Learners Abroad: Cross-Cultural Lessons In Kellogg’s Global Initiatives In Management Courses

‘CULTURE CAN PLAY A SUBTLE BUT IMPORTANT ROLE IN HOW BUSINESS IS DONE’

Trevor Burns, second-year MBA student, also joined the Entrepreneurial Ecosystems trip, however his team project focused on incubators and accelerators.

On the trip, they’d meet at startups and incubators in the mornings, and then meet with stakeholders in the afternoon. “I called this part The Amazing Race,” he says. “You’d go all over the city seeing how many interviews you could get and first-person perspectives to help shape your thesis.”

Since participating in GIM, Burns thinks he’d feel more confident proposing an international project at his job post-Kellogg. He tells Poets&Quants that when preparing for the trip, he and his team would meet weekly to talk about their research, poke holes in each other’s research, and filter their thesis. This preparation period was also when he and his team developed a historical understanding of each region, and learned how politics and geography shapes the modern business climate.

“Culture can play a subtle but important role in how business is done, how businesses can grow, and the direction that folks will take,” he adds. “It’s a great practice to open your eyes and be mindful of how folks interact in different cultures.”

Linda Darragh, GIM faculty member and clinical professor of entrepreneurship, stresses the importance of developing an understanding of a region before doing business there. “Most regions around the world want to create more value and wealth, which is usually generated through entrepreneurship,” says Darragh. “But what I’ve seen is that a lot of areas do it incorrectly by not fully understanding the region’s history, culture, and resources. An entrepreneurial ecosystem needs to be built on that foundation.”

THE POWER OF USING SOFT SKILLS

Learning about how a region’s geopolitical landscape impacts business is what drew Amishi Bharti, second-year MBA student, to the Branding the Nation: Spain and Greece trip.

With a background in manufacturing and healthcare, Amishi Bharti chose Kellogg – and GIM – to gain as much cross-cultural experience that she could possibly have. “GIM provided a close-knit group of peers that I could learn from,” she says.

Bharti’s team project focused on olive oil branding between Spain and Greece. “Spain is the largest producer of olive oil,” explains Bharti. “But we know that olives are very important within Greek mythology, culture, and history. We wanted to understand why olive oil has so much presence in Spain whereas Greece – despite having the same strong connection to it – has much less olive oil marketing and branding there.”

Her team looked at which best practices from Spain could be transferred to Greece, and vice versa. “There were many marketing and analytical tools that Kellogg provided us that were helpful in finding solutions,” she says.

However, the most helpful skills she applied from Kellogg were the soft skills. “Part of our project was interviewing olive oil sellers in Barcelona and Athens, and figuring out what was going right and what was going wrong,” she says. “Using those soft skills helped to build trust and let us imagine being in their shoes.”

Her team met people in the Catalonia Government and Greek parliament, giving her firsthand insight into some of the issues that each of these stakeholders are facing. With plans to go into consulting post Kellogg, Barthi says that her experience at GIM helped her add tools to her professional – and personal – toolkit. “Learning about these countries from a cultural and economic standpoint helped me develop both my personal and professional skills,” she says.

DEVELOPING PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS

Andrew Van Alstine, evening and weekend MBA student, also developed his professional and personal toolkit from the Spain and Greece trip.

Since he’s a part-time student juggling a full-time job, doing a semester abroad wasn’t an option for him. GIM provided him with an opportunity to gain international business experience in a realistic timeframe.

Van Alstine’s team was posed with the challenge of using nation branding to help sell Cava, a Spanish sparkling wine, abroad. His project involved looking at Spain’s wine industry, doing a market analysis, and applying a number of frameworks he learned at Kellogg to understand what the threats and opportunities were. Then, he and his team came up with a path forward to increase the sales and price of Cava within the US either through marketing activities or regulatory change within Spain.

He says that this experience helped him become more aware of what specific countries are doing to promote themselves abroad, whether that’s through investments or tourism. “I didn’t necessarily think of the actions that a country takes as being an exercise in nation branding,” Van Alstine says. “What you don’t see behind the scenes are the various different things that countries can do – at least from a regulatory or legislative standpoint – to really impact how countries view them around the world.”

Following his MBA, Van Alstine’s goal is to move into a leadership role at a large multinational company. He’s grateful for his experience in GIM, and plans on taking his new awareness with him in his post-Kellogg chapter. “The more international experience you have, the better,” he explains.

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR A SHARED EXPERIENCE

For Van Alstine, GIM was a chance to network with people he would have never otherwise met. “It’s a great opportunity to have a shared experience with a large cohort of folks, build relationships, and make close friends,” he says.

“I had a moment of gratitude when I got home that we were able to have such a cool experience with everyone and experience the power of Kellogg with current students,” adds Reis. “GIM was a great way to have a chance to start using that Kellogg network to see how expansive our global contacts really are.”

“The more we understand other people’s cultures and how to communicate, the better,” adds Van Alstine.

Learn more about Kellogg’s Global Initiatives in Management course here.

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