SIS Business Study Missions

More information on SMU Business Study Missions is found here.

BSM Bangalore 2007

The Business Study Mission to Bangalore, led by SIS Practice Professor Desai Narasimhalu, was organised in the latter half of April 2007. The aim was to learn first hand how the city had evolved into the Silicon Valley of India. The study focused on management, and the entrepreneurship of Indian IT and Biopharma companies. It also sought to uncover the reasons why MNCs such as IBM, HP and Oracle have chosen to offshore their operations to Bangalore. Lastly, these foreign MNCs were contrasted against a number of Indian IT companies such as Infosys, Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services, Satyam and Cognizant. Students were required to study and identify the key strategies and practices employed by the companies that had led to their explosive growth. The course was organised into in-class discussions, talks by industry professionals in Singapore and Bangalore, as well as visits to various IT and Biopharma companies, and related academic and research institutions in Bangalore.

BSM Silicon Valley 2007

A group of 30 students, led by SIS Assistant Professor Jason Woodard, undertook the Business Study Mission to Silicon Valley in July 2007. The course examined management, entrepreneurship and innovation in Silicon Valley and the broader San Francisco Bay Area. Some of the topics that were dealt with were the region's long history of boom-and-bust cycles, its unique business ecosystem, the dense network of legal, financial, and social institutions that support it, venture capitalism, and Singapore 's connection to this area. The challenge of the course was twofold: on one hand, to understand why all efforts to replicate “the Silicon Valley miracle” have failed thus far, and on the other, to ascertain the lessons that might be drawn from Silicon Valley, that can be applied to other regional economic clusters, including Singapore.

More information on BSM Silicon Valley 2007. View more photos.