Pitt Business e-newsletter Issue 14, March 2009
Crafting a Vision for a Global Future
Globally contestable markets, radical technological and business process innovation, and shifting consumer preferences combine to stress-test corporations' strategic planning and implementation capabilities. As globalization gathers pace across the business landscape, a general manager must cope with increasing levels of uncertainty and ambiguity and there is a particular need to develop visions to navigate this uncharted territory. That is why Katz Executive MBA (EMBA) students from across the world gathered this month in São Paulo, Brazil to develop their vision-crafting abilities.
Under the tutelage of John E. Prescott, the Thomas O'Brien Chair of Strategy and director of the Katz Doctoral Program, EMBA students learned how the changing economic climate affects firms' visions and performance, as well as how to assess their own firm's vision and design and implement a vision process. Through a series of discussions and exercises, students developed their own vision-crafting abilities.
EMBA's three annual Global Executive Forums have traditionally included company visits, but new this year is that instructors like Prescott have woven local content—case studies and readings from organizations in the region—and incorporated the company visits into the core learning of their classes. In São Paulo, students visited Natura, the largest Brazilian cosmetics company, and the Albert Einstein Jewish Hospital—Latin America's most advanced private hospital that provides considerable assistance to the poor—whre they discussed strategy, vision, and social responsibility with hospital president Claudio Luiz Lottenberg.
"The most valuable lesson from this experience has been the understanding that it is extremely challenging to build an institution that is financially successful yet socially responsible," said EMBA student Ravi Venkatesh. "While the Harvard case study on Natura gave an overview, the visit to Natura was the most revealing. The pride I could see in the team, the happiness I could see in the children enjoying the day care center, are the direct results of an organization that has succeeded in both these spheres."
Andrea Salzano, the Latin American manager of the Low Income Consumers Unit for Unilever of Brazil, joined the class as a guest speaker to share her company's strategy for capturing some of the wealth found at the bottom of the pyramid, a concept-popularized by C.K. Prahalad of the University of Michigan in his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating poverty through profits. Prescott covered the Base of the Pyramid perspective for organizational strategy in his Strategic Visioning class. Unilever's efforts to alleviate poverty and create wealth involve distributing their manufactured goods to the C and D classes of Brazil. EMBA students visited a large urban favela (shanty town) to learn about the concept first hand.
Students were treated to a dance performance by children from the Meninos do Morumbi Association, an organization that teaches music skills and other forms of visual, performing, language, and martial arts to the young people of São Paulo as an alternative to the prevalent cultures of drugs and crime. Many international diplomats, including former U.S. President George W. Bush, have visited the association because it is an exemplary model for how to deal with the base of the pyramid in a productive way. Association President and Director Flávio Pimenta met with the class to discuss the Base of the Pyramid perspective for poverty alleviation.
Academic experiences by design touch the mind, but rarely does an academic experience transcend the mind to touch the heart. The visit to Meninos do Morumbi, however, moved EMBA students, faculty, and staff to tears and, more significantly, moved them to action. Some students were asked to join the favela children in a Brazilian folk dance. One student was so moved by the children and their performance that he started impromptu collection to benefit the association. The totality of these experiences is not something the EMBA students, faculty, and staff are likely to forget. "We were all moved by the experiences," said Prescott.
