EMBA INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS CONSULTANCY: ARTALK IN FLORIDA
After having completed their International Business Consultancy in Orlando, Florida, these three Executive MBA's give us some interesting feedback in this exclusive interview about the nature and value of their consulting experience:
Tony MARQUES
Operations Manager
Allianz Global Assistance France
EMBA ‘18
What is an International Business Consultancy?
A consulting project for a start-up, gathering Kedge and Crummer Business School Executive participants. The objective is to help a client in conceptualising the business model and plan of a new company. This means literally starting from scratch!
How does this factor into your MBA objectives?
This project was totally aligned with my MBA goals of an international experience/openness, multicultural environment and critical thinking on business development. It is an outstanding opportunity for teamwork, creativity and organizational/project management skills use.
What is the nature of this IBC? What’s involved?
ARTalk is an Orlando-based startup whose goal is to create a living library documenting interviews with contemporary artists that will serve for research, education, and cultural enrichment. A web platform will provide the sales and access to the videos.
Can just anyone in the MBA do an IBC?
I’m pretty sure many of us possesses the skills and competencies to participate in an IBC. Nevertheless, the following key success factors must be clearly fulfilled:
- Much availability for 3 months (many conference calls & skype sessions, a huge workload, a trip to Florida)
- Being at ease with teamwork & spirit (about 8-10 persons in the entire group)
What do you think your personal value-added is to the group?
That’s a good question for my teammates! Maybe it’s a tendency to see things differently and be creative and also good interpersonal skills, which allow me to federate the group and relax the tensions sometimes.
What are you gaining from this experience?
A lot! For sure. This was my first time doing a consulting project and working with Americans. We had difficult moments to synchronize ourselves and we made some mistakes. It is also important to fail a bit and then to learn from it. This endeavor helped me to better understand the process of creating a company. What questions you should ask yourself? What you should and should not do at the beginning. Who knows, it may have changed my life. I loved Florida and I may even look for a new opportunities there after my MBA.
Would you recommend it to future MBA participants? Why?
Yes. What an opportunity for a multicultural work environment! You will put yourself in the shoes of an entrepreneur. You have so many things to learn from this experience. It can be difficult at some moments, but there is always someone on the team to reassure you.
Anything else we should know?
Exceed your skills and limits within intense teamwork! Push new boundaries! The IBC is a great way to do this !
* * *
Mohamed Afkir
Entrepreneur
EMBA ‘18
What is an IBC?
International Business Consultancy is a partnership with students from an international college to provide business consulting to a local company and help them create their business plan and advise them on developing their new company.
How does this factor into your MBA objectives?
One of the objectives of my MBA is to learn skills to develop my new start-up. I learnt to create a business plan, gained knowledge using a hands-on approach, communicated with clients and provided consultancy for a new start-up.
What is the nature of this IBC? What’s involved?
This IBC called ARTalk is an Orlando-based startup whose goal is to create a living library documenting interviews with contemporary artists that will serve for research, education, and cultural enrichment. ARTALK’s main product is artist videos, which together serve as an archive and database of rich qualitative and quantitative data seeking to define “the art of our times,” and as such, inform a deeper understanding of art and its process.
Can just anyone in the MBA do an IBC?
This is a 2-month commitment, working and communicating with sub-teams and a larger team between Paris, Bordeaux, Marseilles and Florida. It requires a significant time investment and ability to work within an international team with different experience, time zone, culture and maturity. Patience and passion is important.
What do you think your personal value-added is to the group?
My personal added-value to the group was my experience working within an international team, my extensive knowledge of management, my experiences and my passion for business.
What are you gaining from this experience?
I have gained experience in consulting, writing a business plan, entrepreneurship, learning the art market, working with American team and networking.
Would you recommend it to future MBA participants? Why?
I highly recommend it… but it is not easy, MBA participants must be prepared for 2 months of commitment alongside other MBA coursework and professional commitments as well as working between 4 and 15 hours per week before and after the on-site week where we spent 60 hours during our stay in Florida.
Anything else we should know?
The phase1 start was difficult and communication challenging as we didn’t know each other at all. Even the French team members were from different sites.
* * *
Marine Peguin
EMBA ‘18
What is an IBC ?
An IBC is an International Business Consulting Seminar. An IBC a collaborative project that takes place between two partnering universities, where participants work together as a consulting team to support a company in the definition and the implementation guidance for a chosen project.
This IBC was a partnership between KEDGE and Rollins University in Florida, to support ARTALK, a start-up created by a Modern Art Scholar and a board member of the Museum of Modern Art of Orlando (OMA), that aims to produce artists videos to support OMA exhibitions but also to create a web database of information on modern and contemporary Art.
How does this factor into your MBA objectives ?
I have done two consulting seminar with KEDGE, one for the Resource Management Major hosted in Notre Dame, South Bend, USA, to support Gallo Californian Wine Maker’s CSR development and the IBC with Rollins. These seminars bring us the opportunity to apply our knowledge in practical situation.
What is the nature of this IBC? What’s involved?
The Rollins IBC is a 3 to 4 months seminar, it requires constistency and involvement, huge availability and flexibility due to time difference. As the consulting team is made of 10 students it also requires cross competencies and project management skills.
Can just anyone in the MBA do an IBC?
From my point of view, an IBC is most valuable if you do it at the end of your MBA track. You can then put in practice all the knowledge acquired in class and get an holistic view of the question to be solved.
What do you think your personal value-added is to the group?
My main added value has simply been to be part of a team. You cannot do anything on a project if you are not working as a team. Also, my long experience in international project management and my speed of production have been a support to the team when we were facing gaps of knowledge or resource shortage.
What are you gaining from this experience?
The main gain of such an experience is the Human experience. We really had great time working together.
Anything else we should know?
The topic of an IBC changes each year giving you the opportunity of a fully new challenge to discover.
