Thunderbird Magazine, Volume 53, Number 3 2000

              THUNDERBIRD. THE AMERICAN GRADUATE SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT • VOLUME 53. NUMBER 3. 2000
THUNDERBIRD, THE AMERICAN GRADUATE SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT • VOLUME 53, NUMBER 3, 2000
2
- OYER STOHl'
The E-ing of
Thilllderbird
Technology now permeates
nearly every aspect of life at
Thunderbird. The School has
developed 'killer aps' that place it
squarely on the cutting edge of
student and alumni information
delivery and interactivity. It has
also developed a wide range of
ebusiness programs and incorpo­rates
technology into nearly every
course and campus experience.
Alumni who graduated more than
two years ago wouldn't begin to
recognize the place!
ABOUT THE COVER:
Prof BiU King has incorporated
aformal entrepreneurship
project into his English as a
Second Language course. His
students write a business plan,
create a company Web page, and
come out extremely esa'IJVY!
-EATrRES
8 LEVERAGING BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR GLOBAL GAIN
Global companies are in the perfect position to capture and leverage critical data.
12 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: A GLOBAL MANAGEMENT TOOL
Prof. Paul Kinsinger shares his secrets and explanations in this issue's Faculty Viewpoint.
14 GOOD GLOBAL STRATEGIES REQUIRE A CLEAR VISION OF TRUE NORTH
Orit Gadiesh says that the world's best companies !mow exactly where they have to go.
16 WHAT MAKES A SUCCESSFUL GLOBAL STRATEGV?
Why do some companies succeed while other seemingly similar companies fail?
19 STUDENTS DRESS TO IMPRESS AT INTERNSHIP FAIR
Students were competing for 60 internships. Companies were competing for top talent.
22 T-BIRDS OF TODAV
Meet these five Class of 2000 graduates and you'll understand exactly who they are and
what Thunderbird has meant to them.
26 SILICON VALLEV FORUM ADDRESSES ' NET' ISSUES FROM ALL ANGLES
Who can explain Silicon Valley and the New Economy better than its key players?
31 THUNDERBIRD LAUNCHES MAJOR AD CAMPAIGN
Thunderbird begins taking its brand to the world with an aggressive new ad campaign.
34 FOUR ALUMNI SHARE PRIVATE BANKING WORLD INSIGHT
Major private banking entities are taking fresh looks at Thunderbird.
EPA H T ~I E ~ T S
20 EVES AROUND THE WORLD
Born in India and raised in the UK and U.S., S3l\iyot Dunung's ('87) life has always
bridged cultures. Today, her New York-based business does too.
24 LETTER FROM ELSEWHERE
Jim Anderson '80 shares his insights in Silicon vaUey: Birthplace of the New Economy.
28 CAMPUS NEWS
32 NETWORK NEWS
35 UPDATES
..
AGE ONE
Expanded
Executive
Education
Programs
Provide
Training
Near Home
and in
Targeted
Regions
T-bird Expands Into Taiwan
For 54 years, students from throughout the world have trekked to Thunderbird. Now Thunderbird is taking
more and more of its top-rated programs throughout the world to busy executives-offering them the
option of either studying close to home or in one of their regions of interest.
With students from more than 80 countries on Thunderbird campuses in the U.S., Japan, and France, numerous
MIM exchange and/or travel programs, and regular Executive Education offerings in more than nine countries,
many already consider Thunderbird a highly global entity. However, School officials have announced an exciting
Exec. Ed. expansion that includes new regional course offerings in Asia, Europe, and Latin America
"More than 4,500 executives a year already take part in Thunderbird's current Executive Education programs,
which are offered on four continents," said Thunderbird President Roy A Herberger, Jr. "With its new programs,
Thunderbird will be training more than 10,000 global executives per year within four years."
School officials announced their first regional expansion, into Taiwan, in late April: a ten-course Global
Executive Development Series that covers topics such as ecommerce, global marketing, cross-border negotia­tions,
international finance, and global economics and politics. All programs are six days long, drawn from Thun­derbird's
MIM curriculum,
taught by professors from
Thunderbird, and run in collab­oration
with The Acer Group
-one of the world's top three
PC, component, and peripheral
companies. Managers who par­ticipate
in those programs may
apply their credits toward a full
MIM degree at Thunderbird.
The School has also teamed
up with the American Chamber
of Commerce in Taipei to pro­vide
a wide range of two-day
executive education certificate
programs to chamber mem­bers.
The first such program,
entitled, Globalizati on: Merg­ing
Strategy with Action, will
be held in October. Thunderbird and Acer Group officials form a partnership that takes Executive Education
"At Thunderbird, we have programs to Taiwan. The School plans to offer programs in the U.S., Asia, Europe and
identified Taiwan as being at Latin America; and to serve 10,000 executives per year within four years.
the crest of the current wave of
globalization," said Bud Robyn, senior vice president, Executive Education at Thunderbird. "This environment
requires strong, globally-minded leaders with new management skills. Acer and Thunderbird have a shared vision
of the critical role education can play in helping companies and managers excel in the global market. "
The School already offers several other programs in Asia: a full-time, year-round campus in Tokyo, Japan for
MIM and Exec. Ed. students, as well as year-round executive training in Shanghai, China, and periodic executive
training in Seoul, South Korea
In Latin America, Thunderbird is aggressively pursuing partnerships that will help it bring a comprehensive
executive education series to Brazil. The School has offered a distance-learning program, called MIMLA, to work­ing
professionals in Mexico and Peru for the last two years, and is working to expand that program into several
other Latin American countries.
European executives may obtain critical global management training at Thunderbird's year-round facility in
Archamps, France, which is located just across the border from Geneva, Switzerland, as well as in Moscow.
Thunderbird has been ranked No.1 for five straight years by U.S. News & World Report in the International
Business education specialty. Its executive education programs have also been ranked consistently among the
best in the world by Business Week and the Financial Times. •
For additional information on Thunderbird's global Executive Education offerings,
please contact Frank Lloyd at lIoydf@t-bird.edu or (602) 978-7923.
f you're a little tired of hearing
about e-this and dot-com-that, just
remember this: "Those managers
who aren't part of their companies'
ebusiness efforts will sink through
their organizations. "
This realization by Thunderbird Presi­dent
Roy A. Herberger, Jr. is integral to the
School's initiatives regarding entrepre­neurship,
venture capital, and ebusiness,
which have literally transformed the insti­tution
in recent years. The transformation
has been so dramatic, in fact, that alumni
who graduated even two years ago
wouldn't recognize Thunderbird today.
"Management vision and technological
competencies have simply never been as
important for global managers as they are
today," stressed Herberger. "That's why we
want our students, and in fact, our entire
staff, leveraging leading edge systems and
software throughout their daily lives.'
Laying the Groundwork
The School began with its technological
infrastructure. Everything is now
online, from registration to research.
Thunderbird has invested millions of
dollars in infrastructure and applica­tions-
like My Thunderbird (MTB) ,
Alumni My Thunderbird (AMTB), and
ProFit, the Career Management Center
search system that automatically
matches and rank orders students for
open jobs-as well as enhancements to
its external Web site, which will debut
this Fall. These 'killer aps' (as they're
dubbed by industry gurus) are so
advanced that companies as large as
Dell have offered to buy them.
To date, nearly one-third of the
School's 31,000 alumni from more than
50 class years have signed on to AMTB,
which debuted in November 1999.
Students, faculty, staff and Executive
Education clients are also leveraging
parallel systems, which allow them to
II
by Lindsey Michaels and Jessica McCann
access School databases, news, class
materials, and emails from anywhere.
Those killer aps already give T-birds
unprecedented access to each other and
the things they need to know. But, by
Spring 2001 the system will get better still
when alumni, staff, faculty, and current
students on all T-bird's campuses are tied
in to one system. That means that Thun­derbird
alumni can not only search for
each other; they can also search for faculty
members with specific expertise, and stu­dents
who might be perfect for many jobs.
That feature will make it easier for alumni
to 'hire' needed project-oriented student!
faculty research teams.
In the meantime, alumni are doing
amazing amounts of business on AMTB
because it allows them to post personal
and professional profiles, link to corporate
materials and Web pages, and participate
in open discussions on every­thing
from potential joint ven-tures
to job opportunities. Alumni can see
photos and read speeches from key on­and
off-campus events. They also can
access local chapter pages and participate
in online discussions led by alumni
experts in many fields.
In addition, Thunderbird has actively
encouraged faculty and staff to leverage
technology-and both groups are doing so.
Seventy percent of Thunderbird's faculty
members had established online course
materials within 14 months of the My
Thunderbird release. All departments have
also put most of their key materials online.
Plus, faculty and staff-as well as stu­dents-
have created online personal pro­files
and links that enhance interactivity.
At the same time, School officials are
working aggressively to develop online
courses and other language, function,
industry and country-specific materials
that alumni can access on
demand. They have even
announced a tech-related dot­com
spin off that should help
keep Thunderbird on the fore­front
of educational technology.
And current students? The
School, which already requires
students to have personal lap­tops,
has invested in four T-l
lines, innumerable plug-in data ports
throughout its classrooms, library, cafe­teria,
lounges and dorms, and has
incorporated technology into nearly
every aspect of the registration, class­room,
small group, and research
process. T-birds, for instance, obtain
course handouts and classmate profiles
online and have active course chat
rooms where they can swap informa­tion
and post small group project mate­rials
as well as their final Powerpoint
presentations for classroom use. Even
more exciting, they have nearly unlim­ited
online access to some of the
world's best-and most expensive-
THUNDERBIRD 53/3 / 2000 www.t -bird.edu
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000 www.t -bird.edu
databases. That means they can sign on
from home at 2 am.-or from the compa­nies
they are interning with-and find
country and market-specific data that is so
detailed and valuable that some alunmi are
leveraging their student interns just to do
research.
Electrifying the Curriculum
Given that T-birds are early-adapters
and entrepreneurs by nature, no one
needed to encourage them to jump on this
ebusiness trend. They have signed up in
droves for every ebusiness and/or technol­ogy
class that Thunderbird offers. Those
classes include electronic commerce for
global markets, marketing high tech prod­ucts
and services, global telecommunica­tions
marketing, intellectual property, and
foreign direct investment and technology
transfer. At least one additional 'core'
class, introduction to ebusiness, was also
recently approved.
And, while you might expect to find an
extensive 'e' element in traditional courses
like Thunderbird's competitive intelli­gence,
global sourcing, marketing, compet­itive
strategy, entrepreneurship,
research a company or new idea, write a
business plan, create a company Web page,
and interact with global team members
online. As a result, students leave his class
with interesting global ebusiness insights,
and highly marketable skill sets.
Dr. Signe Nunez, a ChileaniSwed who
was born in Brazil and raised in Mexico,
uses Thunderbird's tele-video studio to
two-way broadcast her cross-cultural com­munications
lessons to students through­out
Peru and Mexico who are enrolled in
Thunderbird's Master of International
Management-Latin America (MIMLA)
program. Those students then use My
Thunderbird to post comments and mate­rials.
Dr. Anant Sundaram, who is from
India, uses that same facility to simultane­ously
teach his advanced managerial
finance class to Thunderbird students in
Glendale, the French-Geneva Center, and
Tokyo. Students at all three locations can
see, hear and talk to each other as well as
share materials.
Dr. Salvatore Federico '99 (EMIM),
a French national, has even incorporated
technology into his business language
training. He developed a highly interactive
French language CD-ROM that presents
more than a dozen business situation and
culture cases. Students can read each case
in French, click on a word or
phrase for the translation,
click again for grammar
information, then yet again to
hear a native French speaker
pronounce the highlighted
part. Students can even prac­tice
pronunciations by
recording themselves and
generating a computerized
voice comparison.
In addition, the School has
been sending students on the
road for e-related opportuni­ties.
For example, 25 current
students recently spent a
week in Austin, Texas, a major ebusiness
hotbed, visiting area high-tech companies
such as Dell, Concero, Vignette, 3M,
Broadjump and Garden.com. This trip was
a joint effort in the T-bird community, and
a huge success, thanks primarily to the
hard work of current student Carrie
Norton and Lance Mchmes '90. McInnes,
who is also a TAA North America Board
member, left a successful eight-year inter­national
Coca-Cola career last year to join
Austin-based KnowltAlLcom, which devel­ops
Internet enabling software that helps
customer service representatives and
direct sales agents interact live with cus­tomers
over the Web.
"Carrie had originally approached me
about doing an Austin-focused ebusiness
conference at Thunderbird, but we even­tually
decided that it would be better to
actually bring Thunderbirds to Austin,"
McInnes said. "T-birds just naturally have
the perfect personality profile and back­grounds
for ebusiness. They will be in a
perfect position two to three years from
now when all of these dot. corns truly go
international and need help with things
like currency exchange, office
and decision modeling classes, you
will also find technology used
innovatively in other not-so-obvi­ous
programs. For instance,
Professor Bill King has incorpo­rated
a formal entrepreneurship
project into his English as a
Second Language curriculum.
Long a classroom pioneer, the
tech-savvy King gave learning busi­ness
English a whole new twist by
teaching foreign students how to
Technology advances at Thunderbird have been funded in
part by two members of the Board of Trustees. John
Berndt and his wife Jean gave 5500,000 to create the
John & Jean Berndt Fund for Technological Innovation, which
promotes new technology initiatives developed by faculty and
administration. Trustee Sam Garvin and his wife Rita, through
their company Continental Promotion Group, Inc., also con­tributed
5500,000 to fund ebusiness curriculum development,
student assistantships and an executive-in-residence.
openings and joint partnerships,
and dealing with language and
cultural issues."
"It was fantastic," Norton
added. "I think we exceeded all of
the students' expectations in pro­viding
insight, contacts, and value.
We definitely built some bridges
here in Austin-which was our
intent. We represented Thunder­bird
very well in terms of our
diverse cultures, skill sets, and
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000 4 www.t -bird .edu
aptitudes. We also put Austin on the map
in many students' minds.»
The students, who were mostly from the
U.S., Asia and Latin America, met with area
alumni, corporate executives, and venture
capitalists researching ways in which they
can leverage their technological training,
multicultural backgrounds, and language
skills to benefit Austin's burgeoning high­tech
entities. The group even arranged for
former Dell International president,
Andrew Harris, to address an open-to-the­public
First Thesday crowd. His topic was
"From Dell International to the '.com': The
Internationalization of the New Economy."
Harris is the current founder/CEO of
Austin-based Handtech.com, which is pio­neering
a new marketing channel that
would deliver Internet based applications
and technology products and services to
over 12,500 technology consultants.
Meanwhile, a second student group was
completing a similar, two-week Silicon
Valley Interim. Sponsored by Dr. Michael
Woolverton, a marketing professor at
Thunderbird, the Interim included 26 stu­dents
who visited venture capital and pre­IPO
companies, as well as established
veterans Apple and Hewlett Packard.
Students also participated in Garage.com's
two-day entrepreneurial boot camp and the
Thunderbird Global Business Forum, enti­tled
Making the Global Net Work, in May.
"We had planned on doing this trip as a
Winterim next January, but given every­thing
that's going on in Silicon Valley, the
consensus was that we couldn't wait that
long," said Woolverton. "We wanted to see
firsthand what was going on in ecommerce
and what opportunities might be available
for our very entrepreneurial and global
student group." Woolverton credited cur­rent
student Kristen Landry, who is presi­dent
of Thtmderbird's Women in Business
Club, as the major
planning force behind
his Interim.
lifelong Learning
Making the Global Net Work was one of
six ebusiness related forums Thunderbird
will host worldwide this year. Thunderbird
Global Business Forums are half- or full­day
seminars on timely topics that make
leading-edge practitioners and Thunder­bird
faculty available to global managers
worldwide. The May event featured top
speakers from Cisco, Silicon Valley Bank,
E*1'rade, OpenTV, GlobalSight and several
other New Economy concerns, and cov­ered
such areas as technological transfor­mation,
globalization versus localization,
funding, and other trends.
"There was a lot of good irtformation
presented here,» said Chris Johnson '86,
a managing director with Bank of Nova
Scotia, and TAA North American chair­man.
"So far I've heard very positive com­ments."
Johnson was especially impressed
by the fact that so many current Thun­derbird
students-Interim participants,
students on nearby internships, and others
who came just for the Forum-attended
the sessions. "You can't understand Silicon
Valley from outside it," he said. "You have
to come here, experience it, and mine the
intellect and energy."
The Forum attracted almost 300 people,
including about 30 percent who were not
T-birds but who were simply drawn by the
topic, speakers and programs. It seems
that even though many people don't yet
understand Thunderbird's growing ebusi­ness
prowess, they do understand the
Enhanced Online Community Offers Alumni More
The old adage, 'less is more: simply doesn't hold true when it comes to Alumni My
Thunderbird (AMTB), Thunderbird's alumni-exclusive online community. Since AMTB
was launched in November 1999, nearly 9,000 alumni in 97 countries have signed on to
take advantage of valuable personal and professional development opportunities.
AMTB offers many features, including hot job postings, information about upcoming
events, access to free online international-business research, lifetime email and discus­sion
groups (on topics such as venture capital, ecommerce and the Thunderbird brand
strategy). And, this summer, Thunderbird launched II!!!!!!I~===~
AMTB 2.0, an enhanced site that offers alumni even ,..=.. -_ _
more:
• advanced searches,
• news and information,
• personalization options,
• user-friendly navigation.
AMTB 2.0 provides greater ease of navigation, as
well as the ability for alumni to add their favorite
=EI-!-- .=-._­--
.. ----_ .. _-_ _.-.. ----­links,
files and photos to their personal pages within the site. It
also provides free Web space for the Thunderbird Alumni Alumni My Thunderbird's
Association's 150 chapters to build and maintain their own pages (AMTB) new design
and discussion groups. The Chapter Pages feature of AMTB makes it easier to find
allows Chapters to post real-time news and information on their what you're looking
sites. This further enhances the dynamic, interactive nature of for-from local chapter
AMTB and strengthens the connection among alumni worldwide. contacts and information
Visually, the new site also embraces the 'look and feel' of
Thunderbird's brand strategy and ad campaign, featuring photos
of alumni from around the world.
A survey of AMTB account holders was conducted in the Spring,
on upcoming events,
to fellow alumni and
lifelong learning
to assess the value of the site and gather feedback for possible opportunities.
enhancements. Nearly 18 percent of the more than 6,000 alumni
surveyed responded.
A full survey summary is posted on AMTB, but here is a sample:
• "The Web site is providing a terrific service. I was able to locate several lost friends."
• "I really value the service of the lifetime email account. Because we T-birds are
constantly moving around and changing jobs, it is difficult to maintain current info,
let alone email addresses, of all of our friends and classmates."
• "The creation of the My T-bird web site has re-sparked my involvement in local
chapter events and networking."
You can sign up for your free AMTB account by logging on to
http://alumni.my.t-bird.edu. by Jessica McCann
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000 www.t·bird .edu
value of the School's unique global per­spective
in the New Economy. As a result,
demand for Thunderbird-related ebusiness
training is on the rise-especially among
working executives.
Thunderbird's Executive Education
group has responded by developing a
series of modular ebusiness programs. Its
recently held, weeklong, Global Manage­ment
in a Digital World was a complete
sell out. Two-thirds of the program seats
were filled before the curriculum was even
finalized. While ebusiness issues are incor­porated
throughout most Exec. Ed. pro­grams,
the Valuing a dot.com section of a
recent mergers & acquisitions program
drew rave reviews, as did Dr. Bill Young­dahl's
global sourcing program, and a
Brazilian telecommunications industry
workshop. Exec Ed. also offers a formal
Global Telecommunications Management
Program, which has been taught to execu­tives
from more than 50 countries. Other
stand-alone ebusiness workshops are in
development.
Forum near you.
Be an online expert
or guest speaker.
Learn more about
Thunderbird's awe­some
online stu­help
you achieve almost unlimited per­sonal
and professional success. And by so
doing, it-and you-will all-but-ensure
that the School retains its coveted No. 1
ranking! •
Does it sound like the Thunderbird you email addresses:
knew when you were here? Hardly!
Technology and ebusiness now figure so
prominently in nearly every aspect of life at
Thunderbird that you might wonder if
you've stumbled into the Twilight Zone.
But you would so eI\ioy that zone! So jump
on board. Sign on to AMTB and use it.
Attend a Thunderbird Global Business
dent research capabilities. Consider
leveraging our incredibly esavvy student
base for internships, consulting work, and
other jobs because, right now, they're a
very underused resource.
Herberger: Herbergr@t-bird.edu
McVicker: JoeMcVicker@global.t-bird.edu
Federico: federics@t-bird.edu
Mcinnes: Imcinnes@knowitall.com
Johnson: cjohnson@scotiabank.com
The bottom line is that Thunderbird's Anderson: janderso@svbank.com
new technology, combined with its world­famous
studenU faculty/alumni base, can
Joyce: wjj@global.t-bird.edu
Lehrer: blehrer@global.t-bird.edu
STUDENT-LED INITIATIVES HELP ELECTRIFY THUNDERBIRD
When it comes to 'e' stuff, T-bird students are making their own
opportunities. They developed their own HTML programming and
Web page creation program in partnership with the School's various
technology staff groups and began teaching each other about the
Web. They also conceptualized and held two outstanding entrepre­neurship,
venture capital and ebusiness conferences (eVe) that
brought dozens of leading New Economy practitioners to Thunder­bird.
Those conferences, which were held in October '99 and February
'00, helped trigger an all-out ebusiness explosion at Thunderbird.
Both daylong, student-led events drew an overflow audience of
students, faculty, staff, alumni, and non-Thunderbirds that filled
both the school's auditorium and an adjacent conference room.
There, they heard speakers like Alan Hald, co-founder of MiaoAge,
Mark Hogan, group vice president of General Motors, and Jim
Anlt.1ID1:-,o. fnlNlgIng GlflClOr.-tlrtG ~esldeot of SVB 5ecuritie$,
_:,,-4.rsul.-.,.>f.$l!itcH.1I,V ... ,ante, dlscusS
"The eVe conference was one of the best conferences I have ever
attended on the subject of ecommerce," said Barney Lehrer '89, a
New York-based ecommerce practitioner and TAA North America
Council member. "The speakers-l'm proud to say many of them
were fellow T-bird alums-were first rate, the organization very
professional, and the networking opportunities were fantastic. I
look forward to the next one."
Given the wide range of possible topics, Leslie and his team
elected to group speakers by category. They also arranged a good
mix of keynote and panel discussions, as well as pre- and post event
mixers and a speaker lunch.
Thunderbird President Roy Herberger kicked off the February con­ference.
Then, speaker Jim Anderson of Silicon Valley Bank immedi­ately
established the Importance of the Internet by asking how many
in the audiencAt had already been online that 1JIOming. The answer
was:.I~. tNn SO perqnt, even though It ... liartt)t 8 l.m.
~in~"" ·.ntIi_1ciI\g is • • Of 1M tr~ltion at
==~~==~ ,~~~.~~ .... ~~~~ .... ---~
THUNDERBIRD 53/312000 www.t-bird.edu
Le
Intellige
'81' is one of the most
overlooked and critical
decision-making tools
in the world today. ,
'M any global conglomerates
could have more competi­tive
intelligence capacity
than most small- to mid­sized
nations do. All they'd
have to do is capture the information their
people throughout the world already know
then funnel it back to one location for
analysis," said Jeffrey Flint '99, a team
leader with Proactive Enterprise, Inc., a
leading U.S.-based business intelligence
company.
"For instance, a company might want to
know how long it will have new product
exclusivity. Or, it might want to search for
any skeletons in the closet of a company
it's acquiring. It might even want assur­ance
that the expatriate it is sending
abroad has the right skill- and mind-set to
succeed in that new environment," Flint
said. "Whatever it is they want to know,
our clients are always wide-eyed when we
show them what's legally available."
So, what exactly is business intelli­gence?
And, better still, how can today's
global companies leverage it to derive
some major gains?
"Competitive intelligence, or business
intelligence (BI), as it is also called, is a
decision-making tool that is focused
almost entirely on the external environ­ment,"
said Professor Paul Kinsinger, a 20-
year Central Intelligence Agency employee
whose Thunderbird BI class has 'sold out'
almost every trimester for seven years. "BI
isn't espionage. And it isn't marketing
research. It's a comprehensive radar sys-by
Lindsey Michaels
tem that helps people identify and take
advantage of market shifts and opportuni­ties,
while missing potential mine fields,"
he said.
As such, BI should be applied to virtu­ally
every major executive decision and a
company's competitive strategy should
drive its BI activities.
"In the best scenario, BI helps compa­nies
look at the competitive environment
and effectively make decisions that cre­ate-
or protect-value for their stake­holders,"
said Michelle (Robertson)
Settecase '95, a global manager for tacti­cal
competitive intelligence at Ernst &
Young. "We're talking about, literally,
everything from establishing personality
profiles on key leaders that help you pre­dict
what they will do, to researching
plant capabilities and current activities, to
understanding supplier, buyer, and joint
venture relationships, to ultimately, estab­lishing
classic 'what if scenarios or 'war
games' that help you predict and respond
to current or future shifts strategically."
"Unlike market research, which is more
quantitative, business intelligence is much
more qualitative in its nature," said Kin­singer.
It involves two very distinct skill
sets. One is information collection-which
requires innate curiosity, good listening
skills, and the ability to extract data. The
second is critical thinking-which requires
strong analysis and logic skills, as well as a
dash of cynicism. Kinsinger believes that
while the first skill can be taught, the sec­ond
largely can't. That people are either
wired for critical thinking or they're not
"In that respect, BI, as a tool, is both art
and science," he said, "where the art is the
challenge of making the whole puzzle
clear when you only have 20 to 30 percent
of its pieces."
Which is where cultural expertise and
in-country contacts come in to play.
"The U.S. is a very information-rich soci-ss
al Gain
ety," said Settecase. "Ninety to 95 percent
of the raw data one needs for good BI are
public knowledge-if you know where
and how to look." Online, for instance, cor­porate
Web sites serve up amazing
amounts of data, as do local newspapers,
Who:S Who listings, trade journals, and the
Security and Exchange Commission filings
that publicly traded companies must file.
Many counties also put land, marriage, and
divorce records online.
"Then there are things like permit
offices, where you can look at specific
building schematics to judge capacity.
How many workers can it hold? What­and
how many-chemicals are stored
onsite? Who is its hazardous waste con­tractor
and how much does he haul out
each week? All such records are valuable. "
"I also check with each Secretary of
State's office," Flint explained, "because
companies have to record their officers,
patents, trademarks, and private label
names with them. Then, there are the
Internet host companies, because you can
sometimes find domain names registered
for new products that are still in develop­ment.
And industry-specific 'chat rooms'
where current and former employees, as
well as suppliers and buyers, often provide
extremely valuable first-person insight."
Accessing The Right
People and Facts
Talk to anyone in the BI field and you
quickly begin to hear a theme. That is:
employing native speakers and those with
extensive cultural expertise and contacts
is essential for success. So too, is develop­ing
a good, centralized data collection sys­tem
and strategy.
It seems that first-person information is
one of the lifebloods of good BI, especially
when seeking data outside of the U.S.
where public records are scarcer and real
knowledge rests with the local elite.
Business Intelligence helps
companies 'see' what the
future holds. Michelle
Settecase '95 calls it 'a great
for infonnatlon junkies
(left) Gerald Heydenreich '97 of
Germany spends a full quarter of
his time doing BI for his company.
(right) Jeffrey Flint '99 poses with
his daughter at a Competitive
Intelligence conference. His prior
work in Russia gave him an edge
in his current BI job.
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000
Obtaining good intelligence in other cul­tures
is often difficult, if not impossible,
for non-natives who don't have an 'in'
through business or family ties. Which is
precisely why multinationals, which have
operations-and country natives­throughout
the globe, could become
incredible BI powerhouses if they would
harness their resources effectively.
"To be frank, we tend to automatically
utilize European affiliates of U.S.-based
companies as a resource," said Flint.
"Since 1 specialize in the pharmaceutical
industry and drugs often get tested in
Europe first, Europe has always been a
good corporate counter intelligence
source." By talking to local sources, Flint
said, he can usually find out how clinical
trials are going, what's on the drug's label,
and what the likely release timeline will
be. "Often 1 find that if 1 can come to an
industry expert or clinician with half of the
story, they feel less threatened. They're
more willing to confinn or deny some of
my assumptions and share things like who
is for the drug and who's against it and
why." Armed with that information, Flint
can often guess the rest of the 'puzzle.'
"Stop and think about it. As an Ameri­can,
wouldn't you be more comfortable
giving out information if the stranger call­ing
you had an American accent and
seemed to know what he was talking
about?" asked Gerald Heydenreich '97, a
German national who did BI for Horchst
AG, now Aventz, before starting his own
B2B online auction firm. "I can tell you
from first hand experience that having a
German accent and knowing the facts
works much better in Germany."
According to Heydenreich, cultural
nuances also play significant roles in BI
work. "In general, I think that Europeans
are much more closed, more risk-adverse
than Americans," he said. "They need more
time to warm up-to feel comfortable with
the caller and the call. But once they do,
they tend to tell you everything you want to
know. Americans, on the other hand, have
always been much more open initially, but
they tend to close up when you get to the
very important things."
"Culture can actually make a big differ­ence
on three levels," explained Settecase.
"It affects how you get the information,
how you analyze it, and how you deliver
your report to your clients. "
According to Settecase, some countries
have legal restrictions about what you can
ask and whom. "In Germany, for instance,
you don't ask salary or financial data and in
www.t·bird.edu
HOW TO BEGIN
by Paul Kinsinger
There is no single, 'best practices' solution for organizing a BI effort in your company. Much depends on your
organizational structure, as is indicated in the models below.
CENTRALIZED designed to support 'C'-level strategic decision making; usually found in single business
companies where decisions are corporate-driven.
DECENTRALIZED designed to support SBU-level strategy and even tactical intelligence needs; found in
companies with disparate businesses.
HUB-AND-SPOKE designed to support strategic effort at corporate level and to coordinate with separate
SBU-strategicltactical effort; found in companies with adjacent businesses.
Paul Kinsinger brings
20 years of CIA
experience to his
Thunderbird Business
THE CEo-BI "CONSIGLIARE" a senior BI executive who reports directly and sometimes solely to the
CEO; rare and always a matter of personal ties.
THE BI ORCHESTRATOR used by smalVmedium-sized companies where one person coordinates internal
intelligence needs with outsource providers. Intelligence course­which
many students
THE 'LIVING, BREATHING INTELLIGENCE CULTURE' where BI becomes second nature in the company; term a 'career gold
employees recognize importance of BI and take part in collecting, analyzing, and disseminating critical
external intelligence.
mine.'
Although organization type should drive how to set up a BI effort, in the end, its success will depend far more on your company's
decision making culture. If your executives have a systematic approach to decision making and are open to others' expertise, then BI
should help you. If they are last minute, 'seat of the pants' decision makers or already know everything, then don't waste your money.
Russia," where Settecase spent five years,
"you can't legally ask people about their
own companies." She added that in Russia,
she is more effective when she goes to buy­ers
and suppliers using an indirect, oppor­tunity-
oriented approach. "I'd say
something like, 'I understand you are
implementing an ecommerce strategy at
XYZ company. I'd like to talk to you about
how you might also help implement some­thing
like that for us.' In Turkey, though, my
best option would be finding
gets or when assessing potential joint ven­ture
partners or supplier solvency. "In
countries like Brazil, where 20 to 30 fami­lies
control most of the nation's wealth,
you would be wise to penetrate at that
level, or else, develop deep relationships
with company CFOs or with their banks,"
she said.
"In France and Japan, though, anything
goes when doing BI. But in France, espe­cially,
which has a very active government
someone who has a close,
personal relationship with
people in government,
preferably, someone with
links to the Electronic
Commerce Commission.
And in Singapore, where a
narrow group controls most
of the government and enter­prises,
you have to hire
someone to get you 'in' if
you're a foreigner."
81 isn't espionage.
intelligence community,
you should assume that
your French competitor
is probably getting infor­mation
directly from
French Intelligence for
things like major bids and
labor disputes because
the French believe that
providing such data is in
their national interest. "
And it isn't marketing
research. It's a
comprehensive radar
system that helps
people identify ...
market shifts and
opportunities. Interpreting and pre­senting
data also takes on
Good business intelli-gence
is, perhaps, most paramount when
doing due diligence, especially in cultures
where there are no Security Exchange
Commission or Financial Standards Board
controls. Many a company has found that
accepting financial data at face value from
such countries can be incredibly costly
when attempting to value acquisition tar-culturally
significant over­tones.
Good business intelligence analysts,
can, for example, put together comprehen­sive
personality profiles of new corporate
or business unit leaders that help them pre­dict
future business moves and potential
corporate culture shifts. For instance,
while a hard-charging, heavily hierarchical
management style might work well in
some locales, it would fail miserably in oth­ers.
A good analyst would account for that.
He would also adjust his client presenta­tion
style. "In the U.S., most companies
want us to present a fully-documented
written plan with spreadsheets and full
graphics," Settecase said. "In other cul­tures,
they only want things verbally. "
"Most people wouldn't drive down the
road with their eyes closed, yet a great
many companies think nothing about try­ing
to navigate without BI," said Kin­singer.
"That's like trying to win a war
without reconnaissance. The name of the
game," he added, "is obtaining primary
source data. Then predicting probabilities
and weighting them. The next step is,
then, identifying 'sign posts' that help you
determine relative positions as the land­scapes
change. "
A Typical BI Scenario
U.S.-based ABC company is in the early
stages of a new product launch that will
take at least nine months to prepare effec­tively.
Given the amount of money that's at
stake, the company asks its BI group to
scan the external environment to help it
make a 'go' or 'no go' call. The BI group
conducts the competitive assessment and
finds that German-based XYZ company is
developing the same product at its plant in
Singapore. It also determines that the mar-
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000 10 www.t -bird .edu
ketplace isn't big enough for both products
and that the company that's first to market
stands to make millions of dollars while
the later company may lose millions.
How do the BI group and company pro­ceed?
By leveraging its sales representatives,
suppliers, and other in-country contacts,
the BI group is able to gain proactive intel­ligence
regarding the competing team's
size, capability, collective personality, and
resources. From its initial 'snapshot
assessment,' the BI group offers two
assessments: there is a 15 percent chance
that XYZ is three months ahead of them
and a 40 percent chance that it is three
months behind them. Based on the BI
team's assessment, ABC's executives
authorize additional resources to help
expedite the launch. They also authorize a
comprehensive BI workup.
The team then learns that the project
leader has his team's unconditional sup­port
and that he has an unblemished his­tory
of new product success. ABC's BI
team terms that fact a big 'red flag' that
changes the odds in the earlier assessment.
The BI team explains how 'signposts'
will help it complete its job. For instance,
it knows that both companies have to file
for and clear the final regulatory hurdle
four months before shipping. That's one
very clear signpost. The team also plans on
working next month's industry trade show
in Paris. Members know that a key XYZ
official is scheduled to speak, and that at
past trade shows, such speakers have
been willing to discuss projects that were
within five or six months of release. The BI
team also knows that several of XYZ's logi­cal
'next step' vendors will be there.
Team members also begin alerting ABC's
multi-national sales and production teams.
The BI group explains exactly what it
needs to know and asks its in-country
nationals to leverage their personal net­works.
Have the proper permits been
obtained? Have online or local supplier and
transportation contracts been signed? Or
have such talks at least begun? Has XYZ
started increasing its Singapore staffing or
production capabilities? The team evens
wants to know if the XYZ project leader
has cancelled plans to take his upcoming
annual two-week vacation in Bali.
Based upon BI's next comprehensive
report, which management has been
promised within four weeks, ABC will
make its next critical 'go' or 'no go' call.
"We're talking almost unbelievable
potential gains or saves," said Flint, who
said his BI team once learned about a
major competitor's Super Bowl-planned
new product launch in time to pre-empt its
effectiveness by having his client launch
an advance campaign.
INFORMATION CENTRAL
"While it's often difficult to assign a
value to Bl's role in preventing bad
choices, it's relatively easy to justify a BI
team's return on investment when it's
working with the sales team," said Sette­case.
"I can tell you confidently that here
at Ernst & Young we closed in·access of
$50 million in business this year that can
be attributed directly to our BI activities."
"All I can tell you," said Heydenreich, "is
that at Portum, my current online auction
business, I spend at least a quarter of my
time directly on competitive intelligence.
If I didn't, I would be out of business."
Given that the speed of global change
today can make Mach 1 look like a Sunday
stroll in Amishville, even medium- to large­sized
multi-nationals may not be able to
operate much longer without excellent BI.
Doing so may not put their immediate sur­vival
at risk, but it will definitely place
their margins, market share, and market
cap squarely on the world's 'Most Endan­gered'
list. •
email addresses:
Settecase: michelle.settecase@ey.com
Flint: jaflint@hotmail.com
Heydenreich: Gerald.Heydenreich@
portum.com
Kinsinger: Kinsingp@t-bird.edu or (602)
978-7611
Thunderbird doesn't just have one of the world's most comprehensive online global research
libraries. It also boasts a 50-50 U.S. to non-U.S. student and faculty ratio, with some 80 countries
represented at any time. That combination bodes well for companies seeking world class
business intelligence on a shoestring budget or timeline.
Alunmi and non-alunmi can leverage those incredible resources in several ways .
• Thunderbird's Business Information Service (BIS) provides experienced business
research specialists who can quickly locate needed data and deliver it directly to your desktop or
door. Fees are extremely modest-$US60 per hour for alunmi and $75 per hour for others-with
a typical search taking between two and ten hours. To learn more, please visit the BIS Web site at
http://www.t-bird.edulbis or contact Jennie Oleksak '88, Thunderbird's business information
systems librarian, at oleksak@t-bird.edu or (602) 978-7236.
• Contad Thunderbird's Corporate Consulting Program to 'hire' an experienced
Jennie Oleksak 'SS
student/faculty team to do your comprehensive, confidential business intelligence project. The cost generally varies according to
breadth and depth of project, but is normally in the US$lO,OOO to $15,000 range. Client companies help select project members and
receive a formal presentation at project's end. Please contact David Martin at martind@t-bird.edu or (602) 978-7814.
• Hire a Thunderbird Intern. Thunderbird offers three-to-nine-month internships at nearly every time of year. Interns have access
to the School's entire database and bring native expertise and contacts. Thunderbird has students representing over 80 countries at
any time. Many also have extensive second and third country expertise. Thunderbird interns are typically paid about $4,000 per
month by U.S. corporations. You can learn more by contacting David Martin (see above).
THUNDERBIRD 5313 I 2000 11 www.t -bird .edu
so, what is this thing called busi­ness
intelligence? Is it a busi­ness
IQ test? Is it about 'cloak
and dagger' games to acquire
your competitors' secrets? Is it
that artificial intelligence that someday
will come to your companies?
To some, business intelligence is any or
all of the above, and that lends to the con­siderable
confusion about this emerging
professional field. But business inteUi-gence,
or BI as I will refer to it, is none of
these. It is quite simply another manage­ment
tool that helps busy decision makers
gain insight and fore!mowledge about "the
external operating environment" -that
dynamic arena over which companies
have little or no control and influence-so
they can make the best informed decisions
possible. In this era of globalization, exter­nal
issues-new markets, partners, legisla­tion,
or competitors-have become
increasingly important. So, too, has the
ability to understand, respond to, stay
ahead of, or anticipate and pre-empt them.
This is the realm of business intelli­gence,
the on-board corporate 'radar' unit
that is constantly scanning business hori­zons
for opportunities and dangers. Have
you ever faced these kinds of questions: "If
we move to acquire company X, will com­petitors
Y and Z do so, too?"; "the Journal
is reporting that our key competitor is seri­ously
considering exiting this market. Is
this true?" If so, then you have needed
business intelligence.
Of course, many executives monitor
external events through their own personal
information networks, many of them first­rate.
But two things ultimately work
against this today. First, as we all !mow, the
information world has exploded, over­whelming
the ability of even the most vora­cious
news junkies to stay afloat. Second,
personal intelligence systems are not trans­ferable-
a liability when decisions are
being pushed down to lower levels and
executives are constantly moving on.
In response, corporations of all sizes
and structures have turned to business
intelligence to stay better informed on a
more systematic basis. Executives from
several well-!mown companies have been
quite candid about the wrong decisions BI
helped them avoid, the dollars it saved,
and the opportunities it spotlighted. And,
companies not utilizing BI or its partner,
corporate security, have found themselves
on the losing end of competitive bids, pre­empted
in new launches, or outmaneu­vered
in a key acquisition opportunity.
Understanding Each 'Business
Intelligence Environment'
International business schools send
graduates into the corporate world with
several checklists and templates for grap­pling
with today's challenges. Entering a
new market? You must !mow about oper­ating
issues such as the local labor situa­tion
and political risks; financial issues
such as rules for the repatriation of capital
and local accounting procedures; and
communications issues such as negotiat­ing
in another business culture. I believe
today's global manager must also !mow
about what I call 'the business intelligence
environment' (BIE, and I have created a BI
'checklist' that they can take with them.
• Accessing the Local Environment
Competitive information-the raw
material that feeds the business intelli­gence
process-is available in every busi-
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000 12 www.t -bird .edu
ness culture, since no company can operate
without disseminating it But is such infor­mation
generally available, timely, and reli­able?
Can it be acquired through secondary
sources or mostly through primary
sources? If the latter, how do you access
the key people who can provide you with
good competitive information?
In the US, competitive information is
widely available, easily accessible, very
timely, and mostly reliable. Why? The US is
an information-saturated, technology-dri­ven,
and 'talky' business culture, where the
provision or exchange of competitive
information is rarely subjected to any
cost/benefit analysis. Moreover, US com­panies
are generally not overly concerned
with information security and will often
r isk leaking competitive information
rather than commit resources to protect it.
I call the US a 'high offense, low defense'
business intelligence culture-like "run­and-
gun" basketball, you can "score" a lot
of competitive intelligence without run­ning
into too much defense.
Many other countries are on the other
end of the scale, however. Although the
kudzu-like spread of information technol­ogy
is reaching into every business culture,
many countries-especially developing
ones with scant experience with political
openness-still offer few if any reliable,
timely secondary sources of business infor­mation.
Recently, in a remarkable New
York Times item reporting Chinese eco­nomic
statistics, the author stopped in the
middle to remind readers that, of course,
China's official statistics were notoriously
misleading. Then, he proceeded on to
report the rest of the numbers. A major
South American country required busi­nesses
to publish their financial numbers;
the catch was that they could be printed in
small, out-of-the-way newspapers with lim­ited
circulation. Many students from still
other burgeoning economies have told me
that almost no business information pub­lished
in the local media can be believed.
Part of this speaks to the scarcity of
information technologies, but a bigger part
is probably due to the personal, largely
closed way that business has traditionally
been done. And this, in tum, underscores
the importance of having a network of key
people with knowledge of business devel­opments
if you hope to conduct effective
BI in most countries. As a result, building a
BI team depends on hiring the right net­workers-
usually locals with family, politi­cal,
or business connections or long­standing
industry reputations who can
work the phone, the restaurants, the clubs,
and the parties and decipher who's reliable.
• Understanding How Aggressively Local
Competitors Engage In BI.
In Asia, for example, Japanese, Korean,
and Taiwanese companies have long had a
reputation for aggressive competitive
intelligence practices and good corporate
security-especially against foreign com­petitors.
All three countries are what I
would call 'high offense, high defense'
business intelligence environments. In
Europe, some companies in countries that
have long been highly trade-dependent,
like Sweden and the Netherlands, also
have such reputations. When competing in
such business cultures or against such
companies, an executive must plan to be
subjected to an aggressive competitive
intelligence effort. The antidote? Strength­ening
information security measures.
• Knowing The Competitor's Defense
Your intelligence collection efforts may
have to be bolstered considerably to work a
'high defense' business intelligence environ­ment
On the other hand, BI is a cost center
and if local competitors are asleep at the
competitive information switch, then per­haps
a more modest BI effort will suffice.
For example, many former students
from developing economies in Latin
America and Asia have characterized their
countries as 'low defense' BI environ­ments,
both because of the predominance
of cozy, family-run businesses and the fact
that truly competitive market conditions
have only recently begun to emerge.
Others from formerly state-run economies
such as Eastern Europe echo this, claiming
that business people in their countries
sometimes do not yet fully comprehend the
value of their company's operating infor­mation
and can be loose-lipped about it
• Knowing How Much 'Help' Competitors
Get From Their Governments
This can run the gamut from illegal
and/or unethical means to acquire key
competitive information from you or your
premises through wiretaps or theft to the
use of government resources to help local
companies play better defense. This cate­gory
is not much of an issue in many coun­tries,
but when it is, it can be the 800-
pound gorilla Imagine being arrested after
being told that your industry roundtable
luncheons violate some obscure 1938 law
protecting local business property. How
did this happen? The head of your local
competitor is the cousin of the intelligence
chief and was starting to chafe at how well
you were plugged in.
• Knowing The Legal Restrictions Regarding
Collecting Business Information
There are many creative ways to acquire
potentially advantageous business informa­tion,
to be sure, but the major trading coun­tries
also draw the line at certain measures
such as wiretapping and outright theft of
trade secrets. While good, heads-up busi­ness
intelligence relies on neither, some
practitioners are lured (or pushed) over the
line in pursuit of the 'easy answer.'
In heading into a new market, the real
issue for companies is in understanding
both the laws on the books and the pecu­liarities
of enforcement. Many countries
consider tapping competitors' communica­tions
illegal, but is it enforced? If so, is the
penalty prohibitive, or just an annoyance?
In Southeast Asia, for example, eavesdrop­ping
is illegal but is still widely used. And, if
laws are only selectively enforced, who is
the target? Foreign companies? Star­crossed
firms that have the misfortune to
be competing with one headed by the
cousin of the interior minister?
• Knowing Local Ethics Regarding Collecting
Business Information
Each company has its own standards
for business ethics and how they should
be applied to acquiring competitive infor­mation.
I make no judgments here, since
even in the era of globalization, ethical
standards differ from one business culture
to another. The challenge for companies is
to know that BI practices they are com­fortable
with in one business environment
may not be acceptable in another, or vice
versa As a result, some adjustments may
need to be made to avoid sliding down an
ethical chute into a legal hole in the pur­suit
of competitive information or to pre­vent
information loss from unacceptable
tactics others are using.
The Bottom Line?
Armed with this checklist, an executive
taking a company into a new market can
make business intelligence a key strategy
tool for navigating the challenging waters
ahead while simultaneously helping to
protect the company's intellectual prop­erty
against such efforts by others. After
all, an executive who failed to protect
shareholder value through poor opera­tional
decisions would be guilty of negli­gence.
Shouldn't the failure to understand
and prepare for the business intelligence
environment be considered grounds for
corporate negligence as well? •
Kinsinger may be reached at
kinsingp@t-bird.edu or (602) 978-7611
THUNDERB IRD 53/3/2000 13 www.t -bird .edu
O rit Gadiesh immigrated to the
U.S. and attended Harvard with
almost no understanding of
American culture, and with a
non-native's English language skills. Since
she neither understood the American
movies her college friends laughed at nor
the slang they used, she felt incredibly for­eign.
But nothing matched the frustration
Gadiesh, a summa cum laude, faced when
given her first graduate school case. She
spent five hours simply translating and
reading that seven-page handout. Signifi­cantly
longer comprehending it. You see,
analyzing a television campaign for cereal is
difficult when people in your country don't
eat cereal or use television to advertise.
"I'd never heard of cereal. I'd never seen
cereal. I'd never eaten it. 1 didn't lrnow it
was a breakfast food," she said. "I didn't
have a clue how to approach this and I
almost gave up. "
But Gadiesh didn't quit. In fact, she
earned her Harvard MBA with highest hon­ors,
became the first foreign national to
win Harvard's prestigious Baker's Scholar
marketing award, and was recently named
one of America's 50 most powerful busi­nesswomen
by Fortune magazine. Gadiesh
is chairman of the board of Bain & Com­pany,
one of the world's leading global
strategy consulting firms. She is also a rec­ognized
strategy expert who shared her
experiences and advice during Global
Week activities at Thunderbird.
Gadiesh credits much of her success to
her first job. She was a 17-year-old
assigned to the Israeli war room, and then
Israeli deputy chief of staff-now presi­dent-
Ezer Weizman, during the Six-Day
War. "I watched how people behave when
they are in a position like that. How they
interact with each other. How they react to
what was coming in from the field .
Looking back, I learned how to respect
people in positions of power without being
intimidated by them. And that's some­thing-
an important something-that I've
taken with me for all of my life, I think."
Today, Gadiesh uses that skill daily
when dealing with CEOs from Fortune 500
companies. That's because Bain's culture
requires its people to obtain quantifiable
bottom line results for its clients-not sim­ply
write reports-which means that
Gadiesh must sometimes 'engage' with
clients who don't think that recommenda­tions
could---or should-be used.
"Bain's expertise is in solving complex
problems. But, if your idea is 'so brilliant'
that it is not implementable, or if you
haven't worked with the client to imple­ment
it, then it doesn't count," she said. "I
call it the 80-100 rule, which is, obviously, a
take off on the 20-80 rule. It means that if
100 percent of your idea can't be imple­mented,
then go to the 80 percent of the
idea that can be implemented." Still, some­times,
she admitted, getting even that 80
percent implemented is hard, hard work.
To illustrate, Gadiesh told the story of
one of her favorite consulting projects.
She had been hired by a steel company
that really needed to improve its profit pic­ture.
Gadiesh's research showed that the
firm's Japanese competitors were using
continuous casting methods while her
client was doing smaller, more costly,
alloy-specific pours. She did exhaustive
research, then spent an entire day with the
company's metallurgist, reviewing each
compound. By day's end, he not only
thought she was a metallurgist, he also
agreed to help her convince the sales
force, customers, mid-level, and senior
managers that the company could continu­ously
cast by reducing its number of for­mulas
from 300 to 36.
"To be a successful consultant, you have
to listen to people very, very carefully,
because a) you need to understand where
they come from if you are going to be able
to work with them to make change hap­pen,
and b) when you have different points
of view, they could be right, even though
you think you are.
"You must also be able to work with
many different levels of an organization,
not just at the top," she said. "Because
sometimes, as I'm sure you know, it
doesn't matter what a CEO says he wants.
People say 'yes sir' and figure out a hun­dred
thousand different ways to make sure
it absolutely doesn't happen."
Which brings us back to Bain's core val-
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000 14 www.t -bird .edu
ues. and the concept of True North, which
was the main topic of Gadiesh's student
address at Thunderbird.
"What intrigued me about Bain was its
different approach to what the 'product' of
a consulting company actually is," Gadiesh
explained. "Bill Bain, it's founder, believed
that the product of the consultant should
be the bottom line results for the client
and not reports. That you, the consultant,
have to take responsibility for maximizing
the possibility that it actually gets imple­mented.
That means that from day one,
you walk in and talk about what you need
to do and what you need to do to get it
implemented," she said. "You don't just do
the report first and worry about implemen­tation
later."
Gadiesh called that philosophy Bain's
True North, then went on to explain the
term. Most sailors, she said, navigate by
using a compass that tells them magnetic
north. But magnetic north is not a con­stant.
It changes depending upon certain
factors and that sailor's position in the
world. True north, however, can only be
calculated by using a gyrocompass, which
works on its own internal system.
"With all the changes that the world is
going through, with all the turbulence, peo­ple
always talk about what has to change,"
she said. "They say, change your competen­cies,
change your strategies, and ask what
you have to do to adapt. No one talks about
what you should not change. To me, True
North is the one thing that needs to remain
constant in an organization. "
To Gadiesh, True North is the very core
of who and what a company really is. She
likened it to a person's character, which is
fornled early on as a result of interactions
with one's parents and others. That core
character rarely changes widely over time.
A company's character, she continued, is
oftentimes instilled by its founders and
leaders. It defines that company.
"I think it is extremely important that
tions or move throughout the organization
and countries." A True North also pro­vides
the basis to experiment from and
come back to.
"You can be profitable and successful
without it," she said. "I don't think you can
be a great company that people feel proud
to be associated with, without True North. "
Gadiesh credits Bain's True North with
(~s a consultant, you can tell people and companies what
they should learn. What they need to know in terms oj
knowledge and capabilities .... When they lack core values
and principles it usually becomes clear that it will be
more difficult to affect meaningful change. "
companies and their employees know
what you anchor to," Gadiesh explained,
"that they know what is important. It's
what creates trust among all the members
of the organization, especially when you
go through difficult times." She said that
she and her consultants can help compa­nies
problem-solve and strategize, but that
ultinlately it is the companies that have a
True North that really thrive.
"Think of True North as a form of cohe­siveness,"
she said. "As a CEO or division
manager in one of today's fast-paced
global companies, you don't always know
what is going on throughout the company
and world, but if you have a True North,
you do know how people will handle cer­tain
things. You know that there are some
things that are completely understood,
and that makes it easy to make assump-helping
it weather a major crisis ten years
ago and says that even today, people in
her company ultimately say, 'That's a True
North problem' when dealing with critical
decisions, such as when to drop power­ful,
profitable clients that are not really
interested in acting upon Bain's consul­tants'
strategies. "Sometimes it means
that we don't take an assignment. We
have even resigned assignments when it
became clear that management was inter­ested
in a report not the execution and
results," she said.
Gadiesh said that her company must fol­low
its own True North "or else the very
bright people who work here are going to
leave." At Bain, she continued, "all of our
assets are people. We have our people, our
customers and our reputation. That is it."
Due to increasing globalization and com­petitive
issues, Bain will hire 200 MBAs and
MIMs this year, Gadiesh said. The company
now has 27 offices worldwide. "In the last
year, I've spent 100 days out of the coun­try,"
she said. "I don't like the travel, but I
love what I do when I get there.
"It's something that I find absolutely
enriching - which is why I am so curious
and interested about this Thunderbird pro­gram.
Globalization is something that most
Americans don't think enough about or
take the time to understand. But it's going
to become more and more important­which
is why I think curriculum like this
School's is going to become so important
and why other schools are starting to add
curriculum like what's found here," she
said. "All companies, American and others,
will be looking to add people with good
international understandings and back­grounds."
•
Gadiesh may be reached at:
orit.gadiesh@bain.com
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000 15 www.t-bird .edu
It's the turn
nowaglo
company is
to be or not.
So, what will it is New Economy?
Several things, not the least of which is an incredibly insightful strategy.
by Lindsey Michaels
"I f I were going to do an article on companies that have had
really effective global strategies, I'd definitely look at
General Electric, ABB, and Cern ex-the Mexico-based
cement company-and Sony," said Dr. Andrew Inkpen, a
Global Strategies professor at Thunderbird. "In cases I have
written, I have looked at companies such as Warner-Lambert,
Enron, Ericsson, and Honeywell. "
At Thunderbird, Global Strategies is the study of how compa­nies
compete in a global environment. It looks specifically at why
some companies succeed while others fail. The course is heavily
case driven and is a 'capstone' course, which means that it is one
of the most advanced classes students can take at Thunderbird.
According to Inkpen, General Electric (GE) is the epitome of a
successful global company. It's one of Wall Street's darlings-as in,
happy shareholders just pocketed a three-for-one stock split in
April. As a result every single share of GE stock that was pur­chased
before 1926 has grown into the equivalent of 4,608 shares
today-worth approxinlately US$235,000.
That's serious shareholder value by nearly anyone's standards!
Under CEO Jack Welch, GE has spent the last 20 years trans­forming
itself from a somewhat sleepy appliance and lighting
entity into a highly diversified global superstar. The company now
derives about 40 percent of sales from its GE Capital finance
group, as well as a sinrilar percentage from non-U.S. sales. It owns
the NBC Television Network, has major medical and aviation
units, and has spent the last year engineering one of the most
remarkable ebusiness shifts yet undertaken by a former 'Old
Economy' entity.
So, just what is GE's global strategy secret? According to
Leighanne Gibson '95, European e-sales manager for GE Medical
Systems, competing through people is a major silent strategy.
"Jack Welch IS everything you've read about him," she said.
"He's entrepreneurial. He remembers peoples' names if he's met
them even once. And I've never met a man with more 'presence.'
But GE isn't just about Jack Welch; it's about 300,000-plus high
energy and empowered people who know how to 'stretch' because
the man knows how to build a team.
THUNDERBIRD 53 /3 / 2000 16
"I know it sounds hokey," Gibson continued, "but we all carry
around a little, laIllinated GE Values card. On it are GE's four 'Es.'
They are energy, the ability to energize others, the edge to make
tough decisions, and the ability to consistently execute. They keep
us focused on driving customer satisfaction and living our Six
Sigma values."
Six Sigma is one of GE's four main strategic initiatives. The oth­ers
are ebusiness, globalization, and an emphasis on value-added
services. Until her recent promotion, Gibson was GE's European
director of corporate sales. In that position, she managed a multi­cultural,
multi-country, cross-functional sales team that was repre­sentative
of GE's business model.
"A key GE value is to be boundaryless, to go jointly to one
account, say, an airline, and provide everything from the engines
to the office and airplane lighting to the financing for everything,"
Gibson said. "Our competitors can't offer the whole solution,
which gives GE a clear edge. The challenge is to identify the syner­gies
amongst seemingly unrelated businesses."
www.t-b ird .edu
Although that 'total solutions' team approach sounds simple, it
actually requires both a very different sales approach and a sophis­ticated
technological backbone. "The magic is in the mindset,"
Gibson said. "With our new Web sites, our customers can get all of
the price and product information they want online so we have to
be able to 'think out of the box.' To go from being an order taker to
a customer enabler. To look at our new ebusiness structure as
ControlYourOwnDestiny. com."
Gibson stressed GE's globalization and ebusiness initiatives
require people to be even more culturally astute. "For one thing,
each Web site has to be localized for each country. And they bet­ter
be in the local language if you ever want to close that sale. But
in addition to good sites, we need people who understand things
like the fact that people in Southern Europe like to talk more
before getting down to the sale, while people in orthern Europe
are much more comfortable with e-technology and online trans­acting."
During 1999, GE generated US$23 billion worth of sales in
Europe alone, or just under one quarter of its total revenues. The
company has now set up hundreds of dedicated Web sites for key
European customers and is expected to transact more than a bil­lion
dollars online in Europe this year.
GE-like Cisco and Cemex-has also significantly broadened
its geographic and product scope through a highly successful
merger and acquisition strategy.
"M&As are probably among the most important strategic global
issues facing companies today," said Inkpen. "They are closely
linked to success and failure as companies look to diversify, locate
positive partners, and achieve greater efficiencies." He added that
good M&A's are especially critical for companies in fast-moving
industries with short technology life cycles and when other forms
of market entry are either too slow or less economical.
GE, for instance, solidified its overseas position during the early
1990s when Europe's recession helped it buy Harrods' credit card
portfolio, Avis' European commercial fleet operations and the Irish
airplane leasing company, GPA Group-now AerFi Group-at sig­nificant
discounts. The company has also capitalized on Asia's cur­rent
financial woes by buying Bank of Japan and several other
struggling financial services companies.
Cemex, the fast-growing Mexico-based cement company is also
M&A astute. The company has vaulted from No. 28 to No.3 in its
industry during the last ten years and now boasts more than US$5
put out by their Boards," she
day."
Gadiesh said that in addition to
with Michel Dell of Dell Computers, Stev
THUNDERBIRD 53/3 / 2000 17
Leo Burnett, of the advertising company that bears his name . ........ t;
DeII's striItIgIc principle was 'go direct.'· she said. ·Steve Case's ..
organizing content to make It easy to 1CCeSS. Burnett's was pushing
leading edge aeativlty and that feeling that no matter how good a cam-www.
t-bird .edu
billion in annual sales and operating subsidiaries in 30-plus
countries.
"We had to go international to survive," said Lorenzo
Zambrano, Cemex's CEO and a Board member at Instituto
Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey
(ITESM), with whom Thunderbird jointly runs its Masters of
International Management-Latin America (MIMLA) pro­gram.
"Our internationalization, however, has forced us to
dramatically change our company."
According to Zambrano, his company has capitalized on
market downturns and employed an aggressive, yet intelli­gent,
acquisition strategy. "We proceed in stages. First we
perform an audit strictly linked to the acquisition operation.
Then we do a quick due diligence 'x-ray' by one of our multi­disciplinary
teams. This group is formed by people specializ­ing
in production, communication systems, and legal and
fiscal affairs. It is an important stage aimed at saving us from
unpleasant surprises. Later, another team integrates our pro­duction
standards with the help of local collaborators."
To Thunderbird's Inkpen, this type of in-depth due dili­gence
is absolutely critical. "Acquisition strategies, on aver­age,
do not create new shareholder value for the acquirer," Inkpen
said. He cited a November 1999 study that was done by KPMG and
which examined the 700 largest M&A deals done between 1996 and
1998. "Eighty-three percent failed to create value and 53 percent
actually reduced shareholder value when measured by their ability
to outperform the stock market or deliver profit increases," he said.
"What was really amazing though, was that 82 percent of the execu­tives
who were interviewed in 107 of those companies thought
their deals were successful. "
Cemex's numbers clearly showcase its success. The company's
operating cash flow has reportedly grown at a compound annual
rate of 26 percent for the last ten years and its earnings increased
23 percent during one recent quarter.
By all accounts, U.S.-based Cisco Systems, Inc. is another M&A
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000
THUNDfRHIRD
on Global
Business Strategy
18
master. The company has acquired more than 40 companies since
1993 and has earmarked another US$lO billion for upcoming acqui­sitions.
Cisco has also forged strategic partnerships with Intel, IBM,
Sprint, US WEST, and KPMG consulting, as well as most suppliers.
That combination allows Cisco to continuously acquire cutting-edge
technology, leverage multiple in-country contacts, and employ an
almost zero inventory supply chain strategy where Cisco can online
test almost any part, made by any supplier, anywhere, before it's
shipped.
"Forty percent of Cisco's sales are already international," said
Scott Hewlett '91, a Cisco business development manager who
focuses on Latin America and Canada "Since 80 to 90 percent of all
Internet traffic goes through Cisco routers, LANs, ATM switches,
and network managers, we have to be ready when Internet usage
explodes in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chili, and other Latin
American countries."
According to Hewlett, venture capital funding for telecommuni­cations
systems in Latin America has risen dramatically in the last
year-which is a boon for Cisco. The company has, thus, estab­lished
offices in target countries and selected a native to run each.
Cisco people in those countries work closely with the local staffs
of strategic partners, such as IBM and the local telecoms, to reach
their customers.
"Localization is definitely a component of Cisco's global strategy,"
Hewlett said. "For instance, in some areas, Cisco is expanding its
presence outside of Silicon Valley even in its acquisition strategy; as
an example, the acquisition of Pirelli Optical to expand our fiber
optic equipment. In other markets where the fiber network is not as
extensive we are focusing on a wireless solution that provides our
customers with a more appropriate solution to their access dilem­mas.
In the end," he said, "everything we do ties into Cisco's core
vision of changing the way you work, live, play, and learn." •
email addresses:
Gibson: leighanne.Gibson@med.ge.com
Hewlett: shewlett@cisco.com
Inkpen: Inkpena@t-bird.edu
Jennie Oleksak, '88, of Thunderbird's Business Information
Services (BIS) group completed the background research for this
article.
www.t-bird .edu
Wandia Musomba of
Kenya and Cos mas
Kimario of Tanzania
prepare for inter­views
at Thunder­bird's
annual
Internship Fair.
STUDENTS DRESS TO IMPRESS AT INTERNSHI'P FAIR
T und"brrd w,,", awash with busm""
suits in February as some three hundred
students competed for over 500 interview
slots at Thunderbird's annual Internship
Fair. This year's event attracted 33 compa­nies
who were offering nearly 60 intern­ships
as well as full-time jobs. Each
company pre-selected some candidates
then filled their remaining slots with stu­dents
they met at general sessions.
"This year's event was so large that we
invested in moving it offsite, to a nearby
hotel, that could accommodate everyone,"
said David Martin, director of Employer
Relations at Thunderbird. That meant rent­ing
presentation rooms and audio/visual
equipment, as well as hiring buses that
could constantly transport students
between campus and the Fair. "But, we
believe the results are well worth that
investment given the number of quality stu­dent/
employer interactions that occurred."
Although the Fair's main purpose was
helping employers find talented, and
needed personnel while providing signifi­cant
skill-building opportunities for Thun­derbirds,
it also accomplished two other
goals. First, it provided a forum by which
companies could educate students about
potential opportunities. Second, it gave
recruiters a chance to target candidates
for full-time jobs.
"I thought it would be easy to make a
decision," said Shalini Bath '99, a
recruiter for Compaq. "It won't. I inter­viewed
14 people and all were really quali­fied.
In fact, several would also qualify for
the two full-time positions we have open."
Bath was looking for an intern who could
tackle a two-part project in Latin America
"T-birds are great for Compaq," she said.
"We need people who have new ideas, who
dive right in, and who think out of the box.
by Lindsey Michaels
Everyone seems to notice that about T­birds,
where they might not see it in some­one
from Harvard or other Ivy League
schools where people tend to be used to
more formal systems."
"You are very advanced electronically,"
said Iomega's David Tietjen. "Much more
so than most other universities. I saw a
ProFit recruiting software demo during a
break, and the My Thunder-bird system
and understand that you do much of your
work online. That's great," he said.
Companies such as Iomega gave two
company presentations during the three­day
event, then interviewed. Three other
Phoenix-based companies gave presenta­tions
at the Fair, but will interview T-birds
offsite afterwards.
Ross Bouldin, who recruits for Johnson
& Johnson International, said that the Fair
gave him the opportunity to meet with stu­dents
face-to-face, which, he said, was
much more valuable than relying solely on
pre-selected candidates. He looks for
interns and pending graduates. "Johnson &
Johnson International made 17 offers for
full-time jobs to T-birds last year," said
Bouldin. "That's more offers than we made
to any other school."
Not all companies, however, liked the
double presentation format, which some
found time-consuming. Students wanted
even more general session contact,
since it gave them the opportunity to
both learn and sell themselves.
Spencer Roeck of the U.S. was
one of many students who bene­fited
from that face-to-face con­tact
Armed with five years prior
experience with medical
companies in Germany, _
Shalini Bath '99
THUNDERBIRD 53 (3 (2000 19
Australia, and the Middle East, he talked
his way into interviews with several com­panies.
"Overall, I think that it was a great way
to get personal one-on-one time with
recruiters and learn about their needs," he
said. "Although only one company
selected me for a pre-scheduled interview,
I ended up getting interviews with four of
my top five picks." Roeck added that one
of those companies had already extended
him a verbal internship offer.
"This was a wonderful experience," said
Wandia Musomba of Kenya. "At the very
least, we got to practice our interview
skills." Musomba, who was seeking a
brand management position, obtained a
Bayer interview. Her friend, Cosmas
Kimario of Tanzania, obtained two inter­views,
including one with Citibank, which
offered him an internship.
Thunderbird regularly hosts Internship
and Career Fairs to help students and
employers find each other. Internships are
especially popular with students, since
they provide hands-on training, needed
income, and the opportunity to both inves­tigate
and impress companies. Companies
tend to use internships to screen potential
full-time employees for skill and culture
fit. About 40 percent of T-bird interns
receive job offers from the companies they
intern with. That's one reason students
are asking alumni to help them find
more internships.
Twenty-three alumni recruited
at this year's Fair. •
Please contact David
Martin at Thunderbird's
Career Management
Center for internship
information.
martind@t-bird.edu
YES A ROIl N D TilE W 0 R L D
by Tatiana Poliakova '00
The world today seems inundated with stories of 'dot com' glory. There's news
about novel techniques, new business models, and sophisticated interface
platforms. Yet the simplest of truths is that good content is still king.
Sanjyot Dunung '87, founder of AcrossFrontiers Inter­national
(AFI), Inc., understands that fact.
Born in India and raised in Liverpool, England and Chicago,
Illinois, Dunung was flying back from Singapore two years ago
when she first realized the potential of applying technology to
deliver leading-edge culture and country information to travel­ers.
So Dunung did just what you would expect a well-versed,
entrepreneurial T-bird to do: she formed a sophisticated New
York-based international culture and
content company.
"Forming my own company had
always been one of my greatest ambi­tions,"
Dunung said. "AcrossFrontiers
allowed me to harness this brilliant
invention and revolutionary communi­cation
tool called the Internet to
deliver innovative, and much-needed
country, culture and global business
content." AFI's award-winning flagship
product, The Global Country Series,
launched in 1999, provides interna­tional
businesspeople and expatriates
with in-depth knowledge of culture,
sites, and facilities in target destina­tions
around the globe. The products,
delivered on CD-ROM or over Web
platforms, provide hours of guided
interactive, multimedia, computer­based
training.
advertisers, and other partner firms to reach even more cus­tomers.
AFI is even working to bundle customized content for
airlines and hotels through in-flight entertainment systems, as
well as in-hotel, airport and Web TV respectively.
Dunung credits her childhood, which was spent on the bridge
between East and West, for her profound multi-cultural con­sciousness.
She has always connected to her Indian heritage; in
fact, she had her own cable TV talk show, called "The Voice of
AcrossFrontiers International, Inc.
is a new media content developer and
distributor, and a global leader in cre­ating,
branding, and merchandising
proprietary, cutting-edge and quality­delivered
country, culture, and busi­ness
content that is effective,
entertaining, and reliable. AFI cur­As
an Indian woman who was raised in England and America, Sanjyot Dunung's life has always bridged cultures.
rently has six country products in its Global Country Series. An
additional thirteen are in final development and slated for an
August 2000 market launch.
The company is comprised of three professional teams. The
technology group develops and maintains the technical plat­form.
The creative team develops the graphic look and feel. The
content group develops materials for transmission through the
New Media channels. This in-house team of 26 professionals is
multi-national and as diverse as the content of AFI's products.
Globally, AFI uses the services of over 150 country specialists. A
few are Thunderbird alumni. Most have Ph.Ds and masters
degrees in either business or the human sciences. Thirty-five
other consultants lend expertise for content review.
While good content is one reason AFI's clients include an
impressive list of Fortune 500 companies, so too is good market­ing.
AFI utilizes traditional marketing venues such as direct
sales, but also teams up with VARs (value added re-sellers), Web
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000 20
the Indian Youth," when still quite young. Yet, one of her most
life-changing experiences occurred while doing an undergradu­ate
research project on India - U.S. relations at Northwestern
University. Dunung wrote several letters to Indira Gandhi, then
Prime Minister of India, and was eventually granted an inter­view.
That is why in August 1983, Dunung found herself on an
airplane headed back to her homeland.
Everything about Indira Gandhi was admirable, said Dunung
of her private interview-her posture, the natural gleam in her
eye, her soft, gentle voice, and her graciousness. "Ms. Gandhi
spoke with fierce determination and pride," said Dunung. "She
was immensely proud of India, of what the country could
achieve." The two also spoke at length about women's issues
related to business and politics. According to Dunung, Gandhi
believed that the quality of women's lives was directly related to
business and economic cycles; that in times of economic down­turn,
women were the first to suffer. Thus, she believed that
www.t·bird.edu
women could improve their own plights by strengthening the
economic conditions within their own countries.
"That meeting taught me the importance and power of humil­ity,"
she said, "and the insignificance of obsession with hierar­chy
and titles." It also taught her the importance of being
accessible-and good-to others, regardless of who they are.
Dunung clearly demonstrated that lesson at Thunderbird's eVe
conference in Februruy. After leading what was easily one of the
warmest and most inspirational of eVe discussions, Dunung
attracted current T-bird students like a modem day Pied Piper
throughout the day.
In 1985, just two years after her interview with Indira Gandhi
and a year after Ms. Gandhi's assassination, Dunung's drive and
resourcefulness landed her an Indian Embassy invitation to a
White House Press Corps dinner during the state visit of Rajiv
Gandhi, Indira Gandhi's son and successor. Meeting such pow­erfulleaders
on a personal level also made Dunung realize that
of video, voice, and interactive components. Such training is
often more time efficient and typically costs up to 75 percent
less than instructor-lead training.
Outside of work, Dunung is an accomplished writer and the
co-founder and president of the Dunung-Singh Foundation,
which helps provide educational opportunities and hope to
underprivileged children. She is also a Member of the Board of
Directors of the U.S. Committee for UNICEF (United Nations
Children's Fund), where one of her duties involves helping form
global charities at the corporate level to improve the lives of
children in developing nations.
Nestled in her cozy, but spacious Manhattan office, Dunung
looks like a poster child for Thunderbird success. Pointing to
the smiling faces of her husband and sons in the photographs
upon her desk, she said, "Women still face considerable chal­lenges
when trying to grow their careers at the same time as
they are growing their families." Part of the challenge remains
cultural; part is personal, she said. To
demonstrate, Dunung told of her expe­riences
while working for a Japanese­owned
bank. It seems that any time she
was asked to work late or atfend a busi­ness
dinner, her boss would first ask if
it was OK with Dunung's husband. "It
was as if I didn't have a say in the mat­ter,"
she explained.
Now her New York-based AcrossFrontiers International company helps businesspeople bridge cultures too.
Today, Dunung's life is somewhat
easier because she's the boss and her
husband works along side her. But, as a
senior executive and business owner,
Dunung is concerned about how hard it
remains for female executives to bal­ance
work and family-€ven in the U.S.
She's especially disappointed when
promising young women feel that they
must drop out of the labor force to start
their families. "Men often have more
opportunities to find mentors in the cor­porate
environment, and promotions
are often based upon such relation­ships,"
she said "There aren't many net­work
groups especially for mid-career
female executives anyway, but women
who temporarily leave the workforce to
raise their children face the very real
added burden of having to totally
anyone could rise to power, as long as they had strong convic­tions,
a little luck, and were not afraid of hard work and respon­sibility.
That insight-that we are all created equal and able to
succeed-was such an immensely powerful message for
Dunung that it became the driving force behind her own career
and life.
As an entrepreneur, community leader, wife,
and mother of two preschool-aged boys,
Dunung's life is full to say the least. Last year HR
Executive Magazine named AcrossFrontiers'
Global Country Series™ its "Training Product of
the Year." One reason is that AFI's programs help
users gain insights into the mindset and the
motives behind people's thoughts and behavior,
rather than just providing lists of do's and don'ts.
A second is that AFI's core software bridges
intellectual content with technology comprised
Sanjyot Dunung 'B7
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000 21
rebuild professional networks once they return."
As a result of such concerns, Dunung allows women on staff
at AcrossFrontiers to telecommute whenever possible.
AcrossFrontiers plans to produce 40 new products this year
alone-which will make Dunung's battle for balance even more
challenging. Yet, after meeting and spending tinle with her, one
gets the feeling that Dunung learned those early Gandhi
lessons well and that she will succeed at whatever goals
she sets and on whatever teIDlS she chooses to define.
In the meantime, CrossRoads, a Northeast Forum for
the venture community, just selected AcrossFrontiers as
one of two business opportunities that it believes will
success exponentially. That organization reviewed 175
companies. •
Dunung rnay be reached at:
spdunung@acrossfrontiers.com
www.t-bird .edu
..
-BIHDS OF TODAY
THEY ARE AMONG THUNDERBIRD'S FIRST GRADUATES OF THE NEW CENTURY. THEIR
AVERAGE AGE IS 29; THEIR AVERAGE GMAT OVER 600. FIFTY PERCENT ARE NON-U.
S. NATIONALS; IN FACT, THEY REPRESENTED 52 COUNTRIES. TWO OF EVERY
THREE ARE MALE. NEARLY ALL HAVE LIVED AT LEAST A YEAR OR TWO ON 'FOREIGN'
SOIL. SO, WHO IS A 'TYPICAL' T-BIRD? HERE ARE FIVE CLASS OF 2000 PROFILES.
Northwestern's Kellogg business school, was just going to spend the surruner here. But two years
so reluctant to leave the School that Thunderbird hired him. "I knew within the first week here that
2hII1m'-M8..w Thunderbird will be in my blood, no matter where in the world 1 go."
pily ensconced in London, working as a banker, when his father sent him back to school. El-KhaJiJ
at Thunderbird and pursued finance. "I got all the way through FORAD (one
-·..w........rmderb· p finance courses) before 1 finally realized that I'm more of a people guy." "BEING AT
Most people who know El-Khalil would definitely agree. THUNDERBIRD IS LIKE
He worked tirelessly on the Foundations team for five trimesters, spending two as a team BEING IN AN OLYMPIC
leader and three as captain. Foundations is a new, mandatory, two-week class designed VILLAGE. YOU DON'T
to help people acclimate to Thunderbird, group work, America, and the EVEN REMEMBER
concept of going back to school. "My first Foundations team carne from THAT YOU ARE IN THE
different backgrounds, different walks of life, yet it was amazing how STATES UNTIL YOU GO
fast we were able to bond, work together, and welcome 500 new stu-dents.
We became a little family.
OUT THE GATE."
"Thunderbird is a microcosm of the world," El-Khalil explained. "It's opened my mind to
other cultures, people and society-made me a better person. At the end of the day, it's rela­tionships
that matter and 1 now know people throughout the world that 1 can lean on, and
who can lean on me, in good times and in bad," he said. "So, even if 1 hadn't gone to any
classes, just interacted with all the students, 1 would have corne out of Thunderbird a bet­ter
manager than most people do from other schools. "
GAIL GIBFORD, THE UNITED STATES
e reasons 1 did well in my interviews and got my various offers was because my perspective was so different, so global,» said Gail
ho chose a brand management position. "I accepted the UniJever job because it was one of the most broad, most global companies 1
work in the U.S. but with people from all over the world. Most other companies 1 talked with had primarily U.S. nationals on staff.»
n"_ .'!.I,ending nine years in sales and marketing positions with Kodak and Xerox, Gibford began researching business schools. When she
ople that she wanted to someday be a country manager in Latin America, they referred her to Thunderbird.
verything 1 wanted in a school 1 got at Thunderbird," she said. "The language. The culture. But more than anything else, it opened up my
mind and gave me a real non-U.S.-centric worldview," she said. "I mean, the first time you meet with your small group for most classes, the first
negotiation point isn't how to divide up the work. It's what language you're going to conduct group meetings in."
"MY FONDEST MEMORY WAS
CARRYING THE U.s. FLAG
While at Thunderbird, Gibford took brand management classes and served as the student director of the
Thunderbird Global Brand Center. That position placed her in daily contact
with powerful corporate contacts. "The best thing about Thunderbird
isn't just the students and faculty-who have gone way beyond that
DURING A FLAG CEREMONY," role to become my friends and mentors-it's the chance to work with
GIBFORD SAID. "AS AMERICANS, amazing people like Sam Garvin and Rick Baer of
WE ARE SO INTRIGUED BY Continental Promotion Group-who took me under
OTHER CULTURES THAT WE wing.
FORGET HOW GREAT OUR "What we have here is so much more than Harvard,
COUNTRY IS. THAT REALLY HIT where they talk about their peer association and pro­ME
AND 1 SUDDENLY FELT
EXTREMELY PATRIOTIC AND
PROUD TO BE AMERICAN."
fessional contacts," she said. "Here, we talk about our
friends-people we can truly count on at any time all
throughout the world"
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000 22 www.t -bird .edu
~ACE GAONA GUILLEN , MEXICO
"I TRULY THINK
She' already earned a master's degree in infornlation systems from Lausanne University in Switzerland, then THUNDERBIRD IS ONE OF
'tched to the finance field. She knew she wanted an MBA, preferably from a U.S. university, but Monterrey,
'co-based Grace Gaona wasn't willing to quit her job to obtain that goal. That's when the French, English and THE BEST UNIVERSITIES
h-speaking Gaona happened upon an advertisement explaining a new distance learning program being co- [N THE U.S. I LEARNED
oped by Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (lTESM) and Thunderbird. SO MANY NEW THINGS
"I had known and hired Thunderbird graduates, so I knew the quality and the reputation of THAT I FEEL LIKE I HAVE
the university," Gaona said. "I thought that that was the perfect program for someone like me."
Two years later, Gaona and 103 of her classmates are graduates, having earned dual degrees
from both universities that were celebrated on June 30 during the first-ever Master's of
International Management Latin America (MIMLA) commencement at Thunderbird.
A COMPETITIVE
ADVANTAGE OVER
MY COLLEAGUES."
"Distance learning is a new paradigm that anybody used to traditional education will have to adjust to, "
Gaona said. "One has to be very brief and clear on a broadcast ... but now I'm not camera shy and I can talk
out loud anywhere. That's a plus." She added that the initial ten-day orientation trip to
Thunderbird, Dr. Anant Sundaram's advanced managerial finance class, and Dr. Christine
Grosse's English business language course were three definite highlights.
MARK LESLIE , THE UNITED STATES
Som: call him Mr. eVe. That's because Mark Leslie was a standout student leader in the quest to bring leading
ge entrepreneurship, venture capital, and ecommerce (eVe) awareness to Thunderbird. Not surprisingly
Leslie joined Services. com, the Internet wing of Evolve, a Silicon Valley-based Professional Service
ation (PSA) company.
"lot an internship at PeopleSofi, with the help of Chuck Hamilton '91, as an ebusiness strategy consultant
returned hungry to get into ebusiness," he said. "I loved being involved on the front edge, on things that
hadn't even trickled down to stock analysts .. . The whole experience rocketed me right out of my shoes."
Leslie had been living and working in Hong Kong in the early 1990's when he stumbled across some T-birds
he termed 'open, generous, and very cool.' "After getting some more international business experience, I
wanted to strengthen my formal business skills and catch up on where the U.S. market was going since it was
driving Asia," Leslie said. "Thunderbird expanded me way beyond what I would
"IT'S NOT JUST A have thought was possible."
PLACE YOU COME While Leslie highly recommended Thunderbird's ecommerce, competitive
TO GET A PIECE OF intelligence, strategic services marketing, decision modeling, and competitive
PAPER. IT'S A strategy classes, he said, "Ten percent of the Thunderbird experience takes place
PLACE YOU COME in classes. The other 90 percent involves interactions with people: students, fac-
TO CHANGE YOUR ulty, alumni, and campus activities. They are the things that really light you up and
make you invaluable."
LIFE."
y 16 years old when I set my heart on coming here. Now I'm standing at the gate,
about graduate. It has all been very special for me, like a dream come true."
Yo IDose first heard about Thunderbird from her cross-cultural communications professor
m 'ing. She ml\iored in finance and finished her undergraduate school in business, spent
. t years working with Deloitte & Touche International, Motorola, a large Chinese trading
firm, and Prudential Insurance Company of America before coming to Thunderbird.
A scholarship award winner, Klose worked in Thunderbird's Communications office and did
a financial internship with General Electric in florida before accepting a business analyst posi­tion
with Exxon Mobile. That position will provide Klose with
three rotations during the next five years, which may provide
opportunities for work abroad.
"When I did my finance Wi nlm-im on Wall Street, someone who was very familiar with Exxon met with us. I was
really inlpressed with the speaker, the energy industry, and the company itself." Klose said she chose Exxon because it
is a world class company with operations anywhere that she might ever want to go, and because the company repre­sentatives
treated her extremely well. "I er\ioyed meeting with people at Exxon. They are very professional and they left
me with a very good feeling."
KLOSE, WHO SPEAKS
ENGLISH, MANDARfN
CHINESE, AND
JAPANESE, CAN SEE
HERSELF WORKING
BACK IN THE ASIA-Klose
said she loved all of her finance classes but termed FORAD her favorite. "We did a multi-national business PACIFIC REGION A FEW
finance sinlulation project," she said. "There were seven financial periods and we all started with the same facts about
the company and its two foreign subsidiaries. It was a competition to see which group could achieve the highest share
price at the end of the 7th period through good operational and financial management. And it was a lot of fun. "
YEARS FROM NOW.
THUNDERBIRD 53 /3 / 2000 23 www.t -bird .edu
by Jim Anderson '80
In May 1999, a very high-level government delegation appeared
in Silicon Valley and was received with the appropriate defer­ence
and curiosity due an Asian super power that had success­fully
reinvented itself since WWll. The group's goal, of course,
was to find and recreate the rich creative economic environ­ment
that makes Silicon Valley a key driver of the 'New Economy'.
Its search eventually led the group to Silicon Valley Bank.
But, could anyone easily define the elements that sparked the
greatest wealth creation in history? Good question. The Asian
group's quest formed a perfect counterpoint to the work that now
fills 100 percent of my professional life-guiding, mentoring and
raising money for the start-ups of the new economy.
This article looks at the macro factors underlying the valley's
entrepreneurial environment as well as some critical success fac­tors
for companies now under construction.
The Silicon Valley Elixir
The core elements that drove the explosive growth in Silicon
Valley are now well documented:
GREAT UNIVERSmES: At the cornerstone are great universities that
attract the top global engineering, biochemistry, computer science,
and physics talent. The ideas born in the labs at Stanford and
Berkeley frequently find their way into commercial enterprises
only a few miles away.
HIGH RISK CAPITAL: Massive amounts of high risk capital have been
invested to support these entrepreneurs. In 1999, according to
Venture One, $36.5 billion was invested in the U.S. involving 2,969
equity rounds. Fully 27 percent of these transactions were with
California-based companies. The exceptional returns that venture
investments produced in the last three years have prompted lim­ited
partners, pension funds and state agencies, to increase their
allocations to the asset class-resulting in a record $24.6 billion
raised in 1999, a 68 percent increase over the prior year. With some
returns in the thousands of percent, many venture capitalists live
in dread of turning away the next Yahoo, Cisco or Ebay. These VCs
now listen to as many stories as possible even though they don't
have enough resources to properly evaluate all of them.
The huge creation of wealth in the past eight years has also cre­ated
a group of individual investors who can deploy capital much
like the venture funds. In 1999, these so-called 'angel' investors
financed more than 30,000 entities in the U.S.-<leploying total dol­lars
that were on par with institutional funds. Each generation of
risk takers expands and deepens the pool of capital in the hands of
those who view themselves as creating the forces to shape the
future. The impact of these angels is already being felt; however,
wealth alone does not ensure success, as the following experience
spotlights:
Peter Carrie walked into the conference room, his crn and mar­keting
manager in tow. Tension was high. Peter was a brilliant young
engineer, a true six-sigma man. Founder of a company he'd already
sold, Peter had netted $65 million. As an angel investor, he had pro­vided
the $4.5 million that allowed my client to acquire a great team,
finish its product, and get it into three beta test sites. I now had the
group in front of some of the best investors in its sector.
As a former engineer myself, I immediately saw that Peter strug-
* Ficticious company and individual names used
th:rouglwut to ensure canjidentiality.
THUNDERBIRD 5313 I 2000 24
gled with the imperfections of a world involving humans. To
resolve his frustrations, he wanted to fire his CEO, risking the
departure of the core management team that was loyal to its CEO.
As Peter worked through some options, he quickly assigned proba­bilities
to each occurrence-reducing each possible path to a
mathematical formula that changed the relative value of his invest­ment.
He distilled several complex scenarios involving 10 different
people into a core probability and a number. I spent two hours try­ing
to convince Peter to let management stay until financing was
secured. I failed. The next day the CEO resigned and six top execu­tives
left with him, effectively decapitating my client and ending
my engagement.
THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT. Much to the chagrin of visiting world
delegations, Silicon Valley developed without government inter­vention.
Most entrepreneurs believe that government action is an
anathema to the expansion of the New Economy. Government
rules and regulation, even if designed to promote investment, usu­ally
distort incentives to the point that the creative talent goes else­where.
The rapid growth of the Internet business model has
occurred despite various government attempts to tax, channel, or
control it. In fact, in the U.S. most politicians prefer to kowtow to
the Silicon Valley wealth in hopes of obtaining a few million dollars
for their next campaign.
ENTREPRENEURS AND THE CULTURE OF THE NEW ECONOMY. First pos­tulated
in Paul Romer's New Growth Theory, the essence of the
New Economy is that wealth creation is driven by human imagina­tion-
not the traditional economic theory bedrock of capital, raw
materials, cheap labor, and a management to organize them.
Romer's theory places the highest value on human capital-which
is consistent with the core traits you find in Silicon Valley:
• irreverence for traditional views and bureaucracy
• acceptance of failure
• rapid adoption of new ideas
• high valuation of creativity and imagination
• belief in the power of the individual to produce changes
Why is this culture important? Because it attracts the best entre­preneurs.
You see, engineers top Silicon Valley's social structure,
not old wealth or politicians.
The Entrepreneurs and their Start-ups:
What does it take to raise money and succeed in this environ-ment?
Here are some basics:
• address a large market with a big vision;
• recruit a team with deep expertise, passion and conviction;
• create a unique and proprietary value proposition;
• build a product that scales in a non-linear relationship to costs;
• be first
People are the core value of any company. For a start-up,
individuals are the most important factor. We look for
passion and tenacity in a management team:
In March, 1999, two founders of World Link arrived at the bank
with a big idea: create a global supply-chain management software
company using a centralized rather than client-server software
model. The two intended to facilitate the purchase and tracking of
inventory right through to the raw materials. They had no resources
other than their own experience, bold conviction and tenacity.
Working with Gerry and Ron, we took their plan through numer-
0us major revisions, and looked at three acquisitions, finally set­tling
on one core licensing deal, which took months to structure.
We spent so much time together that they moved into our offices.
We changed the name of the product and the core technology. We
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000
also obtained a funding commitment from an Asian source, which,
at the last minute, fell through. Despite all these months of turmoil,
the World Link team persisted, ultimately signing a customer, hir­ing
a team and eventually winning funding from top-tier VCs. This
is the essence of Silicon Valley: two engineers with a plan can
racket their net worth to $25 million in 12 months.
Your vision should be huge: world domination is acceptable.
I was looking at a long table covered with various devices to
download and play digital music. Across from me sat the 23 year old
CEO of eSongs. For two hours he explained in detail the current
workings of the music industry and how music like software was an
intangible. Music had been digitized during the conversion to CDs so
it was obvious that all music distribution would shortly be done over
the Internet. Billion dollar investments in elaborate distribution
channels-including radio stations, recording companies, and music
stores-would become worthless. Artists would develop direct rela­tionships
with their fans, enhancing their own wealth and greatly
increasing the variety and richness of available music. Record com­panies
would no longer control what we listen to.
The ability to adapt quickly to change is essential.
Willingness to walk away from cherished assumptions is
also a core competency. And speed means changing course
in days not years.
I sat with Tony and Susan in their modest house in the Los Altos
Hills reviewing a $30 million bid for their company. Eighteen
months ago that house had been filled with employees. It had mul­tiple
T-l lines delivering huge Internet bandwidth. They couldn't
afford office space and had not paid anyone in weeks. On the brink
of personal bankruptcy, Tony and Susan had struggled to under­stand
why their professional services business was not winning
customers. They had recruited top engineers from India But, like a
surfer waiting for the right wave, they had begun to tire.
Then they began building very sophisticated Web-sites in record
time-and the wave hit. For Tony and Susan, that adaptability was
now worth $30 million.
Conclusions
So can the Asian delegation recreate Silicon Valley's unique busi­ness
culture? The answer is: no and yes.
Governments by their very nature constrain creativity and entre­preneurship.
In many countries, the historical concentration of
wealth, high taxes, bureaucracy, resistant unions and stifling
monopolies form strong barriers to the New Economy.
But Silicon Valley's New Economy ideal is spreading. In the U.S.,
all major university centers now attract venture capitalists and bil­lions
of investment dollars. American VCs are also moving abroad
in search of opportunities, investing $4.8 billion in Europe in 1999
alone as Europeans race to catch the wave. Incubators such as
Gorilla Park in Amsterdam and Sillywood in Stockholm are the
vanguard of Europe's future New Economy success. The vibrant
entrepreneurial culture in Andhra Pradesh in southern India has
also started an explosion of Silicon Valley-style start-ups.
As environments change, countries will be able to retain good
people and ensure success. Such people are key catalysts so the
environment must attract and support these entrepreneurs. If it
does, we might see the foreign students-who compose a signifi­cant
portion of the engineering talent at Stanford, Berkeley and
MIT-heading back to their home countries to capitalize on a bud­ding
environment that is as rich and fertile as Silicon Valley. •
Jim Anderson is managing director and president of SVB
Securities, Inc., the broker-dealer subsidiary of Silicon Valley
Bank. He may be reached at janderso@svbank.com.
25 www.t - bi rd .edu
SILICON VALLEY FORUM ADDRESSES
'NET' ISSUES FROM ALL ANGLES
Making the Global Net Watt was
both the name of the latest
Thunderbird Global Business
Forum and an apt description
of the event itself. Held in Silicon Valley,
the half-day event drew nearly 300 peo­ple-
who networked unabashedly-and
featured presentations by members of
some of the New Economy's leading com­panies.
Alan Cohen, a senior director of
marketing and business development at
Cisco Systems gave the keynote address,
discussing some of the more challenging
aspects of globalization in the New Econ­omy.
Two panel presentations followed.
The flrst was moderated by Barbara
Kamm '77, who is executive vice presi­dent
and managing director for Angels/
Incubators at Silicon Valley Bank, and
dealt with a variety of funding issues.
Panel members included Christine Coma­ford
of Artemis Ventures, Lee Hansen of
Net Value Holdings, and Chris Johnson
Keith Powers '99, who attended the forum, is a
master networker. He and his MyFreeCar.com
have been featured on most of the major
national television news shows.
by Lindsey Michaels
Forum attendees leverage their own network during speaker breaks.
'86 of Bank of Nova Scotia Comaford has
founded five successful startups and
secured over $100 million in flnancing.
Hansen helps uncover and develop 'next
generation' ebusinesses. Johnson founded
the Technology and Electronics group at
Scotia and works to secure venture capital
for more established entities.
The second panel was moderated by
Thunderbird's own chief information offi­cer,
Rich Zbylut, and examined many of
the technological and cultural challenges
related to globalizing one's ebusiness strat­egy.
That panel included Jorden Woods,
co-founder and chief technology officer of
GlobalSight-which was recently named
one of the 'Top 50 Private Companies' by
Red Herring magazine. The other pan­elists
were Robert Witchel, international
business development manager for
E*TRADE, and Clay Conrad '80, who is
the vice president of affiliate marketing
with OpenTV.
"I originally got involved with this
Forum out of the goodness of my heart
because it was Thunderbird," said Kamm.
"But as the event got closer, it became very
clear that this was an outstanding opportu­nity
for Silicon Valley Bank, especially
given our increasingly global approach to
business and planned expansion." The
Forum allowed Kamm to showcase her
bank to members of the Silicon Valley and
global ebusiness community since it was
attended heavily by non-Thunderbird
alumni and technology reporters from as
far away as Germany. It also attracted
more than two dozen current Thunderbird
students who were on a two-week Silicon
Valley Interim, as well as dozens of other
THUNDERBIRD 53/3/2000 26 www.t -bird .edu
students who either commuted from
Glendale or were on internships nearby.
Silicon Valley Bank and Kamm hosted­and
actively recruited-the interim stu­dents
for several days.
"We have plans on the drawing board to
sign a major international expansion,"
Kamm said, and I expect to have at least
200 new open positions. Where better to
go than Thunderbird for people who
understand the global community?"
Thunderbird Global Business Forums
are designed to enhance the School's
brand recognition by providing leading­edge
training on a variety of topics in sev­eral
regions throughout the world each
year. Most Forums provide a mix of real­world
practitioners and Thunderbird pro­fessors
who offer timely, hands-on insight.
Since Thunderbird also sends a full Admis­sions,
Career Services, Executive Educa­tion,
and Alunmi team to each event,
the Forums are also outstanding
recruitment venues.
The Making the Global Net Work
event was sponsored by Continental
Promotion Group and Silicon Valley
CONTINENTAL
PROMOTION
GROUP INC. T
f Silicon Valley Bank
Bank. Three other ebusiness­related
Forums will be held in
September in Shanghai, Tokyo,
and Singapore. Another Forum
will also be held in Glendale as
part of the School's November
Homecoming activities.
For more information, please
contact Kathleen Jackson
'91, director, Thunderbird
Global Business Forums. She
may be reached at jacksonk@t­bird.
edu or (602) 978-7084. •
THUNOERBIRD 53/3/2000 27 www.t-bird.edu
Alan Cohen of Cisco
Systems combined
humor with some
sobering facts.
Robert Witchel of
E*TRADE entertained
the audience with ads
Flavio Lebrao '00
of Brazil said that
Thunderbird's top
ranking was a
major factor in his
decision to
attend.
• T-bird Ranked No.1
for 5th Straight Year
The April 10, 2000 issue of U.S.
News & World Report magazine
named Thunderbird first in the
nation in the specialty of interna­tional
business. This is the fifth con­secutive
year in which the School
has been ranked No. 1 in this area.
In the category of international
business, the magazine listed the
nation's top ten schools, which are,
in rank order: Thunderbird, South
Carolina, Wharton, Columbia, Har­vard,
New York University, Michi­gan-
Ann Arbor, Stanford, UCLA,
and UC-Berkeley.
The international business spe­cialty
area ranking in the magazine
was part of the magazine's annual
survey of the nation's best graduate
schools. In the magazine's rankings
of the top 50 U.S. business schools,
Thunderbird was 34th overall.
As components of the overall
ranking, Thunderbird was rated
22nd in reputation among corpo­rate
recruiters, and 32nd in reputa­tion
among academics.
US News & World Report pro­duced
its ran kings based on sev­eral
criteria, including admissions
and placement statistics as well as
surveys of institutional reputation
among corporate recruiters and
business school deans.
WWW.T-BIHD.EDU
• Financial Times
Gives High Marks to
Exec. Ed.
The May 23, 2000 issue of the
Financial Times lists the execu­tive
education programs at
Thunderbird as 17th overall in the
paper's annual international rank­ing
of business school courses for
executives.
In the same ranking last year,
Thunderbird was ranked 20th over­all.
In the new ranking, Thunder­bird's
open enrollment progranls
for executives were ranked 14th
overall. The school's custom exec­utive
programs for corporations
were ranked 19th overall.
Thunderbird is the only school
concentrating in international man­agement
to appear in this interna­tional
ranking of top business
schools.
Thirty business schools from
around the world were included in
the ranking. The top 20 business
schools in the Financial Times'
2000 executive education ranking
were: 1) Columbia, 2) Kellogg, 3)
IMD, 4) Harvard, 5) [tie] Michigan
and Wharton, 7) Duke, 8) Virginia,
9) lese, 10) [tie] Cranfield and
Insead, 12) [tie] London Business
School and UNC, 14) Ashridge, 15)
THUNDERBIRD 53 /3/2000 2B
[tie] Instituto de Empresa and
UCLA, 17) [tie] REC and Thunder­bird,
19) Stockholm School of
Economics, and 20) Western
Ontario .
• First Thunderbird
2000 Class Graduates
There were 410 of them, repre­senting
52 countries. Some two
dozen took children, ranging from
newborns to teens, with them
when they marched across stage
April 28, 2000 in the Sundome
Center, Sun City West, Arizona.
Several publicly thanked parents
or their spouses. Others spoke
heartfelt words of grief or grati­tude.
One even did a pretty impres­sive
stand-up comedy routine.
They were diverse, worldly, and
yet, incredibly united. They were
Thunderbird's first graduating class
of this century.
Thunderbird is such a closeknit
community that making it through
graduation day without being pro­foundly
moved can be difficult.
Families reassemble. Flags from
throughout the world unfurl.
Friends who have become insepa­rable
attempt to pry themselves
apart. Pride and tears co-mingle.
Then, parties and packing eventu­ally
begin.
This year's graduates
got words of wisdom
from Roy Valee, presi­dent
and CEO of Avnet, a
US$lO billion electronics
entity. Valee shared some
of the lessons he has
learned from his 29-year
career. "Globalization,
industry consolidation
and competitive collabo­ration
will influence
where you work, who
you work for, and even
who you work for in the
future ," he told the
group. "You must deter­mine
what is most
important to you. Is it constant
challenge, good health, family or
faith? .. . You must decide whether
you truly want to be a pioneer or
simply get rich quick."
www.t-bird .edu
• One of the
youngest 'future
T-birds' gradu­ates
with Dad.
Roy Valee and
his wife Cindy
pose with Roy
Herberger before
the ceremony.
Jordanian student
Nassim Majdalawi
'~O watches local
Cub Scouts plant
a tree honoring
Jordan's late King
Hussein at
Thunderbird.
Majdalawi was
visibly moved
that Glendale
elementary
students chose to
honor his late
king.
• Elementary Students
Plant Tree Honoring
King Hussein at
Thunderbird
They had definitely done their
homework! Thirty students from
Glendale's Bellair Elementary
School had been studying the
Middle East last year when Jor­dan's
King Hussein passed away.
As a result, they wanted to send
Queen Noor a condolence letter.
When she graciously responded,
they decided to plant a tree of
peace in Hussein's memory at their
school.
That relationship blossomed
and expanded to include both
Jordan's new king and members of
a Glendale Cub Scout troop to
which several of the Bellair stu­dents
belonged. The two groups
decided to plant one more tree and
so wrote again to their friend
Queen Noor asking if there was
anything special she wanted them
to say. She responded with this
quote from the Prophet Moham­med:
"If the resurrection day carne
while a sapling is in the hand of
one of you, he shall plant it and
thus he will be rewarded."
At approximately that same
time, one of the children's parents
attended the Message of Peace lec­ture
that Jehan Sadat, the former
First Lady of Egypt, gave at Thun­derbird.
That parent, a Cub Scout
leader, then suggested that the chil­dren
place their new tree and the
accompanying plaque at Thunder­bird
for people from throughout
the Middle East and world to see.
The children did so in April, provid­ing
a very well researched and
heartfelt presentation to all mem­bers
of the Thunderbird commu­nity-
including Jordanian T-bird
student Nassim Majdalawi, who
took part in the ceremony and
seemed so appreciative of the stu­dents'
efforts.
• For Executive
Education Alumni, The
Learning Continues
Over 30 of Thunderbird's 180
EMIM graduates returned to cam­pus
for the 4th Annual EMIM
Alumni Learning weekend. The
theme for this year's April 28-30
session was 'The New Economy­Which
Direction to Take' and
focused primarily on merger &
acquisition, e-commerce, competi­tieve
intelligence, and globaliza­tion-
related issues and strategies.
Ron Valee, CEO of Avnet, a
US$10 billion electronics distribu­tion
company that employs 10,000
and serves customers in 60 coun­tries,
was this year's keynote
speaker. Valee astounded attendees
with his intimate knowledge of
industry issues, his personal
charisma, and his candor in sharing
data about his own company.
"The Annual EMIM Alumni
Learning Weekend is part of Thun­derbird's
ongoing commitment to
helping our alumni retain their
competitive advantage," said Bar­bara
Carpenter, senior director,
EMIM at Thunderbird. "We work
very hard at bringing in leading
edge industry practitioners and
THUNOERBIRD 53/3/2000 29
facility who can share first­hand
experiences and real-life
cases." Carpenter's group also
helps EMIM alumni, who
went through the two-year
program as a team, forge
effective networking relation­ships
with alumni from other
years.
"For most EMIM alumni,
who already have huge family
and business responsibilities,
taking that much time out of
our schedules to prepare the
cases and attend the 2 1/2
days, requires a substantial
time investment," said Mike
Hecomovich '97 (EMIM),
president and CEO of Global
Marketing Services. "But the
timely content, networking oppor­tunities,
and opportunity to shift
back into the learning rnindset pro­vided
such an outstanding return
on that investment that I've already
committed to prioritizing my atten­dance
again next year."
Hecomovich said that going
through Thunderbird's EMIM was
similar to his experience in going
through the U.S. Naval Academy in
terms of challenge and camaraderie
and added that Carpenter and her
team "place a tremendous value on
further enriching us each year."
Thunderbird is also working at
aggressively expanding its EMIM
and other executive education
offerings globally.
• T-birds Win Top
Honors in Business
Plan Competition
T-bird students Bernd Stomp­horst
and Ingo Haussman won
graduate honors in Arizona's first­ever
statewide, intercollegiate busi­ness
plan competition hosted by
the University of Arizona's Karl
Eller Center.
Their winning proposal focused
upon the creation of a one stop
online tool called "Taxreclaims.
corn" for investors to implement a
foreign country withholding tax
strategy. The team won $3,000 for
its winning proposal.
The University of Arizona, Thun­derbird
and Arizona State Uni­versity
students had the chance to
share their plans with business and
investment-sector professionals.
www.t-bird .edu
Bob Moran's
cross-cultural
communications
book has become
'the book' in its
field during
Moran's nearly
25 years at
Thunderbird.
• Three Outstanding
Faculty Members
Honored
Three outstanding Thunderbird
professors were honored by their
peers at Thunderbird's recent
Faculty Luncheon. The three were
long-term cross cultural communi­cations
specialist, Bob Moran, an
Executive Education professor and
interim chair of the Department of
International Studies who was rec­ognized
for his outstanding books
and articles; Jutta Ulrich, an associ­ate
professor in Modem Languages,
who was honored for implementing
Thunderbird's first all-online Ger­man
course; and Brian Heathcotte,
a finance professor in World Busi­ness
who was honored for excep­tional
service to Thunderbird.
John O'Connell, chair of the fac­ulty
senate, presided over the
event, which also included com­ments
by T-birds Roy Herberger,
John Seybolt and John Staczek.
• Global Week
Attracts Impressive
Array of Speakers
Executives from several leading
New Economy companies shared
their expertise with students, staff
and faculty during Thunderbird's
annual Global Week.
Sponsored by Thunderbird and
USWeb/CKS, Global Week included
informative sessions with execu­tives
from Bain Consulting,
USWeb/CKS, Korn/Ferry Inter­national,
Goldman Sachs, USA,
Sprint PCS, CertCo, Internet Cros­sing
and Wireless Facilities, Inc.
Topics included "Strategic Alliances
in the Digital Economy," "Online
Trading: Changing the Nature of
Finance," and "E-branding: What's
Coming and How to Prepare for it."
Global Week is organized primar­ily
by Thunderbird students and all
sessions were open to the Thun­derbird
community and surround­ing
public free of charge.
• Thunderb ird Hosts
Pre stigious Language
Conference
Thunderbird welcomed nearly
400 people from 50 states and 13
countries to the four-day Thunder­bird/
EMU Conference on Language
Communication and Global Man­agement.
The event, which was
held in April, was the largest con­ference
of its kind ever held in the
U.S. and brought together an inter­national
field of experts on nearly
every as