 Hello, everyone, and welcome you to the battle of programs for the business school. My name is Marcelo probably dinner and today I'll be speaking for the international management program at pro college. A lot of children himself as well. Hey Marcelo thank you. Yeah, my name is Pedro I'm a Brazilian that lived in Prague and now live in Budapest doing the program of the MSc leadership and strategic management. Thank you. I'll probably start off right up about the program that I'm studying. So, as I mentioned before, I'm studying master's in international management. And today I'll be talking about three basic points what I think are the most beneficial parts of the programming studying at pro college. Among the first of them are interesting courses. It's really interesting when you think about like management and what we're going to do in the future is one side of it is business which means half math theories calculation analysis equations and synthesis. The other off is much messier it's people. So one of the courses I really enjoyed was developing self and others, because that course is dedicated to understanding ourselves and people as a whole. In the course you're asked to understand your behaviors and understand your behaviors in work settings. So you have to actually analyze your own experience in carrying out yourself in a workplace and one of the things I really enjoyed about that class is the fact that it allowed me to analyze myself, my behavior and just really see what am I doing in a workplace, what is productive and what isn't, and what could possibly be done in a better way. I think that's something that's really important for any person that wants to be successful or really like happy with themselves because this kind of behavior analyzing yourself and creating a plan how to develop yourself is actually something that's vital for progression in life. And while I enjoy planning normally this was something that was really hard for me to do is to create a plan for yourself, not day by day plan but to write down your goals and to create a path towards those goals so to create a system of activities you need to carry out in order to create to reach those goals. And often when we do these plans. When we really do them well. It's a sobering look to see how much work needs to be done in order to get to where we want to be. That was one of the courses I enjoyed really the most because understanding own personality and self helps you to understand other people and when you can understand other people you can cooperate with them and lead them. Second course I would like to talk about is my favorite course strategy, so strategic management in international context. One of the questions everyone asks me is since I studied economics and business school is, what is the ideal solution, what is the best solution to a product to a service or whatever. The thing I like about this question is that the answer is always, it depends. It depends on the core competencies of the company on the organizational structure and the culture, the financial resources capabilities and skills that are present in the company. The macro economic trends the industrial structure, the profit margins within that industry, the level of competition and the competing strategies the firms are using to compete for clients and customers. It depends on markets, segments and on customer satisfaction, price sensitivity and customer base. All of these factors have to be included and it's always situational. So there's not one single correct answer because strategy is so dynamic you have to always take multiple and multiple sets of variables into account. What this course has taught me specifically is that you need to think, you really need to think. It sounds stupid but it's really hard to go through all of the factors for example I mentioned and really find a competitive advantage for a company. It's really hard to think about all of these levels of analysis but that's the thing I like about the course. I would say it provoked me to develop analytical, critical but also lateral thinking while using real world examples and case studies. So that's something I value really much because I wasn't good at thinking before I came to Prague College. I thought I was good at it but I wasn't and to be able to think analytically and critically and be able to present an argument or something you want to say in an academic and professional settings. It's not as easy as it looks. It's not easy to give a competent presentation of a topic of your choice. So being able to prepare myself for that, being able to analyze all of these variables that need to be analyzed is really helpful and especially when we get to present our conclusions and someone questions our conclusions. That's the best part. The second thing and I'll be sharing my screen for this. The second thing I wanted to show to everyone here is the second reason why I like studying at Prague College and in the international management program. I'll quickly share my screen so you can see this is the reason. So that work professional network. As you can see on the screen. This is a world map and the red part are countries in which I have friends or acquaintances which I can contact in case I should want to do business there or I need to find something. This is something really important and to think about in a business setting. You're never be able to do everything yourself. You need other people and especially you need competent people who you know you can rely on. I have a friend like that in all of these countries. In all of these countries I have someone who I can go to and say, hey, I would maybe like to expand into this country. Could you help me find some information or relevant sources. This is one of the crucial benefits I view as studying it in international management at Prague College is the network of people I met and made become friends with or professionally worked with. It's, it's a huge benefit to know that not only do I have access to information from these countries and people who are capable and know how to do business, not just the thing here in these countries. But when I expand this concept and when I say okay, I have my professional network and my friends have professional network. Well, if I want to reach my friends professional network and I have been a good friend or a good colleague, the network and the relationships are good, which can result in something like this. This is not 100% correct, but this is a true estimation, the best I can give of my network networks network. These are all the countries I can go to and start a business, if I want to, because I have friends I have people who will allow me to in in that area, which is I'll stop sharing a screen for a second, which is something I really value as an international student. Knowing other people and getting to know other cultures, really enriches you, not just from the cultural aspect perspective but also intellectually. As I said before, I wasn't really good at thinking before. And I have made a lot of friends at pro college and they have shown me like, for example, a friend from Norway, who showed me a completely different method or approach to thinking. And that's part of the, of the network is the people that you build. And I feel like, and think pro college is one of the greatest asset in that is that providing that network of people who are competent and can help you in life. And for the last part, I'll be talking about the worldwide projects we got to do and the interesting events I got to attend as a student here at pro college. So, one of the projects that I've been really thrilled about is Phoenix project and international business challenge that I had created with my colleague Nicoletta, who's also my classmate. And we've been working together with T side University and SRMI Institute in India to develop a business challenge and not only is a business challenge for people with entrepreneurial skills, but a challenge that has a social application, which is another aspect of doing business of studying business at pro college is the ethical framework to business and social entrepreneurship that the school has talking. So in the project. There were students from T side University from Britain from Prague and from SRMI Institute in India, who are asked the simple thing. Create a proof of concept of a project that has social and communal benefits to rural in for rural communities in India. While we had to devise the whole framework so the ethical framework the rules and everything for this project we were thrilled about it because it meant we could do some actual good. So me and Nicoletta and a few other students from T side University started doing that, and it turned out to be great project. And I'm glad that it's getting more. It's becoming more of a permanent thing and we're currently working on making that project a more permanent. Yeah, more permanent project. Sorry. One of the other reasons why I liked working on the Phoenix project is that I got to work with even bigger range of international students so not only from our school, but also from schools from India and the T side. It was not easy cooperating and creating a framework for competition with people in four different states in three different time zones and working completely online, but such experiences help you really get the experience under the belt. And that's something that's really crucial. And I'm really glad I got to participate in this project. Also thanks to pro college. The second interesting event I would like to mention is, I got to go to the British Embassy thanks to pro college. This is really nice. I've met a British ambassador. I've met a lot of see see suit people from large corporations for some sponsors and political representatives. And I've gotten this opportunity thanks to pro college and the program. It was amazing, but also a little bit scary because seeing all the people and all the CEOs and CEOs. I was afraid to say the least. But then meeting those people and realizing Oh, they're just people like you normal people they just have more experience under their belt was humbling. And also getting in touch with them and getting in contact with them was a really great thing. And as a beautiful extension of my network. And this is it. I'll probably stop talking because I'm going to I'm rambling too much and I'll leave some space for Pedro. No rambling, no rambling at all. Now you put me not rambling at all. Now you put me on a tough point, you know, in a tough spot. Yeah, well, we have a lot of programs exactly for a battle of programs. And now you saw that she sweet is also people. Yeah, so you're here talking with the city and they also study. And here I am to talk about the MSc leadership and strategic management. And specifically in this context of pro college, what I'm doing it and living in in Budapest is doing on a blended learning format. The point is that you have access to all the digital campus and the digital campus is something very interesting we have the classes online and I didn't have the chance to go there in the campus physically, although it's part of the program to have it. So my master if another mistake in a boot camp like a full weekend off of classes, which is something very nice, although we did it online. Yeah, so I, my colleagues that I met and it compared to your network. I just did it fully online with the colleagues of the program, but you made very, very interesting points my fellow with the specific with some of the of the classes that you had. And I also mentioned about the, the, what was the name I have it here, develop yourself and others, and it compares with one that we have it here we have three main classes this semester is the first semester that I'm doing it. And the classes are the work base portfolio, something a little bit similar what you had with your, with your developer self and others, the challenges of globalization, something also similar with what you had experienced with her with your global projects and interactions. And the other one is the business research methods and all those classes they are unique and what I could see it experience and have both from the lecturers and the colleagues that I'm working on. So let me, let me give you the parallel, you mentioned your developers often others and we do have the work base portfolio. So I'm, I'm not that young I'm 37. Living in Budapest after living in Prague. I already mentioned is a couple of times, and I knew pro college because of it. So I live close by and I got to know the institution. And one more was that how I related to not only Prague and I could relate to college as well being the British University in Prague. And this specific course of the workplace portfolio is for the students are already part of enterprises, and it connects with developers often others with some theories. So it's very interesting how for me, some, some things that you saw YouTube video you saw that talk you saw that X you saw a little quick information on Twitter, about some management style theories that you never heard about it that you heard before, but it didn't know the scientific basis from it. And when you see the paper, and when you go through this academic journey that was very interesting for me to go through and you're starting to read a scientific academic paper, and exploring this critical judgment since the lateral thinking that you mentioned as well was amazing to see it how they derive from literally from scientific research, and it was enlightening. Yeah, and in this workplace portfolio we have five theories I don't know if I'll be able to quote all of them but First is leader member exchange theory LMX very interesting how this dynamic works between hierarchical organizations how LMX happens horizontally vertically, how they flip it from vertical to horizontal whenever you have in groups out groups very interesting path. And we have emotional intelligence, extremely important for all of us to be resilient in these times and to be this rock solid point of beat for your team or as a partner and appear for other colleagues in the organization. Another one that we are going through now is adaptive leadership, the leadership with the aim of managing and nurturing adaptation in people in teams in organizations. Very interesting, all of those and then you go to the theory to the scientific part. Amazing. So, in the end, why I mentioned is and why it resembles with what you said, of the developer self is that this workplace portfolio is about yourself. We go through in the classes with observational questions that we should observe on our environment and surroundings and reflect. How did it make us feel how did we react, how did you and ponder this to make an adaptation co adaptation process to yourself to be to become your own your own development. That you created among this. Amazing. Yeah, I'm thrilled by it. I don't know if I can express this even more connected to it. We have challenge of globalization. And this is this is a topic very close to my heart by being Brazilian and live in Europe and seeing other cultures with a very different perspective, it's something very refreshing, because we can get, we can get a view of understanding that you, the aspects of culture that we never thought of before. And understanding that you're in the cultures, the spouse values, the models that we have the anthropologist in business in the end is also a business school. And how they saw this and how they were able to create theories that make so much sense for us to use them for the benefits of what you said to answer in our professional context, it depends. But it gives you the material, the critical sense of analyzing situations with the with the to support a counter argument after they depend. So you're not only saying it depends for the sake of depending, but you get back to it and say yeah it depends because if you're doing a part of specifically my company it's a multinational in the life insurance services, and they're going for a training, a margin acquisition, expansion on the culture on another country for different culture. You have to critically judge it depends because doesn't make sense for you to send your key people to go there. Are you tackling it with an ethanol, ethanol centric approach. Are you going to overcome the culture that you have it there. Are you taking to consideration the localization geographic region soup ethnicities. There were of such widening view that we're very interesting to look at. And again, the theory behind, when you go to about something that you heard off you talked about it and you didn't know it gives you such a it's more than the know how it gives you the confidence of talking about the topic that he wouldn't before you're talking about the really the scientific base of it. It's a, as you said, and going with this talk about both of them. And it's valid for the three classes that I'm having is how caring the tutors were, and they are. Yeah, I think that I didn't have any problem. My busy schedule I'm usually doing things over the night because during the day I'm working is it on the weekend and I send an email and suddenly minutes later I said no you're good to go your direction is clear or no take a look on this angle look at a little bit different refactor here. And I always they were always very open in both the weekend classes the regular classes that we have. My last one, my last one is the, it was the one that I went to the head rabbit hole. Yeah, I follow the rabbit hole there, and it was the business research methods. This business research is helping you to prepare your thesis. So you're doing your proposal for the MSE, and you guide it through with the tutor guide it through on how to structure your proposal, and you go there. It involves a lot of reading evolves a lot of planning. It's part of our, our own cadence as a student to try to find your plan, find your rhythm, find your pace, and try to do this consistently as a habit. Yeah, find your triggering anchoring habits that helps you to progress it on a good step up. And this, in the business research method, the rabbit hole were, and what I want to share the screen was my process of understanding my relationship with academic research. I didn't have any. Yeah, I came by bread and butter is IP. I'm a chief technology officer in the life insurance company in a thing that can show that. Imagine when I got this in front of me. Excuse me for a second I'll just share my screen very briefly. I was faced with this and I said what do I do now. Oh, no, it's not shared. Now it is. Yeah, I was faced with this and I said what do I do now. What do I type here. So, where do I start. I was very interest my my topic itself is about strategy implementation and the effect of communication. So, when I had here you can see my last, my last searches, and I was discussing I was trying to find for my literature review, quarter steps, the limitations. And I found some some of the, of the, of the papers that we find, they are under their after a paywall. And a paywall because they are, there are plenty of business journals, big journals entities that are releasing those research papers with your review than they, you have to get them through something that they call it a science director Elsevier their big names in it. But the important part is that what college can can support us in doing it. This one is one of the biggest publications that they have it. Elsevier, if you go to pay it directly by yourself it's very, very expensive, but they're the opportunity that we have throughout throughout and studying with college is this the implementation. I want to show one very tricky part of what we have as a this one. This is a paywall. Yeah, why do I what I'm insisting on it is that this helped me a lot. After searching for something Google scholar. I was reverted to a place to a website to a business for a business institution, research. There was a release institution that was. Please tell me institution or pay for the article. And here. What we have it is the access to decide university for access for immediate, an endless universe of knowledge and content. That you have access to it to support you to support your, your research to report your paper to support your, your growth as a student as a professional and as with knowledge and knowledge is power. And we all know this I will just finalize the signing so you can see the end. The part of the, of the access to the paper, and I'm waiting for the cash and just fresh it. No, something wrong. It never works when we want it. Sorry for that. Anyway, I'll stop talking as well. You can find this, you can see that this side is one of the, of the partners. And I'm very grateful for college for not only having this opportunity but bringing here and sharing my, my experience. Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you, Pedro. That's always Murphy's law when something can go wrong, it will go wrong. It will. Yeah. I just can quickly address some of the things you've mentioned. I probably forgot to mention myself. The thing about the lectures, the availability and the help they provide you. Yeah, I completely forgot about that. It's amazing actually like I've been studying because of the corona virus I've been studying in the digital campus. And for the last year, for the last year and a half, I was studying basically over the computer. And at the beginning, you could see everyone adjusting to it, but I have friends and I have friends at Czech universities who were basically doing similar classes to mine but I noticed a huge difference. The difference was that in our classes, most of the people had back cameras on the discussion was plentiful. It was useful. It was a lot of different opinions and people actually sharing information, which for me personally, I don't go out that often. For me, like this school and the work is one of the few social interactions I have in a day. So it was amazing to see like we still carried on with this tradition and we as a students but also with teachers and lecturers. They helped us into that digital environment and they helped to deliver the content of the lectures and to be honest, like, I'm mind blown. I had to speak for us like a half an hour yesterday during the class. And it was so frightening. I was so nervous. I was so I really admired the lectures for the adaptation they've done. So for me, we have like a specific for the for the context of this, this MSC for the leadership of strategic management in the blended learning is a fast track. So what is the cadence of the classes classes every Monday. They go from five until officially until a 39 so started five to classes of two hours every week. And in the semester as I mentioned we have this two weekend classes they run through Saturday. So from 10 until 12 and then after at one until three, three 30 even we did it last week with the work base portfolio was very nice. And as you said, my fellow one of the, the adaptations of the tutors as well as the discussions that we have in class, this is for my for our in this blended mode of the fast track where the students are the ones already working and they have the work life already settled. It's how we have the chance to, to discuss the theory applied on what we perceive based on the on what we learn, and what we saw the effects in the organization as well. As a nurture by the, by the tutors, it's an amazing valuable experience creating expand your network, learning from other people learning from other with very different backgrounds so all the three of us, literally all the three of us were not, and we're not checks, and all of us are three different nationality. Yes. The thing you mentioned was interesting to me the, the multicultural environment, that's something I wanted to touch on. Actually, I don't know if you know Pedro but I'm half check and I'm half Bolivian. Yeah, so that's the thing I wanted to highlight because it is important to me. As I mentioned before, I've met a lot of interesting people and colleagues in pro college, people who I started working with or we keeping in contact. And the important part about that is not only the contacts you develop like friends, but also the professional network and how they help you develop. And one of my closest friends is a Norwegian Norwegian guy who helped me overcome so much in my personal development, and I only met him thanks to the college so not only that but the network I showed this. It's incredible. And especially like the theory you talked about. I had the same thing like, how did they discover this just by looking at the data like, how did you like Ricardo how did you come up with this. So, it's incredible like for me personally. Although digital campus is like it's great. And the teachers done extraordinarily well. I think for me personally it will never replace the in person value teaching because it has. So much more exciting and I would say motivating like for me personally I chose the international management as a program because I want to be a professional and an entrepreneur one day but at the same time I do feel like I want to go into academia I want to be a researcher. And as you said before, to go into the real like science based academia that's, that's a lot of reading, and that's a lot of studying that that's something I really like about the program I think you've also mentioned it. It's not, not only that I also work, but part time. And it's, it's the fact that we come into the classes and we as students we discuss our problems in, for example in our work and we discuss our solutions or what we would suggest. And it's so helpful to get other people's perspective on issues, and to discuss like these things in classroom because that's, that's what I feel like the, this is where the magic happens when we are just left alone and we get to talk and pursue our ideas, and to be able to do that in online setting. It was just incredible. So I'll just quickly find one of the questions I like. Could you please tell us a little bit more about the project that you have worked on and you have liked in particular. I would be probably, sorry, I would be probably repeating myself just quickly. So the project I really like the international business challenge. What I really liked about it is the social aspect of it and that's something I really want to pursue is the social benefit that can stem from entrepreneurship, like how businesses can benefit, not only as a promotion, but how businesses can do actual good in this business world by aligning their profit goals along with the interests and of societies and benefits of society. So, what I really like about that project is the applicability. It's like, basically what we did is take a bunch of students about 30, 30 students, and we force them to cooperate until they create something of a value something that could really help people in those areas. And when it sounds bad, we didn't force them, they liked working. When we did this, there were so many teams and so many amazing ideas that came up out of that project. It was intriguing to me like one of the groups came up with a basically a silo how to make a silo that will not be damaged by rodents and that could be economically sustainable. And then the projects came up with a solution on how to electrify India through renewable sources, and they are already in talks with government officials to see if like something like that could be put in practice. So, that's the part I like the most probably the real, real projects that you get to participate in that you get to do. Very nice. I can only imagine the project then because I'll, well, with the with the business context and be employed I think it gets tricky for us to participate in it a little bit, but anyhow, I, and you pursuing academia so good luck. Congratulations for what you did so far good luck. Thank you. Not in a bad way but in a very nice way because let me connect with one of the questions that we have it here. How much time outside of class to spend on it and how many hours per week. So, one of the winner arrived. And you have been told to target induction class. Yeah, the first class that you introduce yourself to the teachers they are. They are introducing themselves you know who are your your classmates. And I asked him, do you have any recommendation for us. Do you have any recommendation. And one of the tutors is the one for business research methods. Dave said, try to be consistent. Yeah, be consistent. Of course that I weekends are weekends and you have time to do a thing that you want but allocate the time to dedicate to give your time give yourself time for the, a lot of reading that you mentioned Marcelo. And it was something that I started doing with pleasure so the rabbit hole that I mentioned was because I started searching on those research papers and research papers that refers some some other outdoor the research that refers to another out of the research. And your mind blown by it. And you start doing it with pleasure, you know you start reading literary pregnancy, it's the base knowledge of something that was invented as word knowledge, you know, while. So if it if I was leading now is at least my my my recipe I tried to read at least before at night, one, not necessarily sometimes they're big but one article, or half of it. And I'll try to see if it's relevant for what I need to do if it's relevant for me to take notes using. I use some some support for having a tool that helps you to keep track of the paper that you read through. So those references that you need to keep. And in the end I'll say that apart from the class itself. I will take a give or take six to eight hours of dedication for a week. That's more or less what I want to try to do. Yeah, I have the similar experience I actually had Dave gave me the same exact device when I was in bachelors. It was the best advice I've ever gotten from him to be honest, one of the best. He gave me many great advice is to be consistent and as you said like I'll admit it before coming to college I wasn't really a student type of a person so I didn't really even know I would like to work in academia. And when I came here, I had to read, I had to read a lot of references and a lot of text, and as exactly as you said like it's a rabbit hole, you start with one paper, and then you end up reading like a whole lot. And I wasn't doing so well at the beginning because exactly as you said, I didn't have consistency I did everything at last minute and it's thing we young young youngsters tend to do badly, but I learned from it and so I said to myself, start by doing five minutes a day, you can do it for five minutes and if you do each day five minutes. At least it's something. Well I started on five minutes and then I ended up doing it for like five, six hours and it's like, Oh, I have to go to work now. So yeah, I really like this. No, excellent. It's what you said is that like the power of atomic habits if you don't know what you do do one or something. Yeah, it's a one word one phrase one paragraph. Yeah, and you're five minutes and up and summing up into a great amount of deal. Yeah, and you'll end up like reading the academic papers for fun. I actually ended up like reading academic papers from different disciplines for fun. For example, for me personally, I really love finance strategy and organizational behavior. So hardly psychology. And when I was getting bored with my economics and business papers, I just started reading psychology and organizational psychology and sociology, and I never knew it would end up that way but because I started reading that turns out I'm writing my thesis on a similar subject. So, Pedro, I want to thank you very much for coming here. Thank you for talking. I actually want to talk to you more now that I've learned something from you. I hope I'll get to talk to you during our studies, and I hope I'll meet you in a classroom, hopefully one day. And it'll be a pleasure. It'll be a pleasure to see everyone. I don't know if there are some participants or someone looking if there are. Once everything comes down to normal, or even online, I'll be more than happy to talk to you and Pedro and the product stuff. If there are some things we haven't mentioned or failed to mention. You can definitely contact prog admissions team on their, on their email, you can find it on the website. And I'll be disconnecting from my part. Thank you very much for all for attending for coming to see us today. And yeah, that's it for the battle of the programs strategy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Have a good evening. You too. Bye bye.