Bridging the cultural business gap

Hewlett High School students Rachel Fisher and Jacob Brovda represented their Virtual Enterprise class as two of approximately 120 peers from around the world that participated in the Global Business Challenge held at the McGraw Hill Companies office on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on March 28.

On the Monday prior to the competition, all the students were given a Harvard Business Case Study to review. Then, placed on teams comprised of five or six students they were asked questions about the case study. The students on the teams had never met before. The students were also provided with computers to create a presentation.

Though he has experienced much throughout the school year, Brovda said that participating in the Global Business Challenge is a highlight and one he feels fortunate to be a part of.

“This experience was eye opening because it gave me a new perspective of how working with new individuals could be hard,” Brovda said. “With the language barrier being the main problem in particular, the challenge itself wasn’t so easy either. For my group, it was hard to memorize our “scripts” for the presentation due to the language barrier, but we were able to answer questions with ease and professionalism.”

Each team of students was assigned a room and presented their PowerPoint to three judges. The presentation was 10 minutes and there were 10 minutes of questions.

Fisher thought it was a great experience, especially interacting with peers from diverse nations. “It was really cool to watch and observe their business techniques and combine all of our differences and defeat the language barrier.”