Brianna teaches a course on Cross Cultural Research at the Institute of Design (ID), IIT in Chicago, IL in collaboration with ESPM in São Paulo, Brazil.

We’re excited to announce a new initiative that Brianna is involved in. On March 16, 2010, Brianna will kick off a class at the Institute of Design (ID), IIT called “Cross Cultural Research.” It’s a 7-week class, in which her students in Chicago, IL at ID will be collaborating virtually with a team of students at ESPM in São Paulo, Brazil.

The topic of discovery will be home security. Students will be broken into teams, each tasked with defining for the “company” that they are working for the cultural differences, barriers, etc. that they must be cognizant of when selling their services and products in the foreign market of Brazil or the US.

The class is an experiment, with a number of wild cards embedded in it, but nothing that’s not typical in any cross border research initiative conducted. Most importantly, the curriculum of the class drives home the philosophy that Sylver practices in their Cross Border consulting work. Local researchers who have the region’s culture imprinted into who they are–how they think, behave–will be partnered with “foreigners” who are largely unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the local culture. The duality of the “in-the-know” and “fresh perspective” is what will enable us to uncover the “truth” of what customers need, as it relates to each of the new markets.

Students will create cultural frameworks to show the differences in behaviors and assumptions across cultures, as the final deliverable for the class. They’ll also leverage these frameworks to make recommendations back to the “company” for whom they are working on how they should proceed based on the export strategy favored by the organization.

Brianna and Ellen Kiss, the professor from ESPM, are actively seeking articles on international research to provide as the reading list for the course. If you know of some excellent articles in this realm, please pass them along. You can reach Brianna directly at brianna@sylverconsulting.com.

Categories: Cross Cultural Research, Global Expansion Research