Kate Mackie Brings Together Students from Mexico & Austria for an Exciting Competition

Every year , the McCombs School of Business (University of Texas - Austin) organizes a collaborative fall seminar that involves participants from its own EMBA program in Mexico City and the MBA students from IMADEC University of Austria.

Last year, 48 students (38 from Mexico and 10 from Austria) traveled to Austin, TX to participate in the 4-day Marketing seminar, which includes the use of the 6-quarter Marketplace simulation “Venture Strategy”. The English version of the simulation is typically recommended, but students can also choose the Spanish version if necessary. The seminar consists of small lectures, discussions, quizzes, occasional instructor coaching aiming at challenging the students’ thinking, a final debrief, and peer evaluations.

Kate Mackie, professor at McCombs School of Business, chose the Venture Strategy simulation for several reasons. She wanted to pull together broad venture issues and to demonstrate the interrelationship between business functions. She particularly wanted for her students to realize the importance of relating marketing to other functions in order to positively impact the bottom line. Finally, the exercise was designed to be a multi-cultural experience. Each team was composed of participants from Mexico and Austria. Needless to say, the business decision-making style in those two countries is quite different and the simulation acted as a training platform for students to resolve or put aside their differences in order to work together and focus on business decisions.

Using the Venture Strategy simulation during this seminar was found to be beneficial for four key reasons. Students were able to:

• View the marketing function in light of other functions instead of as a department working solo.
• Put in practice important marketing concepts such as segmentation and targeting.
• Design brands based on customers’ wants, needs, and uses rather than what the teams thought the clients would want.
• Understand the importance of analytical work in order to make good decisions.

At the end of the simulation, students have the chance to share the lessons they learned with the rest of the class. They are also asked to turn in a journal of their activities during the simulation. Small gifts are distributed to winners.

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