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.
