European Culture and Its Impact on Business

We started the day by having each of our groups from the respective colleges present their team projects. Each group was assigned a country along with designated landmarks or cultural points of interest. The teams had to research their assigned areas and prepare a presentation on these locations to the rest of the class.

Sinclair’s team. Left to Right: Katie Herring, Celeste Henandez, Shuli Li, Charles Dunn, and Vicki Shuler

After the group presentations, Danish professors, Carsten Nielsen and Erik Staunstrup, provided an overview and discussion on the European Union and its culture. They asked students to draw a map of Europe. Students worked in groups to draw the map. The results were interesting!

Students worked with students from other colleges to draw maps of Europe.

More map drawing!

Students presented the results of their map drawing exercises. It was an interesting exercise as the RBC professors asked the teams to reflect on their process for drawing the maps; not just focus on the results. This was a very good learning experience!

Following the map exercise, the RBC professors began an intriguing discussion on European consumers and the marketplace. In particular, the RBC discussed the recent World Values Survey and facilitated an insightful analysis of the survey results as well as the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map.

Image is courtesy of http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp
According to the survey, “people’s beliefs play a key role in economic development, the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions, the rise of gender equality, and the extent to which societies have effective government.”

 

RBC Professors offered an interesting presentation that compared cultural values between Europe and the U.S.

The discussion was perfect preparation for our next presentation on Experience Economy and Innovation. Esben Danielsen, Director of Innovation at Orange Innovation of Roskilde Festival, was our speaker. He provided a valuable overview of the Roskilde Festival, the business model that is used and the marketing strategy. Roskilde is the 3rd largest music festival in Europe and approximately 130,000 people attend per day during the festival. It is a massive operation and it was intriguing to learn about the business model that is used. There is much we can learn from Esben!

Esben discussed the role in leading, managing the marketing the Roskilde Festival as well as the company division called “Orange Makers”.

Professors Jim Myers from Pikes Peak Community College and Chrissann Ruehle from Sinclair Community College presented a workshop on the 4 P’s of Marketing and launched the team projects which included developing a marketing plan for a new product.

Professors Jim Myers and Chrissann Ruehle presented on Marketing.