Paris:
Before Tong Sarochinee Paweenawat decided to pursue a master's degree in business administration this year, she had extensive work experience at Schlumberger, both as an offshore engineer responsible for exploration projects in the North Sea and as a field service manager in her native Thailand.
But once she had entered the M.B.A. program at Insead, a leading international business school based in France, she volunteered for an altogether different challenge: In conjunction with the Cartier Women's Initiative Award, an international competition for women, she offered to coach an entrepreneur in the start-up phase of her business project.
And that experience changed her own career objectives.
"I wanted the experience of reading a business plan as an outsider," said Ms. Paweenawat, 29.
"But getting to know the contestants for the Cartier Award has motivated me to compete myself next year and rework my own business idea into a socially responsible project."
The entrepreneur coached by Ms. Paweenawat -- Gouthami, an Indian who uses only her first name -- was one of the five winners of the 2010 competition announced Oct. 14 at a ceremony in Deauville, France.
She is the founder of Travel Another India, which was created in April 2009 and promotes responsible tourism and rural development through ventures run by local communities.
Gouthami, 41, and 14 other finalists had been selected from more than 600 applicants worldwide in the annual competition, which was initiated in 2006 by the French jeweler and watchmaker Cartier, Insead, the international consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and the Women's Forum for the Economy and Society, an international association for the professional development of women.
Five winners from different continents were each awarded $20,000 and coaching for a year by students and alumni from Insead and business experts from Cartier and McKinsey.
Each year, 10 to 15 students and alumni are among those coaching the contestants.
The experience of coaching the Cartier Award candidates is a way for business students to get practical experience, and it allows the school to reach creative, socially conscious entrepreneurs who could not otherwise afford Insead, where the 10-month M.B.A. program costs around €50,000, or about $70,000.
"You become involved both emotionally and business-wise in the projects," said Loïc Sadoulet, an affiliate professor of economics at Insead.
"We are not compelled to assist under a coaching contract. We feel we have a stake in these businesses."
Almost all the competition winners continue to be coached by Insead after their victory, even when they have been assigned a Cartier or McKinsey coach. Some Insead alumni have coached multiple winners over the years.
And while success is often a function of adequate seed money, support and follow-up play crucial roles in the survival of a young enterprise.
"With three-quarters of our former laureates' companies still in activity, their achievement far exceeds average start-up success rates, which fall to approximately one-third within four years," said Bernard Fornas, president and chief executive of Cartier International.
Gouthami, who said she does not use her last name because it would reveal her social class and origins within the Indian caste system that she opposes, said the award money would "cut in half what I need to raise next year for my business."
"But the Insead mentoring has made my business plan more focused and concrete," she added. "I received marketing strategies to help grow the business. I was quite surprised to learn that my mentor was still a student at Insead."
In fact, 15 percent of graduates from Insead go on to become entrepreneurs themselves.
"Our goal with this competition is to create opportunities for women entrepreneurs whose business idea has a positive economic and social impact," Mr. Sadoulet said. "Their ideas usually focus on an unmet need, one that the market is not addressing. We help set up a system to develop their project and tweak their business model to create value and be profitable."
Insead is one of the world's leading and largest graduate business schools, with campuses in France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi, a research center in Israel and an office in New York.
There are more than 1,000 degree participants in its M.B.A., executive M.B.A. and doctoral programs.
For Raomal Perera, a visiting lecturer in entrepreneurial field studies at Insead, the mentoring of Cartier Award finalists goes beyond the competition. This year, in addition to leading a training session for the 15 finalists, he will continue to work with both current and past laureates.
"Our focus is not on winning the award, it is on building the businesses," he said. "There is something special about each of the candidates. Not winning the award does not mean their business model is not viable."
Mr. Perera has been closely following the progress of one of the Cartier Award winners from last year: Jife Williams, whose business, Metamorphosis Nigeria, was started as a pilot last year.
With the support of Shell Nigeria, she set up a sanitation facility in a densely populated area of Lagos and is now in the final stages of raising funds to set up three more in urban areas around Nigeria.
"For many women entrepreneurs, with or without a business degree, it is about seizing an opportunity and having the courage to go on," Mr. Perera said.
Success does not depend so much on being innovative or first to market, but having a support infrastructure and the will to succeed.
"It is a typically feminine approach to seize an opportunity created by the circumstances of daily life," said Christine Borgoltz, director of external relations for Cartier, who has spearheaded the project for four years.
"For these women, success is a matter of commitment and courage, more than business savvy. We aim to give back to the community of women some of what they have given us."