WDI Assists with the Creation of a Marketing Center in Kazakhstan
March 2006
Under the Central Asia Business and Economics Education (B&EE) project, financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by CARANA Corporation, WDI was recently tasked with establishing a marketing center at the International Academy of Business (IAB) in Kazakhstan. The mission of the center is to build bridges between the “real” and academic worlds serving the marketing knowledge needs of the business community, while giving students real-world training, enhancing marketing curriculum up to international standards and providing relevant training courses to address the challenges and issues facing marketers today. For this assignment, WDI sent Dr. Aaron Ahuvia of the University of Michigan-Dearborn School of Management to Almaty, Kazakhstan to assist in the development of this center.
Dr. Ahuvia helped IAB create a more focused strategy for the creation of the marketing center by narrowing their focus on providing continuing education to working professionals and opportunities for IAB students to apply their skills in a real-world setting by working for clients under the supervision of a professional. In addition, a budget was outlined, job descriptions were created and a more formal definition of the relationship between the center and IAB was negotiated.
During his time in Almaty, Dr. Ahuvia also spent time reviewing the marketing curriculum, conducting a business seminar to marketing professionals and conducting a training session with IAB marketing faculty.
CARANA is extremely pleased by the work that was completed and hopes to use the center at IAB as a model that can be replicated in other Central Asian countries.