The MMM Program, Explained to the MMMildly Threatened

By: Gaurav Gandhi 

MMM, AAA, DDD, RDB, CUE, BIL… You might be thinking, “what’s up with all these three letter acronyms?” Ask a MMM friend, and they will tell you what at least three, maybe four out of six stand for. Although, you’d probably have to give them a minute. I can promise you, no one’s going six for six.

If you have the great displeasure of not being in the MMM program, chances are your friendly neighbourhood MMM has reached out to you in the winter quarter to schedule a painstaking, multi-hour ethnographic interview. The prize? A Sweetgreen lunch. But, what is all this for you may ask? It’s the culmination of the MMM program: our capstone project, the Business Innovation Lab (BIL). 

See, we start early. When RDB comes along in the fall quarter of first year (Research, Design Build, I gotchu bb), consumer desirability is baked into our heads. A similar quarter- long consulting project as BIL (come on, you’re getting the hang of it!), RDB focuses primarily on desirability. We put on training wheels for RDB, and we lose them for BIL.  

Behind that acronym, "BIL" is a quarter-long, industry-sponsored project where 4-6 high functioning (read: overly caffeinated), sticky-note wielding, often snacking students work together to tackle ambiguous, high-stakes problems at the intersection of business, human-centred design, and technology. It’s part consulting engagement, part design thinking, and part therapy session for teams trying to ship something real. Plus, frameworks. A lot of frameworks. So. Many. Frameworks. Some MMMs have even admitted to seeing a “2 by 2” in their dreams. “I told my JV I saw two diamonds in my dreams, and they got excited. I didn’t know how to tell them,” said one MMM student, after an especially stressful week of concepting. 

So, what is BIL, really?

Across projects, a few patterns emerge: 

The problems are ambiguous. The sponsors are real companies with real asks. The deliverables must live in the real world and satisfy the Holy Trinity of “Desirability, Viability, and Feasibility.”  

It’s a structured collision of process rigor, strategy, and human-centred design. It’s messy. It’s occasionally, and intentionally chaotic. And it’s often the most transformative part of the program. In some sense, it truly is about the journey and not the decision. The design thinking process hinges on you not caring about the solution, but about how you get there. “Trust the Process.” –Hinkie, Philadelphia 76ers.

MMMs in the wild

When all of us MMMs get to the winter quarter (if we make it that far), our Google calendars look pristine. Two credits and no classes on the calendar—sounds chill, right? WRONG. An hour and half booked for client meetings and multiple three-hour group working sessions get blocked off each week. Sundays are spent scrambling over user journeys, personas, 2 by 2s, insights, concepts, prototypes and client decks. Be it, “Audacious Anna” or “Scintillating Sam," every user gets a place on the board.  

So, if you’ve ever wondered what your MMM friends are frantically working on in the infamous “MMM lounge,”now you know. We are not there initiating cults; as one MMM says, “we’re not a cult, we just love each other.” And if you have a MMM friend, ask them to take you to the lounge and show you around. We love talking about it. We love showing our boards, our colourful stickies, or little voting dots, and we love sharing our free snacks (we really don’t).

AAA (Applied Advanced Analytics), DDD (Digital Design and Development), RDB (1.5 credits) and BIL (2 credits) are just 6 of the 10 credits MMMs (M of M and M, who knows?) need to take to graduate with an added Masters in Design Innovation, along with their MBA (bet you recognize that acronym). This doesn’t even include the advanced Operations elective that we must partake in, and the mandatory Finance II class. Long story short: be kind to your MMM friends. If you find yourself asking, “how might we help our MMM friend?”drop that Rookie GM Black Diamond class, so some of us can graduate (for real though, please). And maybe, just maybe, we’ll share a snack with you.