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Rice University MBA students to spend spring break in Rwanda
Breaking news: A positive business story
HOUSTON -- (Feb. 23, 2009) -- On Thursday, 20 students from Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Management will depart to spend their entire spring break in Rwanda for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to apply their business skills in a developing country.
"This is a terrific learning opportunity, and it's unique," Professor of Management Marc Epstein said. "There's no other program offering this experience to tomorrow's future business leaders."
A primary goal -- and a compelling draw for the students -- is the chance to help Rwandan entrepreneurs carve out a living in a country where most people survive on about $1 per day. But Epstein said there's more to the technology commercialization course than just volunteerism.
"About 10 percent of the world's population live in North America and Western Europe," Epstein said. "That's the tip of the economic pyramid, and growth there is flat. The companies our students will eventually be working for are well aware that the growth in the next few decades is at the bottom of the pyramid, where the other 90 percent live."
In the course, the MBA students are divided into four five-person teams and tasked with developing a viable business plan for a specific product in just four months. The spring break trip, an integral part of the class, is associated with Rice's global health initiative, Rice 360º. In addition, three of the four prototype products the MBA students are marketing were developing by Rice undergraduates in Rice 360º's Beyond Traditional Borders (BTB) program.
Epstein's students are developing business plans for three prototype products that were tested in African clinics and hospitals last summer by BTB undergraduate interns. Those products are a low-cost neonatal incubator, a diagnostic lab-in-a-backpack and a plastic dosing device for liquid medicines. As good as the prototypes are, Epstein said they won't solve global health problems unless they are widely used.
"All of these products are terrific designs, but you cannot solve pervasive health problems with one or two of these," he said. "You need them by the hundreds and thousands, and you need to overcome the problem of distribution, which has stymied Western governments and aid organizations for decades."
Epstein pointed out that Western countries have poured more than a trillion dollars’ worth of aid into developing countries since the end of World War II. Unfortunately, neither governments nor nongovernmental organizations have effectively delivered that aid where it is most needed -- in rural areas that often have poor roads, few medical facilities and no electricity.
"Neither governments nor aid organizations have been effective at getting products to the people who really need them," Epstein said. "But that's what business does best. Products get delivered and customers get served when there is a profit motive."
The idea of making money in a poor country like Rwanda may sound odd, but Epstein said entrepreneurism is not only alive in there, it thrives as a matter of necessity.
"Around 100 million entrepreneurs will receive microfinance loans in developing countries this year," Epstein said. "More than half of them are women who live in areas where jobs aren't available or who have young children. They are entrepreneurs by necessity. Why not allow them to use their business skills to get these life-saving products into the market?"
Microfinance -- the provision of credit and other financial services to poor clients -- became a global movement in 2006 when Bangladeshi banker Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering efforts in the field.
But Epstein said financing is just one of the many problems his students will have to overcome to formulate workable business plans in Rwanda. They have to find out where the product will be produced, how much it will cost to produce, what customers are willing to pay, how customers will take delivery and more. Even the simplest of these questions sometimes have complicated answers, Epstein said.
For example, Rice's BTB interns know from their travels to Africa that the neonatal incubator, a low-cost plywood box that's heated with light bulbs, is desperately needed in most African hospitals, which cannot afford high-tech incubators found in most Western hospitals.
"We know the need is there, but what can hospitals and clinics afford to pay?" Epstein asked. "Is it $50 or $100? Because that's a big difference. And even if they're willing to pay, these have to be plugged in. Do they have electricity, and what's the strategy if they don't?"
Epstein said he's been impressed with the innovation shown so far by his students, who have come up with all sorts of ideas. Some are looking at leasing products rather than selling them. Others are considering modular designs, giving customers options with different pricing levels. One group, which is tasked with marketing a micronutrient powder for young children, is also considering how they will educate customers about the value of proper nutrition for children.
Epstein said there's no way to know how good the ideas are until the students arrive in Rwanda's capital, Kigali. Once on the ground, the students will work from dawn to dusk gathering information from potential customers, producers, suppliers and distributors. They'll follow those meetings with evening sessions with government and business leaders.
"This is the longest vacation I'll probably have for a long time," said Wendy Lo, who's still unsure where she'll wind up working after graduation this spring. "I could have visited my family overseas or spent the time looking for a job, but when I really thought about it, I realized this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I couldn't afford to pass up."
Rice University MBA students are available until Thursday to speak with the media; contact David Ruth at 713-348-6327 or druth@rice.edu to set up an interview. The students, Epstein and representatives from Rice 360º will also be available for phone interviews from Rwanda on a limited basis between Feb. 26 and March 10.
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David Ruth
Associate Director for National and Broadcast Media
Rice University
Direct: 713-348-6327
Cell: 612-702-9473
Email: druth@rice.edu
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Located in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked one of America's best teaching and research universities. Known for its "unconventional wisdom," Rice is distinguished by its: size -- 3,001 undergraduates and 2,144 graduate students; selectivity --12 applicants for each place in the freshman class; resources -- an undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio of 5-to-1; sixth largest endowment per student among American private research universities; residential college system, which builds communities that are both close-knit and diverse; and collaborative culture, which crosses disciplines, integrates teaching and research, and intermingles undergraduate and graduate work.
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