From Production to the Pier: Monday March 7, 2011

From the buckled highway roads going out of downtown Lima, Jose explained to us some of the unique sights demonstrating Peru’s economic takeoff. Pueblos jovenes, literally “young towns” where rural Peruvians immigrated to be closer to the city and employment, popped up from the dusty hills. On the left, hundreds of trees dotted the arid landscape as part of an environmental program to slow erosion and create more fertile soil.

Adam, Nathan and Mark get a tour of the Keyfarm facility

Jose was very excited to show Team Keyfarm his production facility on the outskirts of Lima. Jose and his production manager Guillermo gave us a thorough tour of the facility where they make high quality generic pharmaceuticals for sale in Peruvian parafarmacias. We put on hardhats, rolled up our sleeves and witnessed the entire process: raw materials, testing and quality control, mixing, coating, packaging, and printing. Jose is very proud of his production facility, and he has every reason to be.

After our tour, Jose wanted to show us some of the best cerviche in town. The restaurant was located on the shore of the Pacific Ocean in the Barranco neighborhood and offered picturesque views of Miraflores. Cerviche is raw fish bathed in a citrus-based marinade, thinly sliced onions, salt and pepper. I have never had fresher fish than in Peru. The tender white and pink meat was plucked from the Pacific just a few hours earlier. Peruvians also take a lot of pride in this dish – they claim to have invented it 500 years ago.

Delicious cerviche and other Peruvian specialties

Our day closed on the pier, overlooking the beautiful stone beaches of Miraflores. Team Keyfarm has been blown away by our host’s hospitality and willingness to share Peruvian culture. We are working hard to repay him by presenting actionable, value-adding recommendations on Friday.

Checking in on 2010's Recommendations

One of the downsides of MBA projects is that one rarely gets to see the outcome of a recommendation. For example, I've had the opportunity to compete in many case competitions, where the "recommendations" are merely academic exercises and will never come to fruition. I've also had internships in which I made strategic recommendations that would be implemented so far down the road it was hard to tell what affect they would have.

As a member of 2010 GLOBASE Peru, my team worked with a metal fabricator in Lima, focusing on many sectors - education, health care, mining etc. The experience was fantastic, but as the team left we wondered if any of the recommendations we made would ever be implemented and if so what impact they would have - be it positive or negative.

As a member of 2011 GLOBASE Peru, I was fortunate enough to have these questions answered. My team is working with the same client we worked with last year and yesterday, on our first full day in Lima, we were able to visit his factory, which was bustling. As we toured his offices we noticed some new faces. Our client had implemented our recommendations from 2010; to focus efforts on the mining sector, and hire a sales person to solely focus efforts on this sector. In fact, our client had hired not one, but two sales people.

These new hires and renewed focus on mining have resulted in many new sales, which have necessitated hiring more factory workers. It became very evident that last year's GLOBASE efforts had in fact met the mission of GLOBASE - Global Business through Social Enterprise.

By helping the President of a company align his strategic efforts we were able to assist in an increase in sales which in turn resulted in job creation. It was a great feeling to see our work pay off for so many people, and gave me renewed confidence in our efforts this year. I have no doubt that all of the 2011 GLOBASE teams will find an equal amount of success with their projects this year.

Touring the lab and selling to Mexico's former health minister

The intersection of GLOBASE and personal transformation promised by the MBA journey is receptivity to what the experience brings you. In graduate management education, we faculty link high productivity to meticulous deciphering, forecasting, planning, and implementation – in other words, we teach managers to control their environment.

Innovation and creativity, though, occur when a manager allows the environment to deliver new observations, adaptations, and solutions to her mind in an unforced way. Generating value for a family-owned business in an emerging market like Peru with an unfamiliar language and unfamiliar culture disciplines the minds of our MBAs to balance revelation with control. My hope is that everyone leaves Peru a bit different than when they arrived and that a piece of Lima goes with them into their internship and career. This mental export is the ultimate value of GLOBASE.

Yesterday, our generic pharmaceutical team toured the site of their client Keyfarm. By Friday, they must recommend a plan on how to make unused production capacity profitable, either through development of an internal growth strategy or to contract as a supplier for a larger pharmaceutical partner.

Last night, the management team of technology client Dirose met with the former health minister of Mexico to explore sources of financial capital. Dirose used information it had already received from the MBA team to sell its business model. The MBA team will use insights from this meeting to generate final suggestions for Dirose’s commercialization of its harvesting technology. Now that’s real time consulting!

On this Tuesday morning, most teams are in the hotel refining their ideas and analysis based on insights gained from their client orientation yesterday. They will reconvene with their clients for a long Peruvian lunch to move projects along.

It is another enjoyable, productive, and warm day in Lima for the Kelley School in Peru!

Off to the office this Monday - in Lima, Peru

The GLOBASE Peru teams got down to business at 9am this morning (or a little later than scheduled - to match business norms in Latin America) with a welcome breakfast at the hotel with the clients this morning. Teams have personally worked with the clients since January when they visited Bloomington to kickoff the projects. After breakfast, teams headed off "to the office" to start their week of consulting work and site visits. Teams completed about 70% of their project work before arriving with coaching and support from the student leadership team, Ana, and me. The remaining 30% requires data collection and observations only gained on the ground in Lima.

The student leadership team identified clients working through the American Chamber of Commerce in Peru, our GLOBASE partner in Lima. All six clients are family-owned businesses that are active in the local market. They are a fish processing operation, a food distributor (basic agricultural products), a bamboo company, a furniture manufacturing business, a producer of generic pharmaceutical products, and a startup seeking to commercialize technology for automated picking of papricka peppers.

In concert with the rest of Peru, Sunday was a day of rest and relaxation for everyone. Students napped, familiarized themselves with Miraflores (our part of town) through long walks, and tasted the gastronomically-pleasing local dishes (especially cerviche). We start the work week well-rested and ready to add value in classic Kelley MBA fashion.

Takeoff of GLOBASE Peru 2011

Asleep at 2:30 after arrival in Lima, up at 7:00 – I don’t want to miss this morning’s run.

I come out of the Hotel Casa Andina, respectfully pass congregants attending 7:30 mass at the Church de Nuestra Señora Fatima, and then run along the cliff above the sea past Larcomar, El Parque de Amor (the Park of Love – where couples come to kiss and celebrate their adoration), and finally turn around at a miniature lighthouse that honors the Peruvian navy.

Seeing this vibrant, entrepreneurial city come to life each morning always inspires me. Plus, the cooler breeze off the ocean makes a jog more tolerable before it hits the upper 20s (centigrade).

Today is takeoff for GLOBASE Peru 2011 and I am very excited. Our great student leadership team (Rocio, Sen, Caroline, and Matt) brings us together at 11:30am downstairs in the hotel to get us underway.

As we begin, I remember two thoughts that struck me on the plane last night.

In a Delta promotional video, a pilot observed that if he turns his plane into the wind blowing against him, the plane flies higher and faster. Our GLOBASE teams have worked hard before they arrived in Lima – some hit major snags in identifying how to add value for their clients. They, however, faced their challenge head on and are ready to soar. Their "flight" during the next week in Lima will be a memorable part of their MBA experience.

On my Delta headphones, Kenny Chesney sang the lyric "live a little, love a lot". Last year, a Peruvian economist boasted proudly to me that Peruvians enjoy life more than Americans because in Peru, they "work to live" not "live to work". GLOBASE Peru exposes us to successful small companies that don’t require managers to be addicted to their vocation 24/7. For our students, I hope this broadens their perspective on "work life" balance and the long-term productivity it creates.

Back in Lima

Ana and I arrived again in this wonderful city last night. The chief mission of this visit is to recruit from Peru talented members of the Class of 2013. Along with meeting with coaches who prepare aspiring MBAs for the TOEFL and GMAT and guide them on which U.S. programs to consider, we will host a dinner of 20 alums and prospective students. After two years of success with GLOBASE, prospective students know we are serious about Peru and its connection to their MBA experience.


While here, we will follow up with companies with whom students will work in March 2011. Our goal is to provide well-organized, well-scoped projects so that students complete a robust consulting experience. We can capitalize on two years of experience, contacts, and knowledge of the city. The plan is to fly the company owners into Bloomington in late January so they can form relationships with the student teams before "getting down to business" (the refreshing way business is conducted in Latin America). Ana and I look forward to SKYPEing in for the presentation to interested students by Matt, Rocio, Sen, and Caroline (the student leadership team) on Thursday - we'll be able to show the city off in real time. Not a bad way to market this opportunity, eh?


This first morning back in Peru, I woke to see how, during this time of year, Lima is shrouded in a fog formed by moisture off the Pacific that is trapped by the Andes. The fog emphasizes a sense of mystery as the new day begins. Throughout the day, though, the fog slowly lifts to reveal a vibrant community alive with new construction, growth, and optimism. This is symbolic of how Latin America is breaking dated stereotypes held by us in the United States. Our GLOBASE Peru teams will plug clients into Lima's new vibrancy and our MBA students will inhale fumes of entrepreneurial excitement hard to find right now in the U.S. Some of our best lessons in the MBA program are learned thousands of miles away from Bloomington. Ana and I feel privileged to be blazing a trail for these opportunities in March.

Some very cool projects

After a long and very productive week, our trip to Lima has come to an end…I am sitting at the airport waiting for my plane to start boarding and thinking about all the cool things we went through this week. Phil has already blogged about the great contacts we made and the new opportunities that are waiting for us, so I guess it is my turn to write about the companies our students will potentially be working with next March…Jessica, a young entrepreneur that started a web design firm in Peru, then found an opportunity to expand to the US and is now working on starting a new handbag business -unique Peruvian designs manufactured by artisans in 2 local communities. Miguel and Diego, 2 young entrepreneurs in his late 20’s that started a paprika business a few years ago…at the beginning of 2010, they got money from the Interamerican Development Bank to develop a robot that will increase harvesting capacity and now want to commercialize it…pretty cool, huh? And lastly, Pilar, who ventured in the food segment and started selling jams, olives, salad dressings -among other Peruvian delicacies- in the local market…suddenly she realized she could expand to Europe and has done it with great success. Her sales have increased in such a way that she is now looking at investing in building her own manufacturing plant…quite impressive!

My greatest takeaway was to feel the passion that these young people have for their businesses and their country. It is great to see how committed they are with their community and how much they care for their employees and their families. Their positive energy and optimism is contagious and made us feel we definitely want to be part of it!