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February 14, 2005
Cross-Cultural Alliances Crucial to Venture Creation,
Says Cobas Flores
By Sandie Taylor
For a lucrative career in venture creation, Elisa Cobas Flores, a professor at EGADE, the business school at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico, suggests that students not only brush up on their Spanish but enroll in Chinese language classes ASAP.
It’s time to acknowledge that global competition is the biggest obstacle in venture creation, Cobas Flores told students at the McCombs School Feb. 11. National alliances must be forged to create valuable, sustainable products.
“It’s very competitive out there,” she said, noting that several foreign countries now compete effectively in markets the United States dominated in the past. “To be competitive in the right way,” she continued, “you have to learn about other countries, other cultures and languages. You must be global.”
Therefore, she said, integration is the next step. “We need to collaborate and compete,” Cobas Flores said. Present concepts must be combined with future ones and local aspects should be incorporated with global ones.
Armed with a bilingual slide show, Cobas Flores, added that business professionals must understand at least one foreign language in order to succeed in the global economy.
What’s more, innovation, rather than investment, is what will separate the weak countries from the powerhouses in the coming years.
China, for example, reproduces products that others have already spent years developing with research and innovating new products from that knowledge. “[China] has the capability to not only copy, but to go farther with a product,” she said. “They don’t suffer from the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome.”
In the future, China will not only have labels that read ‘Made in China,’ they will also have ones that say, ‘Designed in China.’ The country, Cobas Flores said, is on a long march toward turning low-cost manufacturing capacity into fast-growth innovation capability. “We will be copying them in the way of new venture creations.”
Europe, too, is moving more quickly as a region than any of its constituent countries. Cobas Flores suggested that Mexico and the United States should partner to invest in development, focusing on expanding knowledge and technology to build potential resources, and commercializing products. “We should be generating and appropriating wealth by connecting design and marketing to commercialization,” she said.
And as we strive to remain competitive with other countries, Cobas Flores reminded students that companies must simultaneously strive for sustainable development, taking three interconnected points into account: environmental quality, social equity and economic prosperity.
“Business is for making money, but we have to consider we
are affecting the resources of future generations,” she said.
“It is our responsibility—having some of the highest positions
in the world—that our companies work in the right way and
encompass values and ethics with making money.”
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
