Bus 600: Management Communications with Technology Tools
Instructor: Sara Garski
January 31, 2011
With the rapidly growing state of todays start-ups, fostering good overseas partnerships are essential in any business seeking to expand their company internationally. With such expansions, come becoming inter-culturally involved with those partnerships so that both party’s implicated can expand exponentially, building off one another. In the Case Study of LaJolla Software, Inc.; overseas expansion was laid out in their companies plans for months. Their intent? To deliver a new product launch that could potentially prove to be very profitable. But to achieve such aspirations they needed a business partner that knew the market in which they wished to serve. When the opportunity presented itself to make such a merger they knew it would take more than their companies most brilliant programers to take on the challenge. And after constant visits to Japan, correspondence via fax, and many meetings with the interested shareholders and business partners of Ichi Ban Heavy Industries, the alliance was formed. Now all that was needed for the deal to be complete was for LaJolla to meet with Ichi Ban’s organizational management team where they were to learn more about their new partnership on the foreign territories of the United States. The problem, nevertheless, was communication; getting the Japanese to understand American culture and more importantly how LaJolla Software, Inc. functioned in it. And being that their first partnership was with the Japanese they needed Ichi Ban to understand their purpose so that the two could unite as one solid entity of ingenuity for all of Asia to see. More specifically, here you have one company attempting to expand their products overseas. But in order for them to do so they need to first partner up with a company that is more knowledgeable of the territory in which they