Why business schools do not teach importance of business partners?

My current primary job is about establishing and developing business partnerships in different countries of Europe in CyberWatcher, a provider of technology for web monitoring and business intelligence. It means that our partners use this technology to enhance offerings for their potential and actual clients.

For me it means the tight cooperation with our partners - if they succeed, we succeed too. It's a classical win-win situation. But it is normally quite a long and complicated process - both parties need to win mutual respect and trust - and then work hard in order to maintain it.

Interestingly, I don't remember learning about the option of business partnerships as one way to develop a company in the business school's curriculum. It simply is not the part of a regular business theory. Competition - yes. Supply chain - having suppliers, customers and so on - yes. Franchise - yes.

But building a product/service offering together with another company in a specific market, sharing both inputs and outcomes of such cooperation - this is something a normal "inside-the-box" business manager is apparently not supposed to learn about. I have learnt it from the practice - and see the tangible benefits of such work.

Who is more popular - Osama bin Laden or Kate Middleton?

We did a short fun media analysis in the company I work for - CyberWatcher. The question was: which of the two events - the recent royal wedding in the UK or the death of bin Laden - attracted more media attention in selected countries.

The answer varies from country to country and can be found at CyberWatcher blog.

Here is one example of media coverage of Osama bin Laden versus Kate Middleton in Germany:

Working at CyberWatcher

Although my main purpose of coming to Norway was and still is studying, I am happy to say that the second main output of my activities here is my work at CyberWatcher.

I have a good working atmosphere - relaxed working style, yet concrete and down-to-earth tasks and expectations.

I have great colleagues too - smart, easy-going and very collaborative (I love Scandinavian working culture!).

Last but not least, I have very interesting working tasks. Being responsible for the market of Central and Eastern Europe, I am running sales and marketing campaign with companies in the fields of media monitoring, media intelligence and market research. As I believe in our products and I see the real value coming from them for other companies, it's really fun to do this job. Especially taking into account the geographical scope of my activities - so far, I have been in constant communication with companies from Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Estonia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Czech Republic and Slovakia. Will be adding more to this list. :)

It's great to learn in practice advanced ways of doing sales - no matter how good product or service one has, it must find its customers. Moreover, it's great to learn in practice what does it mean - to constantly deliver a business value to other companies and to provide them support in it.

I am looking for an intern

When I was an active member of AIESEC, I set a goal for myself that in some year, instead of offering interns from abroad to the companies, I would take one. It is happening earlier than I expected :)

Indeed, we have decided in the company I work in (CyberWatcher) that an AIESEC intern would be helpful in executing our current strategy of conquering the markets of Central and Eastern Europe. I am assigned as a project manager for this. So, the code for the internship (all people who have gone through AIESEC experience know what does it mean) is TN-IN-NO-MC-2009-1302.

Looking forward for having AIESEC intern working with me!

CyberWatcher - the company I am working for

I am working in the company called CyberWatcher since the middle of October. It is the part-time job (15-20 hours a week) which allows me to study in university, develop professionally and have stable earnings. The latter is important when you live in one of the most expensive countries in the world :)

CyberWatcher is a small Norwegian company established by AIESEC alumni, Morten. AIESEC has actually connected two of us. I'm generally quite happy with the way I manage to capitalise on my AIESEC connections and my network (and it is just one part of what has AIESEC experience given to me!). Morten has established and is CEO of the company.

As the name of the company says, we watch the cyber-space there :) And that is actually pretty much concised business-model of the firm: any client who wants to be updated with certain news about certain things from certain online sources, can get such service from us.

Since the time I was studying Journalism and Communication in Estonia, I have been interested in information management as well as effective information and communication skills (in terms of organisations rather than individuals). The work in CyberWatcher gives me opportunity to learn about the ways people and organisations can have more effective information management thanks to certain software platform. What is good about our service is the fact that it can be implemented everywhere in the world by everyone who speaks English.

As I am not the man created to work in big organisations, I very much like the fact the company has nine employees in Norway together with me (in additions, few more people in Sweden and the United Kingdom). It gives me opportunity to work on different tasks and projects. In fact, I don't have any precise job title or job description. Latter would be rather a disturbant factor for a freedom-loving, independent and critical person like me :)

Another nice coincidence is that Morten, the head of the company, has graduated from the same business school I am enrolled in (BI Norwegian School of Management). He respects my studieds and my AIESEC experience and gives me quite a lot of freedom.

It is actually a working culture in Norway in general - people are not being pushed or overly supervised. My colleagues all come and go in different times of the day, in case of neccesity they work from home. I find it all very welcoming - this is one of many aspects why Norway is so well-developed and quite harmonic society (compared to vast majority of other countries), in my opinion.