Born in Uruguay and raised in seven different countries in five continents, one of my goals in business school was push the envelope even further as a global trotter and to set foot on at least one of the two remaining continents during my time at Sloan. So when it came time for my team to choose our project, my regional preference was naturally Africa (they didn't have Antarctica). Luckily there were a lot of Africa projects to choose from in a wide range of sectors. Given that my team had two LGOs (dual degree program in engineering and MBA), a former engineer and me, the project on an antenna technology for market entry in Africa was our natural choice. To be honest, our three-month research process in the U.S. was a rather grueling experience as we had a hard time grasping what new ideas we may be able to come up with for our client. However, it all came together during the on-site internship in Africa, and G-Lab ended up completely exceeding all of my expectations in terms of what I learned and how much I was able to grow as a person.
Getting ready for my on-ground research in Ghana and Kenya, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. My visit to the MIT travel office resulted in six shots on both arms and various medications including malaria pills and diarrhea pills. Boarding the plane to Accra, I was overwhelmed with apprehension and excitement. As we landed, the plane just sort of hit the ground, kept rolling and came to an abrupt stop at a random spot at the airport. We were told to get off the plane, and there we were, in the middle of the Accra airport, where there were no gates and a huge sign that said Akwaaba, which means "welcome." Underneath, there was a list of prohibited items in Ghana, including pedophiles and other sexual deviants.
All G-Lab trips are funded either entirely by the host company or by MIT and the host company, but our G-Lab experience was much different from that of other teams in that we were working for a U.S. Fortune 500 company that put us up in a five-star hotel, both in Accra and Nairobi, where we were treated like celebrities. We had a personal trainer in Accra and my tennis coach at the hotel (yes, the hotel had a tennis court) was a Ghanaian national tennis team player who competed in the Davis Cup for Ghana. We also occasionally got massages at the hotel, sipped on pina colada by the pool and worked on our project in a fancy business center. As I mentioned before, this is definitely not the typical G-Lab experience as most G-Lab host companies are start-ups. Another thing that was different about our project was that we were mostly left on our own to work on the project, whereas other teams were working side-by-side with their client companies on-ground. The only face-to-face interaction we had with our client was during our final presentation in Nairobi on the last day of our on-site internship. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the flexibility of being able to think outside the box and to schedule meetings with whomever we felt could add value to the project.
There were a few things that amazed me about Ghana and Kenya. Since our project was in the telecommunications sector, we had the chance to speak with various operators, regulators, base station providers, other vendors, and customers of telecommunications service. The first thing that surprised me was how sophisticated Ghanaian and Kenyan customers were in their use of telecommunications services. Most people owned various SIM cards that they used to call different people depending on the varying rates and services provided by the different operators. A lot of people also owned what were called “China Phones,” which allowed them to use multiple SIM cards in one phone. This brings me to the second surprise, which was the influence of China in Africa. In the telecommunications sector, they had laid out the underlying telecom infrastructure for these countries and Huawei, a Chinese base station provider, had already taken over the European vendors and was the preferred vendor for all the operators we had met. There were a lot of Chinese people in Ghana and Kenya (everybody thought I was Chinese) and there were also a lot of Chinese restaurants. Another interesting thing we noted was the difference in business culture between Ghana and Kenya. Kenyans seemed to be a lot more process-driven and formal whereas Ghanaians seemed to be more casual. However, the amount of business opportunities in both countries were amazing. In Ghana, everybody we met was extremely enterprising and wanting to start a new business. Another thing that was great during the process of our research was the extensiveness of the MIT network. We were able to leverage our MIT network to meet up with many high-ranking and knowledgeable representatives in the telecommunications sector. We also realized how well-connected our African classmates were as they helped us lot in reaching out to various people.
In our spare time, we had time to travel to a lot of places in both countries. Ghana and Kenya were both absolutely beautiful, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time in both countries - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oy7lmNj1sM.
Without going into too much detail, our project was to develop an African market-entry strategy for the company who had developed a new mobile antenna solution that could achieve lower OPEX and much wider coverage than traditional systems and was thus very suitable for rural areas with lower population density. Specifically, we answered three key questions, which were which countries to enter with the technology, how to enter the target countries and when. We developed a country selection matrix, presented the wireless ecosystem and regulatory environment in each of the target countries, suggested different ways to organize the business and key relationships to focus on, and presented distribution channels, funding opportunities, timing analysis and pricing and value analysis.
We worked a lot during the week, visiting companies back to back each day and spending the evening working on our presentation and report. In the end, it was all worth it and our client liked what we presented to them.
Growing up in various countries, I saw things mostly from a cultural perspective, particularly from that of an expat, but seeing things from a combination of cultural and entrepreneurial perspective and seeing how the two interact with each other was a unique experience that G-Lab allowed me to have. My learning from this experience will most certainly assist me in the future as I have learned a lot about how to interact and communicate with other people, and have stretched my boundaries to think about issues from different perspectives.
