Kwansei Gakuin University Institute of Business and Accounting Professor Yoshinobu Sato In charge of Global Business Project in Japan Faculty Advisor

International Management Course (IMC) of Kwansei Gakuin University has participated in the "Global Business Project (GBP)" since 2008. GBP is a joint extra-curricular course offered by the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBERs).

CIBERs were created to increase and promote the nation's capacity for international understanding and competitiveness, being funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The CIBER network, in which 31 business schools in the U.S. have joined, links the manpower and technological needs of the United States business community with the international education, language training, and research capacities of universities across the country.

GBP is one of their various programs. It is a consulting project course where the MBA teams (5-7 students/team) are offered real business issues by client companies. Teams work virtually for seven weeks, gathering information/data, clarifying problems and investing in possible solutions. Then for two weeks on site, they conduct field research about the management problems of the clients and present their findings/proposals to them.

IMC has participated in the GBP from its start in 2008 as an only partner in Japan. IMC students team up with MBAs in the U.S. and address issues of Japanese companies/organizations. So far, six diversified companies in Japan have sponsored the GBP, and students investigated problems and offered proposals to solve issues of each company. We received high evaluations from participating companies which noted "we got valuable knowledge we cannot gain from the consultants only with the Japanese mind-set" and "we learned new ways of thinking from MBAs with different cultures".

GBP has also received a favorable reception from IMC students who could take the international standard MBA course with MBA students of US leading business schools while experiencing hands-on consultation practice. In addition, it is a valuable learning opportunity for students to demonstrate coordination ability and leadership as intermediaries between overseas students and Japanese companies.

GBP has been certified as a formal credit by IMC since 2009. The Program for a Strategic University Alliance has financially supported to dispatch IMC students to the U.S..

Kick-off Meetings in the U.S.: Teams met in Washington D.C. with MBA students, faculty advisors, language mentors, primary company representatives, and country leaders. After the plenary meeting and various training, teams separately developed their own project work for their client companies.

Dr. Jean Wilcox, who visited Japan as a faculty advisor in charge of the Potomak Project in 2010, provided the lecture "A Random Walk from Chemistry to Marketing: An Example of a Career Transition" at an open seminar sponsored by the Program for a Strategic University Alliance.
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