A78607 The Italian Way of Doing Business

At the end of the course the student will be able:

1. To identify the value creation activities of the most important sectors of made in Italy;
2. To assume a junior role in  the export manager career;
3. To assess the risks and the opportunities of a decentralized production structure and to indicate the necessary change to implement in the company for a successful implementation;
4. To identify the appropriate decisions and to draw appropriate implementation plans in order to develop an international retail network.

This course allows students to acquire sector-focused  practical knowledge in the fields of export management, international retail networks and multi local production structure management.

The possibility to work on the field will consolidate their knowledge and will stimulate them to a “bounded creativity” approach in performing their job.

The course is composed of four parts:

- a first part where the Italian way of doing business is  presented  through  the analysis and discussion of emblematic Italian cases;

- a  module focused on the export manager role, competencies and skills. The students will work with company experts on practical issues;

- a module focused on the organizational mechanisms that must be implemented in the company in order to manage successfully a multi-local production structure. The transition phase from a centralized structure to a multi-local production structure will be analyzed;

- a module focused on the various aspects connected to the implementation of an international retail network (how to create new markets/how to exploit existent markets) integrating the concepts taught in the previous courses. The students will be required to perform practical exercises on real cases.

MODULO 1:

The objective of the first part of the course is to present and to discuss the characteristic  of the Italian model of management of the high performing companies and the common traits among the different sectors. The Armani, Ducati,  Brembo  and Tecnogym cases will be discussed.

MODULO 2:

The objective is to provide the knowledge needed to set up and manage the business contacts with foreign countries in view of both the planning of trade policy and the organization of the sales network. Topics include: the choice of commercial intermediaries, the build-up of a budget of internationalization, the economic and financial assessments of the commercial network.

MODULO 3:

Starting from the Italian design industries, this session covers the process of delocalizing production from local to global network. The international sourcing will be analysed from operational execution to the approach of cultural differences.

MODULO 4:

The content of this session is to show to the students why is important to create an International Distribution Network and to give a strong insight on the diifferents models of distribution in order that the partecipants will be able to choose the right model of distribution , in the differents markets, depending of the situation of the company situation and the local conditions of the market. During this session will be ,also, discussed in depth how to control it via the follow-up of some importants KPI's and the right contracts.

The course will be run under a workshop format requiring active students’ involvement.

Projects on the field, company visits and exercises are part of the program. Lectures are held, by academic professors and company managers,  throughout the entire semester. Students are responsible for LEARNING the material before coming to class and for PROVIDING a meaningful contribution to the discussion led by the instructor. It means to be able to provide accurate and sensible answers and comments whenever personally quizzed by the instructor (it will happen several time during each lecture) and to contribute new and original ideas.

In preparing for lectures students are required to know any detail of the required readings (academic papers from top journals), but are also invited to extend their reading to related papers listed in the references of the required readings, to related paper discovered through personal search on the internet, to related newspaper articles they may become aware of through their daily reading. The students are responsible for consulting on a regular basis the website of the course on “my.liuc.it” where updates, additional material and slides about the course are posted. No excuse accepted for any failure during the course due to a delayed consultation of the website.