Fox School GET Teams Help International Pharmaceutical and Biodiesel and Other Companies Enter the American Market
Biodiesel and pharmaceuticals—two industries in tremendous flux in the US. At The Fox School of Business, two teams of International MBA (IMBA) students were thrust onto the front lines and charged with the mission of developing market entry strategies for Garware Chemicals Inc., a biodiesel production company based in Mumbai, India, and Pharmalink Consulting, a regulatory affairs consulting company based in Berkshire, England.
The research these students completed was not just for the benefit of the companies; it was also for a grade. The students are completing the capstone course for their IMBA, The Fox School’s award-winning Enterprise in Management Consulting Practicum, which is designed to incorporate the challenges of international business, including multicultural communication, and the gathering and analysis of foreign market data.
About one third of the projects were for non-profit companies, one third were for larger companies based in the Philadelphia region, and one third were for start-up companies.
On May 2nd, the teams presented their findings at the Ninth Annual Temple University Global Innovation & Entrepreneurship Expo, which was sponsored by The Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute and The Enterprise Management Consulting Practicum Group. Also presenting their plans to clients and venture capitalists at the event were three winners of The Fox School’s Annual Business Plan Competition, including the winning team of students from Temple’s College of Engineering, Advanced Medical Data Solutions.
Dean of The Fox School of Business M. Moshe Porat said, “Both participants and audience members span the globe, and many projects were completed in collaboration with our International MBA partners: Welingkars Institute in Mumbai, India, École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees, in Paris, and Ben Gurion University in Israel.”
This year, there were sixteen teams of students, and each was given a consulting project for a real company that has a unique set of business goals. These goals were made even more challenging since students also had to communicate with international teammates to conduct research on an international product. For example the consulting team for Idea, an Israeli biomedical firm, which manufactures revolutionary microscopes, included both Fox School students and students from Ben Gurion University.
Explaining some of the other challenges of the course, Sally Shuai, (IMBA, ’07) a Pharmalink team member said, “One of our biggest challenges was satisfying the needs of both our international client and our course requirements. Pharmalink was concerned only with determining American consumer needs, but for the class, we had to submit a full business plan, complete with research, a marketing plan, strategic recommendations, and a financial model to support those recommendations.”
The challenge the Pharmalink team faced was part of the goal of the course according to TL Hill, the managing faculty director of the EMC program.
“In any business situation you are going to have multiple expectations from multiple bosses. One of the goals of the EMC is to simulate reality,” said Hill.
“The teams have been very successful in overcoming that obstacle, but the real measure will be in 6 months after the organizations begin seeing the results of the teams’ suggestions,” he added.
For teams working for companies like biodiesel producer Garware, a lot could happen to the industry in the next 6 months, which makes their research that much more crucial for the company.
Said Michael Kane (IMBA, ’07) from the Garware team, “So much could change—crude oil prices could drop, or the political climate could change—and it would affect the entire industry. Dealing with a topic as relevant as alternative fuel, which draws on such a wealth of changing information was a really interesting challenge.”
A perfect example of navigating through industry turbulence using an entrepreneurial mindset was the event’s keynote speaker, Douglas Maine, former CFO of IBM and MCI, and the director of both Rockwood Holdings Inc. and Alliant Techsystems.
Maine explained his experience. “During my first week at MCI, The Supreme Court ruled that AT&T, then the largest company in the world, would have to provide local connections to its network. Presto, competition was born, and ultimately, MCI grew to $25 billion in revenue,” he said.
“MCI’s success was due to the fact that it never ceased to be entrepreneurial in its culture. In fact, if I had to cite one trait that is most important to the success of all companies, it is entrepreneurship,” concluded Maine, emphasizing the lesson all Fox IMBA students learn during their completion of the Enterprise in Management Consulting Practicum.
Maine shared more than his entrepreneurial wisdom at the Global Innovation & Entrepreneurship Expo. He also shared his contacts by connecting the Israeli biomedical company Idea to a New York Venture Capitalist firm, which will help the company enter the American market. Idea was just one of the many teams who made connections at the Global Innovation & Entrepreneurship Expo, whose effects extend far beyond the one-day event.
Very special thanks are due to TL Hill (the managing director of the practicum), Jim Hutchin, Sid Amster, Eustace Kangaju, Rick Hinkley, Gloria Rabinovitz, John Vairo, Chris Pavlides, and Jaine Lucas for advising and working with our students and preparing them to present at the Expo. Very special thanks are also due to our full-time faculty Rob Hamilton and to other faculty, like Arvind Parkhe and Laureen Regan, for their involvement and leadership in the MBA program.
