most efficiently. That was a challenge more so than worrying about competition."

"I think the biggest challenge was the fact that there were so many ideas and directions to go in, we needed to be focused and try to come up with recommendations with real action," Alex added. "It is one thing to come up with a high-level outline of the scenario we were given and provide generic feedback, it is another to actually get to the level of tangible steps CynosBio could take. Getting our analysis to that point in the timeframe given was the biggest challenge. Especially when each group member went into the exercise with their own perspective that we needed to figure out how to blend together into a cohesive path forward."

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From Strategy to Action

Rather than presenting high-level academic theory, EMBA teams delivered operational frameworks tailored to CynosBio's active U.S. market entry. The evaluation panel featured key stakeholders, including Gregory Kunst, Strategic Advisor to CynosBio and CEO of Valator.
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"We are a startup; we don't have time for artificial projects," said Kunst. "The EMBAs didn't rely too heavily on abstract frameworks. They gave us deliberate actions and real plans that we are actually implementing right now."

Key Student Deliverables Implemented by CynosBio:

• Real-Time Cross-Border Translation: Integrating simultaneous translation tools into live cross-border meetings to capture non-verbal cues, tone, and context often lost in asynchronous text translation.
• Governance & Decision Authority: Establishing a clear RACI framework - defining who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed –  across Japanese and American business units to resolve decision delays caused by the 16-hour time difference.

Speaking on the collaborative effort, Alex shared: "I think it was a great exercise in learning to flex and be adaptable. It is very rare for things to be constant in the real-world so having to approach a business problem from different perspectives emphasizes the need to stay agile and know how to lean into certain skills or perspectives at the right time."

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Experiential Learning in Action

For Dr. Paul Melendez, University Distinguished Outreach Professor at the Eller College of Management, experiences like the CynosBio hackathon are designed to move students from learning concepts to applying them in situations where the answer is not predetermined.

He compares the role of the professor during an experience like this to the role of a coach preparing a team for game day:

"During practice, Coach Wooden had the players' complete and total attention. But the minute game time came, he told them: 'Don't look back at me. I've already taught you what you need to do—it's your time to go execute.' That is what the hackathon is for these EMBAs."
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The hackathon gave students an opportunity to make decisions independently, work with professionals from different backgrounds, and apply their existing knowledge to an unfamiliar business problem.

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Beyond the Classroom

The CynosBio hackathon brought together several elements of experiential learning: a real business challenge, an international context, multidisciplinary teams, a demanding timeline, and direct interaction with company leadership.

For the students, the experience provided an opportunity to apply their EMBA education in an environment where there was no single correct answer.

For CynosBio, it created an opportunity to receive fresh perspectives on an organizational challenge the company is actively navigating.

For Damiano, the experience provided an opportunity to take the skills she had developed in biotechnology and apply them to a different dimension of business leadership.

"The hackathon really showed the impact of everything we are learning in our EMBA program," Alex reflected. "Traditional class projects are great ways to apply learnings to show we have learned a concept, but going through an exercise where we get to apply these concepts to a real business problem with recommendations that could be implemented to make a difference right away helped to translate how relevant and significant what we are learning truly is. We are gaining such a broader perspective on business with new skills and insights that are needed across any type of business. Despite not everyone in our class having a life science background, everyone could contribute and apply what we are learning to CynosBio because our EMBA is really a toolkit we can utilize wherever our careers take us. The emphasis our program has on leadership also takes us a step away from hyper focusing on the specific tasks to be done, but the bigger picture view of all the elements that have to come together for a business to work."

"I think it provided a great example of how to solve a business problem holistically and finding a true root cause as opposed to implementing a surface level fix," Alex added. "Culture is so deep rooted in all of us and the organizations we are part of and in the case of a startup that is building from the ground up, it is incredibly important to get right. The challenge could have been viewed as fixing very specific elements like communication or project management, but it was on a topic more central to the core growth of the organization which required a very different mindset of wanting to proactively set things up for success rather than reactively course correcting individual failure modes."