Monday, March 17, 2008

The new FIA MBA Challenge

Dear students and colleagues

One of the big impacts our students felt on visiting China is the realization that it is not only cheap labor that makes it a formidable international competitor. An outstanding achievement by the Chinese has been the ability to attract and develop industries through the affective integration of central, provincial and municipal level governments, together with investors, entrepreneurs, unions and workers. Even considering the existence of a strong central government, a single political party in power, environmental costs and worker safety issues still to be resolved, it is no small achievement to put together a competitive infrastructure for modern industry in a newly developing country.

Our alumni have created a magnificient social consulting program which has trained and implemented projects in over 500 social entreprises in Brazil.

The new challenge I would like to make to our students and friends worldwide is to discuss how Latin America, and Brazil in particular, can learn from some aspects of the Chinese experience, and promote rapid and sustainable growth of selected industries and regions in our country.

I specially invite to participate in this discussion not only our current students, but alumni from our International Executive MBA, our colleagues from partner schools overseas and other interested contributions. This effort will be open, non partisan, and focused on accelerating development and improving the quality of life of the Brazilian population in general.

Thanks for joining in !

James Wright
Director, FIA Business School

PS: If you feel more comfortable writing in Portuguese, we will translate your submissions.