In 2013 and 2014, our organization offered Go•To•Market programs in Goa, India. The target for these programs were high potential entrepreneurs selected by a government partner. These participants experienced a successful program featuring Stanford MBA faculty which resulted in refined business models, pitches and a Go-to-Market strategy. Coming off the success of this program, we launched a similar program with an incubator in Malaysia. It failed miserably.
While there could be many factors to attribute the failure to, such as an unexpected rotation of the program faculty, new cultural and language barriers, and a new, untested technology infrastructure, we now reflect on the fact that the selected participants were not the appropriate target for the program. The participants were selected by the incubator, which is highly influenced by the government bodies responsible for economic growth in the newly founded "Silicon Valley of Malaysia." The partnership with Stanford was touted as the next step to realizing the transformation of Malaysian business and elevating it to a new level. This highly publicized relationship drew potential participants who had connections with the government bodies, influence in the current economic ecosystem and were in varying levels of the business lifecycle.
Because our organization was not familiar with the ecosystem, was not, contractually, responsible for participant selection, and did not have the level of insight or authority of the incubator or government, there was a missed opportunity with the program. Participants found the content to be inapplicable to their current business venture, for the most part, and had expectations of direct contact with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, which was never a part of the curriculum.
With the significant investment that the Malaysian government made and the very little perceived return on investment gained by the participants' development, the program was discontinued short of its three year fulfillment. With the falling out of this program, our organization also lost reputed viability in other Asian sectors that were in the pipeline, such as Singapore and Taiwan.
In our other programs, our organization plays a central role in selecting participants who are at the critical stage of their business that can be most impacted by the curriculum. In custom programs, we now better realize the importance of understanding our pool of applicants if we are not highly involved in the selection process so that we may work with the faculty to deliver the most applicable and impactful content possible.
