In two years, from a person with a liberal arts education and an internship at the Big Four, I turned into a specialist with developed business intuition and good connections.

Contents

International Business Competing in the Global Marketplace PDF Creative Workz
Personal experience: executive business master`s degree

In my opinion, this progress is due to three parameters: competent teachers, a good structure of the educational process and classmates with a diverse background.

Teaching Staff

Almost all teachers on the program are top managers of international companies: directors, general managers or entrepreneurs. They, obviously, did not come to work at the university for the sake of a teacher's salary, but really get a kick out of teaching.

Professors teach their classes in accordance with their experience and often share such insights that are not written in any textbook. Everyone is very open, positive about feedback and ready to answer any questions. Here is the most well-known textbook on this subject: International Business Competing in the Global Marketplace PDF

It is fair to say here that not all successful careerists become good teachers. There were a couple of people with a very cool business background (for example, an advertising teacher owns a large advertising agency) and disgusting speaking skills in front of an audience (reading text from slides in a soothing voice and indistinctly answering questions), but their subjects can simply not be chosen.

My personal list of subjects with the most competent teachers:

  • Strategic management. Lead by a graduate of the French business school Insead, at the time of my studies he was the general manager at Uber. He constantly gave us Harvard cases and invited his comrades to share their experience at guest lectures. In one semester, we were visited by the Delivery Club CEO, Rosbank Strategy Director, Uber Communications Director, a partner at the Bain consulting company and many other reputable speakers.
  • Marketing research and strategic marketing. The former manager of the McKinsey consulting company clearly showed us what and how of what is written in the books works or does not work in real life. With him, we even plunged a little into psychology and military strategy (in order to better understand some business concepts), did real market research and criticized articles from the Harvard Business Review.
  • International marketing. This subject is taught by the Director of the FMCG International Network. Didn't force us to read Kotler, although he showed his basic concepts, as a rule, to refute. He supported everything he studied with examples from his practice in Procter & Gamble, which gave rise to the game “guess how many times he will say the word Gillette today”. Throughout the semester, we worked in small teams on a marketing plan for the chosen brand, each lesson complementing it with the tools we just learned.

The desire to share information was noticed among all the professors. This is in stark contrast to what I have seen in other educational institutions. You can discuss something not only during class, but also in the smoking room, on Facebook or in person during lunch. After graduation, I communicate with some of them, I ask for advice.

Educational process

There were no divisions into lectures and seminars on my program. During the lesson, you can express your opinion and start a discussion at any time. Teachers themselves all the time initiate discussions, urging not to be silent.

In such an environment, you really learn from everyone around you. Well, if someone has said outright nonsense, you can raise your hand and explain to him why he is wrong. Such a mode of conducting classes has long taken root in foreign business schools, but in many Russian ones it is still a stone age in this regard.

No less time is devoted to developing communication skills than acquiring knowledge. We practically did not submit written works, but we had to present orally all the time, and public speaking skills also added weight to the final assessment.

During the negotiations, there were game sessions simulating the conclusion of contracts or pre-trial agreements. At the same time, everything was done in English - a good practice.

Almost all teachers use the case method. It consists in studying the experience of other companies by living the process of making business decisions in specific situations. Most often these are Harvard Business School cases describing the experience of world famous corporations.

We studied Walmart, Disney, Uber and Cirque du Soleil cases. Sometimes the teacher can give something from his experience.

For example, in strategic marketing, we were sent a large download from Euromonitor on the dry noodle market in several Central Asian countries, and a week later we showed a presentation explaining which market the company should enter, what product to launch there and what method we recommend for this.