B-School Rules

Latin Trade, August, 2000 by Mary A. Dempsey, Alice Crane Kovler, Chris Humphrey, Dan Krishock

To dot-com or not? That's the question for Latin America's Class of 2000 business leaders.

SIPPING COFFEE AT AN OUTDOOR CAFE jammed with Harvard University students, Claudia Sanchez readily admits that two years ago she thought the school's Business Administration program was simply a steppingstone to a career in investment banking or consulting.

But this is 2000 and, like many Latin American business school attendees, she's booking on an e-future. The region's next generation of leaders is clicking past the well-worn path of their parents and grandparents toward entrepreneurship and electronic commerce.

Sanchez chose Harvard because its degree tucks her into a powerful alumni network of movers and shakers with a curriculum that now straddles the Digital Divide. "I want some connection to the Internet world," says the petite Chilean, known to her friends and classmates as Manola.

Armed with an undergraduate degree in business administration and finance from Chile's Universidad Adolfo Ibanez in Valparaiso, Sanchez worked for McKinsey & Co. in Buenos Aires before heading off for a graduate degree. And that route is not unusual; many business degree candidates nab professional experience before--or during--their quest for a master's of business administration, or MBA.

Under a clutch of trees, within a nexus of purple-haired punks, lost teens, famous poets and professors, and full-time deep thinkers at permanently bolted chess tables, Sanchez details how Harvard has embraced the future.

In September, the university unveiled an Entrepreneurial Manager class to replace the decades-old General Management course that was required for first-year students. Harvard Business School students can now spend half their second year at a New York research center dubbed "Silicon Alley," and the conservative school lists as many as 11 Internet-related classes.

Other courses take students on a technological trek, from the conception of the Internet to future digital trends. The Entrepreneurial Finance class looks at the financing, as well as the risks and opportunities, of new start-ups.

Many Latin American business aspirants, both those heading off to study in the United States and those sticking closer to home at regional universities, are still approaching traditional employers, but--long term--they've got their eyes on being their own boss.

Creating the company. "In the future, I want to have my own company," says Marcelo Regen, a student at Instituto de Altos Estudios Empresariales (IAE). Regen, from Argentina's northwestern province of Tucuman, says he'll look for a job in the aeronautics industry after graduation but his dream is to start his own "airline, a flight training school, something related to the industry."

Regen, like other master's candidates at the Buenos Aires-based university, is required to take a Creation of New Companies course, for which he must write a business plan. The school also sponsors a competition to unearth good business ideas through its Center for Entrepreneurship. Top prize is US$30,000.

Until this year, the competition was open only to the university's community--including enrollees in the executive master's of business administration program and various executive development programs--but now students from other Argentine universities will be able to compete.

Despite the emphasis on what's new in the business world, conservative habits die hard. Even more so than their compatriots studying in the United States, master's degree students at Latin America universities seem intent on landing their first jobs with established companies. Maximiliano Marolda, who worked for the Argentine subsidiary of an European company before enrolling in the Instituto de Altos Estudios Empresariales, says he's "most interested in getting a job with a large international or local company to get more experience" before testing his entrepreneurial skills.

"I am a mechanical engineer and, with what I learned here, I want to get more involved with the operations of a company," he says, echoing the sentiments of other business school students in Argentina, who hesitate to throw themselves headlong down the entrepreneurial chute. That may be a reflection of a social reality in Argentina, where Internet jobs are not as readily available as they are in the United States (especially in Miami, which has become the Latin American Silicon barrio) and cash for start-up companies is not easy to nab.

Reduced-risk revolution? "You can say now it's far more risky to go to a traditional company," says Laureano who, after graduation in June, headed to Miami for a job at a Telefornica incubator for digital businesses. "Because of the Internet revolution, it's a safer path in the long run. The risk profile has actually shifted."

For Latin American students in the United States, a detour from traditional workplaces holds more appeal. Alberto Laureano, who left Mexico to get his master's degree at Harvard, is one of those turning their backs on the tried and true.