5 Lessons Learned from Studying Abroad

Over the last year I have had the unique opportunity to not only attend MIP Graduate School of Business in Milan, but also was able to study for 2 weeks in beautiful Barcelona, Spain. The last year has been a wealth of experiences, lessons learned, challenges, and growing both personally and professionally. 

1) Learn from Other Cultures:

Studying in Milan and in Barcelona allows you to expand and grow by learning from and alongside students from all over the world

2) Travel, Eat, and Experience:

When visiting a new city or country, the first thing to do is try the local cuisine and look up all the amazing history and sights to see.  Barcelona is a wealth of experiences. Oh and the food is top notch!

3) Wealth of Knowledge from Professors:

When studying in a new city you are exposed to new professors and industry experts to learn from, as well as adding to your professional network.

4) Professional and Personal Networking:

Studying abroad allows you to meet, connect, and network with people from around the world, growing your network to have a wide reach. This is excellent for job search, knowledge, finding a mentor, etc

5) Cultural Differences:

Every culture is different and different cultures have different views and respond differently to marketing, advertising, new products, etc. Being able to learn about these differences is key in working for a Multi-National or Global Company.

When studying abroad, depending on where you come from, where you are going to, and how you look at and attack your time there will shape and define your experience. Make it unique and make it your own. 

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

- Mark Twain 

Grad School Adventures: Week 10: "Practice Makes Perfect"

Week 10: November 23-28th

Lesson of the Week: “Practice makes perfect”

Now this is nothing new to anyone but for me it came into play this last week. Over the weekend Christine and I hosted some of our friends over for an American Thanksgiving dinner, which was deliciously prepared by yours truly…. lol jk actually it was wonderfully and deliciously prepared by Christine!

My job was to go to the store (bum bum bum) which is daunting as the Italian supermarkets are ALWAYS busy. Doesn't matter a day or time, always busy. And not entirely sure why but whenever I stop somewhere in a store in Italy, to stand out of the way, to check my phone, to cross something off a list, always and I mean always people have to come look at whatever I am standing next too. There could be no one around and when I move boom people. Coincidence?!

So Friday afternoon I embarked on my journey for a pretty long list as Christine has had one heck of a busy week at school, I managed to do well, only not finding 6 items. 

After coming home and sorting through our groceries, Christine and I planned out our attack for Saturday morning to get the remaining items, this time as I embarked on my journey, I was once again met with the challenge of not finding what I was looking for after searching all over. So what was the next logical thing to do, ask for assistance. Now this alway makes me nervous, (yes me, who loves to, and will talk to about anyone) because I get what I need to say in Italian ready, run through my lines to ensure dictation etc, and then I get to ask and freeze, and instead of use Italian, I fumble through in English and trying to talk with my hands. 

But I have been practicing, and on Saturday I was able to ask for what I needed and got it! After that when I went to one of our favorite local Egyptian Kebab places to grab a quick lunch in the midst of cooking a feast, I asked for and ordered everything in Italian only!!!  I have been trying really hard to learn Italian and been taking a class 2x a week that in graciously offered by our school. But as much as I know when doing worksheets and writing, talking is the hardest. Slowly though I am learning and practicing. And this goes to the point that practice makes perfect.If I don't try, I don't learn.

On the school front, classes have continued to pick and we have been diving into some good topics! The other day we were having a discussion around Innovation the skills of innovators. The key takeaways or top 5 skills of an innovator are:

• Questioning- be curious always, learn
• Observing- pay attention to the world around you and what people are doing and using, and how
• Networking- Network, Network, Network! And not just within your field, you need to network with others outside your field to gain valuable knowledge, insight, and ideas
• Experimenting- try and do not be afraid to fail
• Associating

We also had a lesson with the Director of Brand Fashion and Luxury give us an excellent presentation around Brand and the effect of Pricing on a brands equity. This is a big point of emphasis for company want to be positioned as a premium product and high priced, high fashion line. To counteract this and to not diminish your brand equity, companies must diversify their product and brand portfolio. We also discussed the ‘Brand Iceberg’, there is the external brand that everyone sees and knows, i.e. the logo, slogan, etc, and then there is the internal branding. This visual representation, I believe, is spot on! Living in Milano, a city known for being at the center of the fashion world, it was great to see and use examples in class of companies like Armani, Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, and others. It made for an interesting and intriguing lesson as the fashion industry is an industry I would be very interested in working in. 

I am excited as next week we will be competing in a Business Game Simulator. The goal is to run an airline and make decisions regarding Marketing, Pricing, Flight Options, Communications, and Network. This will be a great hands on experience putting to use our experience in strategy and positioning as well as getting to work in a multi cultural environment. This simulator will allows to make real world decisions and compete with our classmates! Next post I will make sure to let you know how it goes!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving back in the States!

As always I hope that there is a takeaway or two in here for everyone. If you have any questions or would like to discuss some of these issue more in depth feel free to write a comment or shoot me a note at robbynap87@gmail.com. You can also follow me on Twitter @RobbyNap and connect with me on LinkedIn at https://it.linkedin.com/in/robert-napoli-a5839119

Ciao Ciao!

Below is the spread from our American Thanksgiving in Milano! We shared with our friends from Egypt, Turkey, Colombia, Taiwan, and the Philippines!

Grad School Adventures: Week 9: "Product Management and Market Trends"

Week 9: November 17-22nd

Lesson of the Week: "Do not let yourself get stagnant, make sure you read and know what is happening in the marketplace and the world around you."

“Innovation” “New” “Creative” “Differentiation” “Disruption” “the Customer Experience” - there are many buzzwords in business and Marketing. But what do they mean? How can they be applied? In a world filled with messages, ads, noise; it is hard for your consumers to hear your message. So how do you stand out? That is always the million dollar question in Marketing.

This week we had some fantastic classes around the 3 C’s of pricing; Customers, Competitors, Company. Our lectures were focused around Customer and Competitor pricing as these 2 drive a lot of the pricing decisions in the current market. We worked with Nielsen Company to look at some real case examples as well as were tasked with certain objectives and had the ability to use one of their pricing tools to do so. Both cases were very interesting and fun to play around with the pricing simulator. When approaching pricing there are many questions to look at from the price, distributions, competitor’s pricing offering, etc and to be able to look at in the sense of should we introduce a new product line? If so how and at what price to increase revenue as well as market share. Definitely skills that we as Master’s students can take with us as we look for internships and jobs.

The other class that I found extremely interesting was based around the Product Management focusing on the current Market Trends. We had a professor give a great presentation and discussion around The Unicorn Club- Companies that achieve $1 Billion + in Market Valuation and how it has become increasingly crowded with notable companies such as Facebook, Snapchat, Uber, etc. (photo attached). We discussed the 4 Keys to Success that really hit home for me:

1. Quickly build a customer base- this is very important as customers drive everything
2. Experience- in todays world the customer experience is even more important than the product
3. Pivoting- the ability to change your product, even radically, based on what your customers are saying
4. BE FAST- now more than every you have to be fast, fast to deliver, fast to enhance, fast to change, if you don't you will be left behind

Customer Experience is one of the things that I appreciate and am passionate about when it comes to digital strategy. In today’s world with so many social media outlets where people can talk about your product, you have to be visible, and not just be visible but be active. Talk to your customers, listen, react if needed to provide them with a great experience. And not only the experience but from a Branding and Brand Equity perspective having a strong presence will help foster that Brand Community and increase your brand awareness, strength, and equity. I truly believe that for companies to continue to grow and thrive in the new and ever growing digital economy, you have to be active to be relevant.

Another very interesting topic that we dived into are the 8 Market Trends that we are seeing:

1. Sharing Economy and Collaborative Consumption
2. Do-It-Yourselfers and the Makers Revolution
3. Startups & the New Entrepreneurs
4. Phenomenon Crowd & Co-Creation
5. Always On and Multichannel
6. Quantified Self
7. Gamification
8. Internet of Things

So many great new companies fall into these categories and I could probably write a whole post on each topic, but some companies I find interesting that make up the new sharing economy include the explosive growth of Uber, the redefining music consumption company Spotify, and AirBNB. Amazing companies with very interesting platforms that offer low overhead and an amazing service and customer experience (there is that term again). 

It was a great week of classes and starting to get into some of the exciting but ever difficult tasks of Marketing Managers!

I had made a goal for myself that everyday to read 4-5 articles, 2-3 (I usually read more) on Marketing trends, goings ons, etc, 1 in regards to financials, company acquastions, buyouts, etc, and 1-2 current events. It is very important as a Marketer to read and now what is going on not just in your industry but in business around the world. This was instilled in me by one of my Marketing Professors back at Simpson College and re-affirmed from every Professor that has lectured us this year. This is a list of websites that I like to use to check for articles, there are many great places to look but these have been suggested by multiple leaders that i have meet with, in the industry. 

• Advertising Age
• Fast Company
• LinkedIn
• INC
• Wall Street Journal 
• The Atlantic
• Food 4 Brains (this is a website by one of our professors and colleagues that are snapshots of major articles that were published from some of the biggest sources in the world)
• I like to also browse Yahoo and MSN 
• Twitter is also a very good tool for finding great content depending on who you follow

As always I hope that there is a takeaway or two in here for everyone. If you have any questions or would like to discuss some of these issue more in depth feel free to write a comment or shoot me a note at robbynap87@gmail.com. You can also follow me on Twitter @RobbyNap and connect with me on LinkedIn at https://it.linkedin.com/in/robert-napoli-a5839119

Ciao Ciao 

Grad School Adventures: Week 6: "Top Brands- A Game!"

Week 6

October 26- November 1st

Lesson of the Week:

"When you look good, you feel good, when you feel good, you play good, when you play...they pay good" -Tori Hunter - one of my favorite quotes and oh so applicable. When you feel good about the way you look, you exude confidence. There is an emotional connection to the way you carry yourself based on how you feel. 

As I had a whole week to sit around and study, which let’s be honest I did a lot of in between Netflix, Facebook, gym, and looking at entertaining articles. But I did study, I promise! It was interesting to evaluate how I approach finals and studying now compared to when I was in college back in 2006-2010. But throughout the week of studying among other things, I was able to catch up on quite a few current events, which is something I need to get better at. My goal is to read at least 1-2 articles a day related to Marketing and Business, but that sometimes falls to the bottom of the list. But it gave me time to get caught up which was nice. In the process of studying Marketing principles such as Market Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning, I was drawn back to an infographic that a colleague of mine sent to the class and I am sure one that I will be discussing again in this blog at some point when we get to the topics of Brand Management. But the below infographics is the Worlds Top Brands! Crazy, as you read through the list, think about what first comes to mind?

Let’s Play a Game!!!!!

Please pick one brand and share what immediately comes to mind in comments section below!

You guys are awesome! I am fascinated by brands, and how they have shaped our economy and consumer perceptions. I am sure that not everyone has the same perception of the same brand. Some people are avid Apple users and others are loyal to Samsung. I know that at some point I want my career to be involved in branding and brand management. I am excited for our future courses and experiences at MIP. For now I will continue to study, finals are next week right?

As far as Halloween goes Christine and I went out with some friends from class and had a fun night hanging out in the VIP sections at a club called MiB Piazza Affari. It was an excellent venue with a fantastic DJ. Piazza Affari is where the Stock Exchange of Italy is, and there is a very interesting piece of art in the middle, a giant marble middle finger! Yes you read that right, Google it!