A University Experience with the MBA Export Expansion Program
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The University of Wisconsin's experiences with the MBA Export Expansion Program have been favorable. It has been a good supplementary educational vehicle for students, participatingfirms seem to have gained from it, and the faculty coordinator has gained useful insights regarding business behavior. The University of Wisconsin Business School has been participating in the Bureau of International Commerce's MBA Export Expansion Program since its inception in 1970. This is a report of our experiences with it, and a discussion of some of the issues raised by these experiences. Program Structure On the basis of exploratory work by Professor Richard D. Robinson of M.I.T., the Bureau of International Commerce initiated the MBA Export Expansion Program in 1970. Their stated rationale was that, "Many small businesses fail to consider export opportunities because they lack the internal resources necessary to execute a preliminary international market study."' Their stated objective was to fill this void by combining ". . . the efforts of business, government and academia in expanding the export sales of small American companies."2 To cover the costs involved, the Bureau payed a stipend of $1,000 to each participating university plus $25 to every participating student.3 The Bureau then asked cooperating firms to pay them $25 to help defray the program's costs. They also recruited firms for the universities. All of the firms assigned to the University of Wisconsin were small. Some had extensive international experience; most had none. Some seemed to be motivated by a desire to receive help; others seemed motivated primarily by a desire to assist students to learn "what international *Presented December 30, 1972 at the A.E.I.B. meetings in Toronto, Canada. Dr. Bilkey is a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. 'Letter from Donald Demer, Special Assistant to the Director of the Bureau of International Commerce, to the author, dated July 27, 1970. 2Ibid. 3Minor changes in these stipends were made during the course of the program.
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business is all about." Before assigning students, the instructor met with an official of each firm, visited their plant, ascertained their export goals, learned their past international experiences (if any), and discussed how students could assist them effectively. The instructor then presented the students with a summary of the firms' situations, and obtained the students' rank-orderedpreferences as to the firmswith which they would like to work. During the 1970-71 spring semester, for example, thirteen firms worked with the University of Wisconsin program. Some had individual students assigned to their case, some had teams of two, and others had teams of three. (In retrospect, teams of two performed best, especially where one student was foreign and the other American). The instructor took the assigned students to each firm,
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