Workshops

Macro Environment: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor
Maria Minnitti, Associate Professor of Economics

Using original cross-country data recently collected for the GEM project, the presentation will discuss what factors have a significant impact on an individual’s decision to start a new business. The presentation will review the role played in entrepreneurial decisions by variables such as education, gender, age, household income, financial constraints, and networking abilities. The presentation will also focus on the importance of perceptual variables and show that they too have a crucial impact on new business creation across all countries in the sample. After discussing the process of entrepreneurial decisions at the individual’s level, the presentation will discuss the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and economic growth. The presentation will analyze the existence of strong country effects, and stress the importance of an appropriate institutional business environment. Finally, the presentation will use the evidence provided by the data to address important policy issues related to entrepreneurial activity.

Using Non-Market Strategies To Change the Institutional Environment To Your Advantage
Carlos Rufin, Assistant Professor of Strategic Management

In this workshop, we will explore examples of companies that have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to have an impact on foreign institutions and national business systems. We will focus on sectors where the institutional environment, and more specifically government policy, is particularly prominent: the so-called “infrastructure industries”, where major reforms in recent decades have led to a wave of privatization and the global expansion of companies that had a purely domestic scope only a few years ago. In these industries, government regulation of prices is an ongoing reality, despite extensive deregulation, for a variety of reasons. Nonmarket strategies are therefore essential in order to address regulatory risk. We will look at the various mechanisms available to foreign companies, and examine the degree to which they meet legal and ethical standards in the companies’ host and home countries. Our objective will be to expand the range of possibilities that firms going abroad can consider, and to discuss how can these possibilities be incorporated as part of a company’s international strategic decision-making.

What Can Global Managers Learn From A Global Sports Team: Alinghi Wins The 2003 America's Cup
Jean Pierre Jeannet, Professor of Global Business, Director of W. F. Glavin Center for Global Management

Case:
Alinghi and the 2003 America's Cup: Strategy to Win
Copyright (c) 2004 by Babson College
To be handed out prior to session

We will discuss the efforts of Team Alinghi as they approached competition in the 2003 America's Cup, and we will consider the implications for managers and businesses. Babson alum Ernesto Bertarelli, CEO of Serono, Europe's largest biotech company, headed the 2003 racing syndicate Alinghi Swiss Challenge. The Alinghi case was written by Martha Lanning (M'85), Research Associate, under the direction of Professor Jean-Pierre Jeannet, F.W. Olin Distinguished Professor of Global Business and Director of the Glavin Center for Global Management. The case is based on interviews with key players, including Ernesto Bertarelli and Russell Coutts, Alinghi's skipper. The session will include new video shots of the races and a March 2004 interview with Russell Coutts during his visit to Babson College.