AUG
16 1996
Businessmen: Take a leaf from MBA students
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CAD-IT is today a homegrown, award-winning leader in computer-aided manufacturing and engineering systems, with offices in Penang and Kuala Lumpur.
But three years ago, when managing director Terence Chan wanted to set up his first office in Penang, he had not even heard of the Penang Development Corporation. This is the equivalent of the Economic Development Board and Trade and Industry Board here, and anyone hoping to get into Penang does not do so without its help.
Luckily for Mr Chan, MBA students at Nanyang Technological University were studying Penang as an investors' region and were preparing to go on a study mission there.
As an NTU MBA graduate, he was allowed to join the mission.
When the 50-member group of students and lecturers from Nanyang Business School went to the Malaysian state in February 1994, the highlight of the trip was the opening of CAD-IT's office in Penang.
To this day, Mr Chan still waxes lyrical about the experience.
He had finished his full-time, 16-month MBA programme at NTU in 1992, and had no need to go on such a mission to meet course requirements.
But the extra effort paid off. He said: "Because of the study mission's research and work, I was put in touch with the economic administrators of Penang.
"We also had very good publicity because many of the state's ministers came to the opening, and my business here even benefited from it."
LIKE Mr Chan, businessmen who want to regionalise can now take a leaf from -- interestingly -- students.
NTU has produced a set of six books detailing the facts and how-tos of doing business in five countries, that may just turn on its head the view that students are mere spongers of knowledge.
The Nanyang Business Report Series is based on research and reports by the university's 296 present and past MBA students and lecturers, who went on study missions to Penang, Sichuan and the Yangtze River delta area in China, India, The Philippines and Myanmar.
The books are the first in a series to be published by NTU and the first such publications ever put out in the world, based on students' missions.
Minister for Trade and Industry Yeo Cheow Tong launched the series yesterday. From the inception of NTU's MBA programme in 1991, about 600 students have gone on 13 study missions to nine countries, including Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, China, Japan and the United States.
The director of NTU's MBA programmes, Professor Low Aik Meng, said no other university in the world makes it compulsory for MBA students to spend at least eight days in trips abroad, to forge ties with, and cull business-pertinent information directly from, businessmen and government leaders.
EACH year, the university's annual batch of 150 MBA students go in separate groups of 50 to three countries, as part of the international business module of the MBA programme.
Students cannot graduate without going on at least one study mission, which was started to nurture managers with a global mindset.
Partly because of this component in the MBA programme, last year, NTU came in 14th in a survey of the top 25 MBA programmes in the Asia-Pacific.
Asia Inc., the regional business magazine which conducted the survey, commended NTU, in part, for its "unique study missions in Asia".
The National University of Singapore does not have a similar overseas segment for its regular MBA programmes although it has student exchanges with business schools abroad.
But from January, senior managers taking its new executive MBA -- designed much like the short, residential executive development programmes in Harvard -- will have a compulsory overseas module, that appears to be like that of a business study mission.
FOR now, businessmen who want macro and micro views of the ins and outs of doing business in the Asian countries covered can delve into the NTU books.
But a sceptic may question the usefulness of the work of students, who are perhaps still wet behind their ears where business is concerned.
However, faculty members at the Nanyang Business School point out that NTU's MBA students need at least two years of managerial experience before they are admitted into the programme.
Most are managers in their 30s who are working, and who take the MBA on a part-time basis over two years. A few, such as Mr Chan, somehow manage to complete their full-time MBAs while juggling duties as bosses of their own companies.
Others even mix work with study by seeking business opportunities for their companies while on the study missions.
Gates Rubber Singapore's regional marketing manager Paul Lee, for one, went nosing for a hose manufacturer during a trip to Sichuan in 1994, using information his study mission mates dug out.
The tie-up failed, but thanks to his work during the visit, his company is now talking to a few partners in China on possible ventures.
PROF LOW also pointed out that the students' research work is done not just during the mission, but before and after it.
In all, the students spend over eight months of part-time research on a single business aspect of a region, out of a full-time programme that lasts 16 months or a part-time one of about two years.
Preparations for a mission are a whirl of talks by country experts, ambassadors, business and government leaders on various aspects of doing business in the country, starting even before the term starts.
The seminars guide the students in their research. They are broken up into small groups, each handling an aspect of doing business in the country.
The mission itself is a formal affair, with a back-to-back schedule of seminars, visits to factory sites and business facilities, panel discussions and receptions, where students forge useful ties with key business and government leaders.
Behind the rigour of NTU's MBA is perhaps the university's emphasis on being practice-oriented.
Since its establishment, NTU's policy has been to make graduates immediately useful to industry.
The joke at Nanyang Business School is that its dean, Professor Tan Teck Meng, is a "businessman in a professor's skin".
Students point out that Prof Tan, who is said to run his faculty like a business by dreaming up innovative ideas, is also a mine of business contacts.
The dean has also stipulated that lecturers in the school must have at least three years of prior industrial or management experience before they can join it.
The result is classroom lectures peppered with real examples from business life.
Practical work like case studies and the business study missions are also integrated into the curriculum.
According to Prof Low, the students' work on a study mission is equivalent to that on two or three of the 16 compulsory subjects of the MBA programme, such as entrepreneurship and international accounting. SOME 40 per cent of lecturers in the school are foreigners, and students in the programme come from 20 other countries.
The students are therefore exposed to cross-cultural influences and perspectives of doing business in a global world.
Mexican Eugenio Reyes said his MBA programme at NTU is part of a strategy by his company to make its employees more culturally sensitive. The international trading manager's Mexico-based company is sponsoring him for his MBA here as it plans to start manufacturing activities in Asia.
The company is so eager for him to pick up an all-round understanding of doing business in Asia, that it is putting Mr Reyes on all the study missions during his course.
He chose NTU to do his MBA partly because of the study mission component. He said: "As a student, you get easier access to key business people and more first-hand information than as a tourist or businessman."
The Nanyang Business Report Series is available at major bookstores at $26 to $29 per book, or a set of six books at $165.
