This happened like a few seconds ago. What happened an hour ago, was Andrew's international marketing class. What we discussed today was not from the assigned articles that we need to read for every alternate class. So far he has mentioned very few points from the assigned articles. What he does every session is throw random things at us. He says that it will one way or the other help us, attain our goal, that is to do the project. He says there is not enough text in this world that can teach someone something but nothing can beat a man's experience. According to him experience is one's best teacher. Interesting concept. Old school I would say!
All he imparts in his class sessions is his experiences as VP or CEO of different companies. Companies that sold totally unrelated products or services. He is an example of a person who is a high achiever and extremely flexible. Someone who has the capacity to adapt to changes and loves challenges. He thrives on it. It is hard for me to agree that as a non-engineer I can become Cisco's Chief Technology Officer. According to me that position does need some sort of knowledge about hardware, softwares, wires and cables and so on. Well our man Andrew says that CTO or CEO, it is the management skills and not exactly technical or non-technical knowledge, that makes one successful.
He further goes on to say that one should not stick to a job for more than three or four years. Now that is a hard thing for everyone to do. Especially based on one's needs, priorities, drive to excel and so on.
One can argue about these points forever. Prove it is wrong. But Andrew's experience says otherwise. As for me I probably will not take a shot at anything unless I do thorough research on the subject. And switching jobs for me depends on how good the other job will be in terms of both position, growth opportunity, pay and work environment. I will personally not prefer valley over deep sea.
Anyways that was a point from one of his earlier classes. As for today the session was all about as to why a company should go overseas? There can be dozens of reason as to why a company chooses to capture a market outside the country that it currently operates in. Is it easy for a company to cross boundaries? Even with a team of 50 Stanford and Harvard or other school MBA's, how easy is the expansion into a different country.
There are enough success stories to inspire other firms and more than enough disasters that companies have faced by expanding outside their comfort zone. One such example is Wal-Mart that tried entering Germany and later for various reasons pulled out. There is when I wondered how easy is it to pull out? Well that depends on how deep a hole the company is in. If the company can find other partners or some way to not pull out. Then it would be great. Or else imagine the cost involved? Wal-Mart could probably afford this costly mistake. But can other firms afford to do the same mistake. And as Andrew says what is best is to remember that when in a hole stop digging. Try and get out. Because the more you dig, bigger the hole becomes.
A firm should move into a country if the country of choice has good enough demand for the firm's product, economically and politically safe, helps firm to counter attack its competitors and so on. Hmm! Interesting point. But as Julia Child says, "Who is to say as to what can or will happen?" I guess a firm has to do its home work well enough and then take the plunge. It should also have a back up plan in place for worst case scenarios. A firm should try its best to make things work and learn from its mistakes. Fear of failure will not help a firm grow. An important quality for a firm is to also be resilient. So thats what at least I learnt from Andrew's session today.
Keeping all this in mind my team and I decided to concentrate on Chile for Whole Foods. Chile is a small country. Has rich agricultural produce. And is suitable for Whole Foods to test the waters. If successful (Of Course! We as a team want to make the plan work) then Whole Foods can move to Brazil and other countries in future. Sounds like a plan!
Now what we need to do is take golden points from Andrew's experience and our knowledge, and day by day every day take steps towards the goal. I will mention our plan of action and we will see at the end as to how the project comes out to be.
Till then think what would have happened had world not shrunk? Companies would be born and rapidly die for their market would saturate in no time. Probably only indispensable products would survive. And there too there would be cut throat competition which probably would be mob dominated. Man that sounds scary!So lets be happy that scary things did not happen and only good things did!
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