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Letters from Staff

June,2011

Entrepreneurship Education in Vietnam

In 2010, a program for cultivation of entrepreneurs in ASEAN countries “Common Curriculum for Entrepreneurship in ASEAN” has started by Japan-ASEAN Integration Fund (JAIF).  As a part of the program, AsiaSEED conducts “COBLAS: Consulting Based Learning for ASEAN Small and Medium-sized Enterprises” in ASEAN Countries.

COBLAS is a learning method developed by Dr. Takeru OHE, a former professor of Waseda University, Tokyo.  Along with learning theoretical approaches for business analysis and consulting at classroom, students visit local small companies to conduct actual business consultations to deal with their challenges.  It is a practical and mutually-beneficial program, as the target companies gain students’ ideas for improvement and students gain valuable experiences of real businesses.  Program supervisors are lecturers of hosting universities, Japanese and ASEAN universities with rich experiences.

From January to March 2011, twenty students of the Faculty of Business Administration, Foreign Trade University, Hanoi in Vietnam took a part in COBLAS program.  They were divided in four teams and visited each company.
At the end of March, final presentation to report the study results was held with the attendance of owners of the target companies.  In the presentations, students introduced how they tackled various challenges facing companies while collaborating with the business owners and employees. 

One of the students groups presented a leaflet of a furniture store which showed significant improvement made based on their proposal.  Another group visited a food-processing company which used to mainly import unprocessed foods such as corn grain.  They proposed the company to produce processed food in order to multiply the number of clients (customers) and reduce the business risk, and co-operated in implementation of the proposal.  In the final presentation, the group served some of their new products for tasting.   One of the new products was Taro potato croquettes shown in the picture below, which quality was quite high given the short period of time that they had for its development.  Taro-potato is soft and appetizing, similar to Satoimo-potato (a kind of Taro popular in Japanese cuisine).  The croquettes were rather modestly seasoned and also suits Japanese taste. Even though Taro-potato is not yet familiar in Japan, I suppose it could be successful export product to Japanese market.  The new product seems to have a great possibility of increasing the company’s range of business, and the owner was very satisfied with the students’ great works.

The COBLAS program lasted only for three months, and there were limitations and difficulties in activities for students due to the target companies’ conditions.  However, many students were very keen to continue contributing for growth of the companies they helped, and the beginning of continuous collaboration were already seen in some of activities  that they already started such as hiring excellent part-time staffs recruited using  students’ human network.  I hope such activities will continue and develop even further.

Taro-potato croquettes and improved leaflet of a furniture store
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