Why Emerging Markets?

As part of Rice Business curriculum objectives, the focus of the GFE experience is in one specific type of international environment – the emerging market context, and there are top 3 reasons why:

1

Much of the coursework in the MBA program focused on concepts and frameworks that have been developed based on developed economies such as the USA. The underlying assumption of such framework and concepts is that there is no information asymmetry between participants in economic transactions. Specifically, economic institutions have been established in economies with little opportunity for information arbitrage.

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2

In contrast, emerging markets have less developed institutions, leading to questions about how concepts and frameworks developed in the context of developed economies can be applied to emerging markets. Through the GFE, Rice business allows students to identify how economic institutions differ between such markets and examine the implications of such differences for firms and their strategies.

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3

Understanding the emerging market context and the differences between the developed and emerging market contexts has increasingly become important. For instance, the top 6 economies in 1990 were the USA, Japan, Germany, the UK, France and Italy. Today, India and China are in the top 6 (China is number 2). In another 20 years, it is expected that apart from the USA and Japan, there will be no other developed economy on that list. China, India, Brazil, and Russia are expected to make the rest of the top 6. They would account for almost 40% of the world’s GDP. This suggests that most of your jobs and careers involve extensive interaction with these markets. In other words, even if you don’t plan on moving out of the USA, your life, job, and career will still be impacted by what happens in today’s emerging markets.

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The Core Curriculum Extended

The Global Field Experience isn’t an elective — it’s a core curriculum component of the Rice Business learning machine. Here, the premise is simple but profound in its implications; students take their classroom learnings from the first year and immediately put them to the test in a real-world international setting, acutely discerning the socio-economic and cultural tremors that affect business operations daily.

The projects undertaken during these global field experiences extend a diverse spectrum. By shading the consulting experience with the kaleidoscope of international scenery, these MBAs have to decipher market intricacies that would be irreplicable domestically. The insights offered are organically nuanced, and the solutions are not one-size-fits-all but tailored: the epitome of strategic consulting.

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