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We have to provide students with actual projects to work on for firms, with real opportunities to engage with the commercial culture in each region. It's rewarding—and it's tough. students with actual projects to work on for firms, with real opportunities to engage with the commercial culture in each region," he says. "It's rewarding—and it's tough." Teaching with Live Cases The ten-week "live case" is a mainstay of the international program at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management in Minne- apolis. Each live case puts students to work on a prob- lem that a real company faces in a foreign market. Students spend seven weeks on campus researching the problem, meeting with exec- utives, and brainstorming possible solutions. Then, the students spend two weeks in the country itself. In the final week, they return to campus to present their findings to company representatives. Karine Watne, an interna- tional business manager for Minnesota-based Toro, says that such live cases give the company another window into its global strategy. For instance, Toro, a lawn care equipment manufacturer, asked students to work with students at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, to find out what expectations Chinese cus- tomers had of its parts and service division. "When students asked customers for feedback, customers told them that they wished that Toro would allow them to return parts," says Watne. "That surprised us, because we do have a parts return program in place in China. We realized that we had a communica- tion issue that we had to take care of." Cargill, a food and agri- cultural services company, provided Carlson students with a live case based in Poland and Hungary. Carlson undergraduates worked with executives from Cargill's animal nutrition division and graduate students at the War- saw School of Economics to determine how the company might best expand its pet food operations in Central and Eastern Europe. The students' research validated some of the expec- tations that Cargill had about the market, says Lee Skold, a corporate vice president. "These live cases help us know whether our intuition is serving us well or not, and it helps shed light on things that we wouldn't otherwise pre- dict," says Skold. "Moreover, it also teaches students to become comfortable tackling and finding solutions for a problem in an often unde- fined sphere." Carlson also sponsors live cases in Minnesota, bringing students from partner universi- ties to work with Carlson stu- dents on U.S.-based projects. Anne D'Angelo, Carlson's assistant dean of international programs, says that live cases offer a perfect mix of global experiences—coursework, travel, multicultural teamwork, research, and interactions with executives. More Than Geography For students to think glob- ally, they must understand how business has developed across centuries as well as across borders, says Bing Xiang, dean of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing. For that reason, CKGSB is working to integrate the humanities into its curriculum. Study of world history and religion is included in its MBA and EMBA courses. All MBAs also take a course called "Confucian Humanism" to —Peter Rodriguez, University of Virginia better understand Confu- cian philosophy and how it shaped Chinese culture and business. Xiang hopes to add more humanities-focused classes to the curriculum in the future, to give students a more com- plete context for the global business environment. As an example, he refers to China's historical and religious relics—only by knowing their importance and the values they represent will future busi- ness leaders make decisions that take their preservation into account. "If they don't, the beauty of these relics may be gone— the damage we do may be irreversible," Xiang says. "What's right for the next 20 years may not be right 50, 80, or 100 years from now. If students take history into account, they will make more sustainable decisions." Eventually, CKGSB's cur- riculum also may include study of artists and artistic periods that have been most pivotal to social, political, and economic innovations. Xiang points to the Medici family, who owned Europe's largest bank during the Renaissance era. "The Medici family had so much power and wealth, they sponsored key artists and became key drivers of the Renaissance movement," Xiang says. "By discussing topics such as this, our stu- dents don't only learn how we do business, but why we do business." ■ z BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 35