Global Entrepreneurship Lab 2012

MIT Sloan G-Lab... check

It is hard to believe that after a very busy semester working with our start-up client in Singapore, followed up with a jam-packed three weeks on site, our G-Lab experience is over. 

Thank you, Oruga Touching Dreams!

Last night in Bogota, I was sitting on the open area of Oruga’s office, looking at the Friday evening traffic and reflecting on my G-lab experience. Here are my take-awys.

Start-ups in developing countries.  Don’t undersell yourself. 

Before arriving at Oruga, we already like Oruga and its people very much, and thought we knew a good deal about the business and the culture.  However, I was truly impressed by the young and vibrant culture, the dedication to making beautiful things, and the fun office setting. It is a pity that it is very difficult for outsiders to know all these cool things.

Looking back

My three weeks in Peru have come and gone.  In the next two weeks the team needs to finalize its recommendations and produce a package Fairtrasa can leverage going forward.  We arrived back in the US on Sunday evening, exhausted but inspired.  Our three weeks were enriching, enlightening and truly incredible.  At the airport, we hugged our client contacts good-bye, promised to stay in touch and share our stories.  "You have been here and seen what it is like for our growers,"  Patrick urged us.  We are more than motivated to spread the word about this company and the truly life-changing impact it is having in the countries it operates.  

Who Says Colombians are All Drug Traffickers?

What I’ll remember the most about the experience working in Bogota is the kindness and generosity of everyone I met in Colombia. Several weeks ago, one of the other production companies in Oruga Touching Dreams' studio was commissioned by Coca-Cola to do a viral marketing campaign. For the shoot, they hired a truck and some actors. They pretended that the truck broke down on the side of the road and the actors would randomly ask people walking by to push the truck around the corner. Once they got around the corner, the reps from Coca-Cola would surprise them with a bottle of Coke. I'm not sure if this campaign would work in some other countries.

For this G-Lab class, one of our final deliverables is to come up with a poster to showcase the work we did for our G-Lab client Oruga Touching Dreams. In the process of trying to figure out what to put on our poster last week, we decided to check with Oruga Touching Dreams to see if they could send us some of their character animations to put on our poster. Oruga Touching Dreams CEO & executive producer Pedro Tosin readily agreed and assigned one of his animators Harry Villamil to go through Oruga Touching Dreams’ database and pull up some character animations for us. But after waiting a day, Harry Villamil still hadn’t sent us the characters animations. It turns out that Pedro Tosin had pushed back one of Oruga Touching Dreams’ deadline for a client by a day and asked three animators to do the poster for us! Oruga Touching Dreams even created the caterpillar and butterfly just for our poster. Mucho gracias Oruga Touching Dreams por lo que el G-Lab como una experiencia increible en Colombia.

1/30-2/3 in Oruga Touching Dreams

Our 2^nd week finished with horseback riding in Villa de Leyva! It was such a great experience! Villa de Leyva is a colonial-era old town 3-hour drive northeast of Bogota. It is well known for it cobblestoned street, red-tiled roofs and private courtyards. To me, it is probably one of the best places to enjoy the starry sky. I enjoyed the horseback riding, not only because it brought us to the beautiful natural scene, but also the process of learning new things and trusting the horse.

Back to Bogota, we had another week of intense work.  We were busy working on the presentation deck, consolidating database and having debates within the team.

Back West

Now back in cold Boston, I can think about our experience hot Jakarta.  I was lucky to have such a great team and an unbelievably gracious host company.  Our hosts spent a lot of time with us to ensure that we had access to all the information, data and people to best make our recommendation.  Our GLab team worked hard the whole three weeks and came together very well down the home strech to delivery a great recommendation.  I am proud or how we did and will always remember our great experience.

The one with online advertising, CEOs and cars in Latin America

It's a sad day for two reasons; the Pats lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl XLVI championship game and my GLAB travels have ended. This is the concluding post in the 5 part series on my GLAB experiences and I will attempt to pull together some lasting observations from my experiences in Latin America

The Home Stretch

Though we had a short week because of Chinese New Year, the final week of the project was very productive.  After the mid-term presentation, we had a lot of great feedback for how we should structure the final presentation.  We also scheduled a few meetings that we thought would be particularly helpful, particularly with potential distributor partners that could give us an insight on what they look for when distributing auto care products.  It was particularly interesting to see what they thought of branding for products and how important sales person incentivizing is.  We learned a lot about what it takes to get someone to sell your product. 

Stateside

Now that I’m back in the States and reflecting on my experience, I’m especially grateful for my awesome team. A month abroad would not have been nearly as successful (or enjoyable) without them! I must admit that sharing a small apartment with three other people was quite cozy but now that I’m back, it is quiet without my 24/7 roommates / teammates. I miss the constant tapping and fidgeting, foot-in-mouth comments, and cat pictures from them!

Coal Mines, Lorries, and (big) Pineapples

It doesn’t get any more hands on than this. We soon found ourselves in a coal mine with the Pro Energi delivery team, observing what they do on a daily basis as well as getting some direct input from their customers.