NZ technology companies benefit from MBA project

By ADAM GIFFORD

Sixty New Zealand IT and biotechnology companies are getting a crash course in how to enter the United States market from Master of Business Administration students at one of the world's top business schools, the Anderson School at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Six years ago, Trade New Zealand conducted a similar exercise with Anderson, which looked at primary sectors such as wine, lamb and venison.

It was through that work that the Game Industry Board learned that it should rename venison Cervena and target those chefs who could create signature dishes, rather than go to customers direct.

Trade NZ's senior trade commissioner for North America, Arama Kukutai, said Cervena was now a banner market.

"Cervena gets higher prices there than anywhere else in the world and the Game Industry Board has developed a niche which belies the fact Americans have not been keen on eating Bambi," Kukutai said.

"Out of work done with the Wine Institute, the US has now overtaken Australia as the second most important market after the United Kingdom.

"The recommendation there was for New Zealand to put its own presence and marketing team on the ground. Over 65 New Zealand wineries now export there."

Anderson associate dean Professor Victor Tabbush said the six-month international field study commissioned by Trade New Zealand came at the end of three years of part-time study by the 55 students.

The current project's focus on information and communications technology and biotechnology was a better fit for the experience of the students, who worked in companies including Honeywell, General Electric, Boeing, Disney and Dreamworks.

"They bring education backgrounds. Even before the MBA, 40 per cent have advanced degrees, many of them are engineers, two are doctors, so there is a lot of scientific and technical knowledge."

The students have already researched the competitive landscape and potential customers. When they are in New Zealand they will get to know the potential exporters so they can make recommendations on how they should proceed.

One of the companies involved in the study is telephone billing systems provider Argent Networks.

Chief executive Chris Jones said Argent already had direct sales people and engineering support on the ground and four US customers, but "we want to move up the value chain to the higher-end telcos and that is very difficult".

The Anderson School is seventh in the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2002 ranking of business schools worldwide.