U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, recently said:“95 percent of the people we want to sell something to live somewhere other than the United States.” For Midwest Entrepreneurs going global is not a choice, it’s the road to prosperity.

Victor C. Johnson said the following in yesterday’s edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education: “American competitiveness depends on success in a world of which most of us are remarkably ignorant, and on selling things to people whose languages we don’t speak.

The competitiveness conversation must shift from “STEM” to “STEM-internationalized”— or STEMi”– a phrase commonly used to encompass all of the international aspects of learning that are available to our students today: foreign languages, curricula with global content, study abroad, foreign students on campus, academic partnerships and research collaboration across borders, and more.

This is why we created the international business major at Monmouth College. It may seem out of place to have international business at a liberal arts college, but we believe it is exactly what business students should be learning about so I continue to preach the mantra to anyone that will listen.  Johnson goes on to say “International education’s goal is–or, properly thought of, should be—to graduate “globally literate” students from our schools and colleges. Most political and opinion leaders can articulate that this is important, but it usually doesn’t make it into the competitiveness conversation. It’s as if international education were something different from competitiveness—something we might get to later once we get the important stuff done. But this is important stuff. It is simply not possible to imagine, in today’s world, a country succeeding in global competitiveness in the absence of a citizenry equipped with global knowledge.”

With the international business majors our goal is to graduate internationally –literate citizens and workers that can thrive working with colleagues from other cultures. Johnson concludes “our biggest national problems are global, and indeed knowledge is global—[all] education is international. It must be central to our competitiveness strategy to ensure that by 2020, all of our college students graduate with basic international knowledge, including knowledge of at least one foreign region, and with the ability to converse in a foreign language.”

Remember the prediction:95 percent of the people we will want to sell something to now live somewhere outside the United States. For Midwest Entrepreneurs going global is not a choice, it’s the road to prosperity.

One of the biggest criticisms of the US education policy is success in the “No Child Left Behind” testing program does not necessarily improve that school’s performance in preparing future college students. There is a huge financial incentive for teachers and principals to raise test scores by teaching to the test. Essentially the instructor feels good when their students can “cram” all kinds of facts and figures in long enough to recall them on then exam. Then all of the “crammed” material is forgotten. Another strategy has been to commit fraud or cheat to obtain the federal funds.

What is the difference from gaining real knowledge and memorization for a day or two?Humans have two types of memory: spatial and rote. We understand best when facts are embedded in natural, spatial memory. Most educators fall into the trap of teaching to the test since accounting instructors are evaluated by their ability to help a greater percentage of their students pass the certified Public Accounting Exam or law programs are evaluated by the percentage of graduates that pass the bar exam.

Rote memorization is practiced more often than educators will admit. I spent three years living in Japan. During my stay in Tokyo, I became intimately involved in the Japanese education system both as a teacher on the undergraduate level, and as a parent with three children in Japanese public schools.

The Japanese put great emphasis on preparing high school and junior high students for the entrance exams for top universities such as Tokyo, Waseda, and Keio Universities. To the degree that a high percentage of its students pass the entrance exam, that high school will be praised as an excellent institution. The institutions that continually send a higher percentage of their graduates to these schools are able to raise tuition–the sky is the limit!

Overall, Japanese students excel in many areas because of their strong motivation to succeed and ability to transfer facts memorized in a rote fashion to spatial memory. The best students apply the knowledge and can understand how it fits into a larger scope of disciplines. That is how students can successfully tackle complex problems. They integrate the knowledge and lessons from say marketing and art to create appealing advertising. Or the drug company makes a compelling video about how their anti-depressent can change your life. They combined good science with marketing and communication techniques to create a campaign that moves doctors to prescribe the drug and those suffering with depression to request it.

Traditional schooling in Japan, however, appears to inhibit many student’s learning by discouraging, ignoring, or punishing the brain’s natural learning processes. This weakness is most evident in English instruction. Japanese students have more difficulty than their Asian neighbors in China and South Korea despite spending more time and resources on English curriculum. In order to improve education, we must address policies and ideas such as teaching to the test. Teaching to the test is often a shortcut for real knowledge and deep learning.

It is a shame our government places so much emphasis on the exam scores rather than looking at the number of graduates who successully tackle college assignments or graduate in science, math or business related subjects. This approach would allow schools to take a more holistic approach and stop teaching to the test.

I was struck with the challenge to “bring it” from some young hoopsters in my community. Since I have some really lousy days during noontime basketball, I often do not bring it at all. I immediately thought of all the entrepreneurs that “bring it” everyday to their business. What does it take to bring it? I may not bring it to the noon-time basketball scene like I did in the 90’s but I know what I can change and what I can’t. There are some places you travel to where you better be prepared to learn just how good the competition can be. Being globally competitive is definitely bringing it.

 Another way to improve and “bring it” is be curious and on top of trends and the impact of technology. Answers and data related to questions such as: What are you are doing today or not doing that could add value to goodwill (to your brand)? What additions or subtractions will bring more customer satisfaction? How do I delight my customers? If you don’t know where to start, look first at the essence of your brand, and then ask your customers, suppliers, and friends what is positively distinctive about your product or service. What have they heard “on the street” about you and your competition? What can you do to work on those particular areas? Given the scarcity of marketing resources, spend the most consistently on promoting your exemplary products with the greatest potential demand, rather than trying to sprinkle the budget around weaker programs to match a competitor’s offerings or shore up your weaknesses.

I recently interviewed Lindsay Bero, who is a former student of mine. Lindsay knows how to “bring it” in her work for Accenture despite being in her mid 20’s. A 2006 graduate who majored in international business, Bero says she squeezed every possible experience out of her Monmouth education, from singing in the Chorale and performing in an opera, to serving on the executive board of Student Senate.

Bringing it means taking advantage of international opportunities. Bero spent a semester in an exchange program with Umea University in Sweden and also traveled to Japan with other business students. Both experiences have contributed to the career success she is experiencing at Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company made up of more than 223,000 employees who serve clients in more than 120 countries.

“My ‘ah-ha’ moment at Accenture was when I realized the extensive global nature of my work,” Bero said. “I work with a truly international team from all corners of the world – from India, to China, to the UK, to Canada. I’ve come to appreciate how critical and life-changing my semester in Sweden and time in Japan hav been to my contributions to a very global firm. My travels in college were an essential building block. I feel very comfortable traveling internationally for work and experiencing different languages, cuisines and cultures.”

Hired by Accenture in 2006, Bero supports the planning and management of learning engagements for the global Accenture strategy practice. She oversees the execution of the strategy practice and manages teams, working directly with her clients to help them achieve. Her goal is to transition her clients into a profit-oriented, learning-driven business environment. In short, she is responsible for ensuring that Accenture provides its clients with the best training in the market.

One of Bero’s responsibilities is to oversee the skill level assessment for each Accenture strategist. “Assessing the skills of very bright and motivated people certainly has its challenges,” she said. “Rarely do you find the individual who feels the lower-level course to brush up on needed learning is necessary. Each wants the hardest course and most challenging curriculum. Telling them that they need otherwise can bring about high levels of tension, to say the least.”

Each year, Accenture offers thousands of training courses globally, both in the classroom and electronically.  Accenture offers 80 percent more training than its competitors and this year was ranked by trainingindustry.com in an elite group of 20 companies as an industry leader in training outsourcing.

“The Accenture environment is ambitious, fast-paced and highly focused,” she said. “Consulting is a highly competitive field. Daily, we are up against firms like IBM and Deloitte, all competing for consulting projects and outsourcing assignments worldwide. My job is to make sure our people receive all the necessary knowledge and skills to remain competitive and stay ahead of the curve.”

The vast majority of the instructors she works with are top senior executives who have been with Accenture for many years.

One of Bero’s marketing projects is a program called Strategy College, a training seminar developed to offer more than 60 courses in one week to approximately 300 strategists. It is presented by approximately 60 faculty members and is offered eight times each year.

“You are one of Accenture’s best if you are asked to present,” she said. “Faculty share invaluable war stories and teach both theory and practice. Accenture employees are a tough crowd, so one has to be very good to keep such a bright class engaged.”

What competitive advantages will be most important as markets shift and technology changes the competitive landscape? What external factors are driving the need to change in your industry? For your ideal customer profile, are you becoming more competitive as a product or service or less so? Why? These are the key issues to discuss before preparing and investing a driving up perceived value through marketing intiaitives.

One proven way to “bring it” in your small business is to consistantly work on marketing intiatives that drive perceived value. Perceived value usually translates into increases in brand preference.  This is as true for choosing colleges as restaurants or travel destinations. So what determines perceived value and how can you enhance it? The answer in how to bring it lies in the specific marketing tactics you invest in to drive up perceived value and increase the tangible goodwill of your brand.

In the United States, leadership in higher education was derived from successful research and discovery which led to increased funding and notoriety. As more money was raised, faculty salaries grew in concert with the college’s endowment. Students with high aspirations applied to these storied institutions confident a great college experience will translate into a better life and more financial rewards. Most research indicates that with the exception of a handful of top ranked business schools, it is difficult to obtain a great education, know your professors well and graduate in four years from most undergraduate business schools. These top schools save the best faculty for MBA and PhD students leaving the undergraduate teaching and grading to graduate assistants. The required classes are crowded or unavailable for all but the upperclassman with the most credits. This means the majority of graduates spent five or more years accumulating the classess they need to graduate. Some programs lure students in with the promise of studying international business or accounting then force 30% of the majors out before their junior year.

Motivated high school graduates  interested in a good education have a choice.

When there is choice, a key marketing principle is brand differentiation and a clear demonstration of superior value. Various management schemes and business tools help hundreds of universities; research oriented, teaching-focused and career-oriented institutions compete on a national basis via niche strategies. Calibrating the relative student success of an undergraduate business program is difficult if not impossible but some standardized metrics are gaining more attention from prospects and alumni. One such metric is percentage employed in the industry of their choice withing six months of graduation. Monmouth College boasts one of the highest percentages in the nation 96% which demonstrates value and the market demand for its graduates.

Colleges should do more than simply prepare graduates for gainful employment. They are challenged to demonstrate how they can improve the quality of their graduates’ lives and give more meaning to their existence. Most graduates will be called on as leaders in their community. Ethical questions will test our moral integrity. Institutions that ignore these “soft” skills face marginalization or extinction since business strategy and tactics change dramatically over time.

Liberal Arts colleges, a uniquely American institution, provide an ideal testing ground for incorporating a more holistic curriculum. Private institutions such as Monmouth College are depended on tuition revenues and alumni donations to financially survive. This is analogous to natural business forces in a competitive marketplace. If you do not meet a need or fill a market gap, your college will struggle to increase its volume of customers and lack the financial strength to invest in quality. Monmouth recently announced a new Center for Science and Business–an investment of $39 million dollars. The business program with over 300 majors is the largest major on campus. The business faculty offer the largest variety of electives of any private school its size.

Excellence in an undergraduate business program is subjective. It depends on the criteria and the judges. However you define excellence, it must be worthy of a price. Since Monmouth is not the least expensive option is is imparative that you make a personal determination what criteria are important to you. Do you value taking classes from faculty who have management experience or passion for teaching the best theory? Do you want to work with faculty and alumni mentors who will help you find internship opportunities and summer employment? Who will be your references and mentors as you search for your first full-time position?

Educational value may be relative, but we all must make judgements. Monmouth combines a great breadth of educational opportunities (as demonstrated by its tradition as one of the Midwest’s finest liberal arts colleges) with the program that will prepare you for success in your business career or in graduate studies. Recently our graduates have been accepted at Northwestern University, University of Chicago, and University of Michigan to name a few. Your opinion is highly dependent on the perceived value of the program or institution. Private undergraduate institutions offering study in business can be some of America’s most expensive colleges; demanding $35,000- $50,000 annually in tuition, room, and board  (much less for the average business major at Monmouth). How well these schools monetize their assets, market their success and drive awareness will determine your perception. The high aspirations of motivated high school graduates that apply to these highly-ranked institutions make a huge difference too. Their success is a self-fullfilling prophecy. Monmouth students are known for hard work, integrity, and strong moral compasses. Our graduates go forward confident that their college experience will translate into a richer life with more financial rewards. The payback is usually before the fifth year reunion. Maybe a celebrated business school is not the best place to study business after all.

When your business takes a turn for the worse or you lose a key customer, what do you do? As an entrepreneur I have found it difficult to pick myself off the ground. In my discussions with my entrepreneurial comrades I been given some good advice. “You learn more from mistakes and failures than success” or “the ability to rise from the ashes of defeat are the qualities that will ultimately make you successful as an entrepreneur”.

I worked briefly for a company called PocketCard in Chicago. Because I had considerable experience in financial services marketing, I was recruited for the CMO position. I had been successful in a three year stint with start-up Netcentives and PocketCard wanted to own the market American Express calls “PASS” that is focused on a card for teen spenders funded primarily from their parents. Despite some solid marketing efforts we were not able to get enough traction to attract the 5,000 + accounts needed to get to the next round of funding. We made some mistakes including advertising to spenders when the parents were key to acquiring the account. I learned a lot about the challenges to account acquisition that helped me in my work for Visa and PayPal. I learned from my failure at PocketCard what I could do to manage the advertising agency and my marketing personnel during difficult times.

It wasn’t easy but learning something worthwhile and new rarely is. But the day after PocketCard failed I was still able to get up, go for a work-out, and see the sun rise. True, I had lost a year of my career to a failed company. I lost  $22,000 in stock that I purchased and without another career alternative, I had no immediate job prospects or income to rely on. I had invested my heart and soul into PocketCard and come up empty. I can’t say I have no regrets about that experience. I wish I never stepped into the doors of that company or invested a dime with them. But I can’t deny I learned some valuable lessons that I use today. I learned that every entrepreneur must be prepared at any time to pick up the pieces of a lost venture or dream and pick yourself up. Your only benefit might be the experience or skills you gained. You will be fortunate if you can apply those lessons the next go around.

For those of you facing these issues right now, I say pick up the pieces and move on. Your best times are ahead of you

Loyalty is the ultimate goal of marketers and it should be on the minds of anyone managing brand or new venture. It is often said that 80% of your company’s profits will likely come from the top 20% of your customer base. Another name for the top of that 20% is loyalists. Loyalists talk up their brand, actively engage in promotions or brand activities and rarely switch or  move even if discounts or incentives are offered. They give back in the form of spending more of their share of wallet and through referrals. In higher education, loyalists are the alums that go to homecoming and give back year after year. They go to the reunions and keep up with their former classmates even when it is years after they graduate.

 Moving prospects from unaware to awareness is an advertising and social media challenge. In marketing Monmouth College, direct mail to prospects is the traditional route for generating awareness among graduating high school seniors, but today most research on college is done online by the prospects themselves.

Once the prospect is aware of your brand, you should consider the best strategies and tactics for getting into the consideration frame. The consideration frame is the “short list” of schools the prospect wants to consider. Another way to describe consideration frame are the the finalists in your wish list.

The next step is generating trial. Trial could be a visit to the college web site to see a virtual tour. At this point you will begin to reap the benfits of your loyalty intiatives. Before you achieve loyalty you need to establish a pattern of brand perference. Many loyalty programs are built on the premise that this phase is the most important link to loyalty.

Repeat might mean coming up with retention staregies if you are an institution of higher learning. The objective is loyalty. Using the example of marketing Monmouth College, loyalty is a current student or alum recommending Monmouth to someone else.

Helping brands plan promotions and incentives for each step in the continuum, let alone planning how to handle challenges is challenging. Each company must distinguish its marketing programs or its methods to get attention. In higher education a common practice is to copy or patterns oneself after an aspirational peer.  

Another proven marketing principle is that a high perceived value translates into brand preference and goodwill in higher education. The brand value equation provides a meaningful model that helps us understand how to build that goodwill. Ultimately the marketing plan, resources available, execution and learning from results determine the success of your marketing program. Marketing criteria and milestones established in a business plan will become your recipe for brand momentum and success. 

 Prior to beginning any marketing plan it is recommended that the institution conduct study and research on the key stakeholders. The problem most institutions face is that marketing is inherently repugnant because it smacks of manipulation. Plus the task of market planning requires colleges to do something that is not natural. Traditional universities were not designed to brand distinctively or address metrics of quality as benefits. Promoting a quality education or faculty is like telling prospects you have good customer service—everyone says the same thing. Large universities have not successfully educated students around their individual and distinct needs, yet their faculty are often quite accomplished. They must be effcient and teach students in very large groups to compensate for their high salaries. This is especially true in the first few years of a student’s education in business. It happens often in general education too. If your customer’s goal is to land their desired job you need to convince prospects to take a closer look at your school, look around its offerings via the website, and convice them to visit campus. If they live far from the college, your job will be tougher. No matter what their incoming academic achievement, you need to convince them that they will be a better job prospect, smarter, and more able to handle leadership opportunities when they graduate or you will fail.

Asking traditional universities to market something distinctive and memorable is challenging. Becoming a “great college” is a process. Focusing on student success represents a seismic shift in how society, broadly speaking, has judged high quality—in higher education. Its a move away from the trational focus on research and knowledge creation. A focus on teaching and smaller classes moves the brand benfits toward a focus on learning and knowledge proliferation (Christensen, 2011).

But at the end of the day, the success of your new company is still depended on getting new customers. But to be truly successful you will need to move new customers down the continuum towards that path to loyalty.

Strategic planning is a structured approach to anticipating the future and “exploiting the inevitable” . The strategic plan charts a path for both your internal management and competitive actions in key markets or divisions. Application of this process might take the form of a plan to maintain leadership in an important or growing category over the next five years. Strategic planning for start-ups is a process for ensuring that the budget dollars follow the plan rather than vice versa. (Paris, 2003) For start-ups, planning is not just following their business plan for growth and expansion. The strategic plan often guides retrenchment and reallocation since many external factors shift and market conditions change when competitors make investments, innovation or strategic moves.

Strategic plans make the case for resource allocation in an environment of scarcity. The strategic planning process helps your venture determine which products or programs are exemplary or offer the greatest opportunity. Ultimately, strategy is about differentiation . Differentiating your product mix is critical. However it is a more difficult task than most companies believe since they are modeled after top national or regional competitors. Ironically, most marketing material could be used by direct competitors by simply changing out the logo, colors, and tagline.  Companies who do not strategically plan, fall into the trap of simply following the leader’s well-known program.

Two well-known models in use for  strategic planning have their roots from the Harvard Business School. The analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) was a popular Harvard model from the early 1980’s and Michael Porter’s Five Forces is another model by which institutions can analyze their market position. The Five Forces model goes beyond the typical Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis. It forces institutions to predict or explore substitutes for their product or service. Porter’s thesis with Five Forces is that the level of competitive rivalry is paramount to how to best strategically plan.

 With the Michael Porter’s Five Forces model, outside influences such as buyer’s power (in higher education it might be student options/choice to obtain an MBA instead of continuing to be underemployed), are considered along with other key questions not included in a SWOT analysis. Porter, from the Harvard Business School, first developed the Five Forces Theory as part of his strategy treatise, “The Competitive Advantages of Nations (1986).  Porter’s Five Forces theory provided an alternative framework to analyze markets beyond the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats paradigm.

 Since there are so many competing theories on strategy and competitive analysis many entrepreneurs legitimately ask if this analysis is applicable to their specific market. Questions such as: “Why use business analysis tools if we already have a strategic plan or few competitors? Or What tools are essential for my challenges?” . It takes time, skill, and practice to use business tools like SWOT, Five Forces, Blue Ocean, BSG Product Mix, Value Chain for competitive analysis. It requires agonizing discussions on priorities, and creates potential winners and losers in your current product mix. Despite that, there were few entrepreneurs that did not at least acknowledge the value of managing their venture with employees that can analyze their data, market, and use these business tools.

It is one reason I am here at Monmouth College. To help would be entrepreneurs apply these tools.

It may seem strange to even mention the blue ocean while seated in the middle of the great American Midwest. But one lens by which an entrepreneur can look for new opportunities and find strategic advantages is to do frequent analysis and mystery shopping yourself for your products and your competitors. Additionally, some self introspection would not hurt either. Who are your ideal customers? Other than your own venture, what competitors are knocking on the same doors for business?

Your small company can view itself through an analysis process developed in 1981 at the Harvard Business School called strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threat analysis ( or SWOT). 

Another helpful model is the Blue Ocean Strategy. The Blue Ocean marketplace is a relatively new marketing strategy (Kim 2005). Blue Ocean is a “marketplace focused strategy” that is created by identifying an un-served set of prospects or customers, then delivering them a compelling, new value proposition. Blue Ocean Strategy was first published in 2005 by researchers W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne at The INSEAD Business School in Paris, France. The authors believe the high growth and revenues for a venture are generated by creating new demand in an uncontested market space, or a “Blue Ocean”, rather than by competing head-to-head with in the same market with known customers. Red Ocean is markets were all major competitors discount or compete by cut-throat tactics. (Mauborgne, 2005)

Looking for new, untapped markets for customers is analgous taking a dip in the blue ocean. The waves may be scary, but the ride can be worthwhile. I highly recommend trying it.

Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline explained that academia as the classic example for how difficult it is for organization to manage the process by which change is introduced and sold in to the organization. (Senge, 1990) Senge is best known for stressing the importance of cross department communication and alignment of goals across department lines (Senge, 1990). Higher education tends to function as a disparate group of independent departments and individual contractors. Change becomes a difficult process because there is limited line management outside of the Provost, Dean and department chairs. But without an awareness of the competitive factors and changes in market for college graduates, institutions are walking in darkness at noon day. That is why Senge, George Keller (1983), and others believe strategic planning and alignment is so critical

Senge sees academic departments as the classic silo within the larger university setting. By design at the vast majority of colleges , disciplines are fiercely independent and fight to establish a culture of superiority in order to compete for limited resourses with  other departments and gain the approval of the outside world.

Unfortunately that silo mentality is usually damaging to the organization as a whole. Competing against other departments for resources happens everywhere. But how do they compete? Departments compete for scarce resources, notoriety, students, and presidential attention by advancing their personal goals and agenda and not for the overal good of the university according to Senge.  

Most universities had over 100 of these departments/divisions operating semi-autonomously with their own set of rules and distinctive culture. It was the classic fiefdom of  chairs who have ruled their department for 10+ years with little or no input from busy Deans or Provosts. Does it have to work that way?

The way faculty are evaluated gives us a clue. Peer review, research and teaching expectations, incentive compensation, and culture are by definition defined by the chair and key members of the department as opposed to the Dean. Usually the key members of a department are senior faculty who are tenured. Faculty promotions, tenure and raises are primarily determined by the department chair and these senior faculty in a peer review process.

 According to Senge, the faculty who work in these silos have “blinders on” and cannot meet the needs of the institution when their goals are not aligned with the college’s. These faculty members will not sacrifice or even empathize for the goals of the entire institution if it conflicts with their professional goals or conflicts with the discipline specific work related to achieving tenure or recognition (Senge, 1990). This means most department members are walking in darkness at noon day” in terms of the overall objectives and goals of the institution. When these institutions get “out of alignment” in terms of their department goals versus the entire institution, any change acceptance process is hindered too. 

 Often the institutional department or administrator responsible for implementing change, say the Dean or Provost must exhibitan authoritative style to get things done in this environment. When problems arise, the dysfunctional behavior of chairs will rule the day because faculty won’t understand or agree with the need for change. These cultural fights for institution wide initiatives such as changes in general education requirements, or greater inter-disciplinary integration become a battlefield for the heart of the institution.

Why does this happen? Answer: The institution’s goal of student success runs out of alignment with department goals or expectations for graduates. Senge believes this is not necessary and advocates leaders who can bring departments into line with the overall good of the university.