Business, Students Work Together for International Study of Trends, Technologies

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l-r: Bin Liu, Brent Horn, XiaoYan Zheng, Lauren Collins and Manish Phogat.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Henkel Consumer Goods is spearheading a project this summer to give students in Arkansas and Ireland a taste of what it is like to work in long-distance collaboration for a multinational corporation.

Henkel has operations in more than 75 countries worldwide. Brent Horn, vice president of Walmart U.S. for Henkel Consumer Goods in Rogers, said Henkel is in a position to help students collaborate over long distances – and to benefit from the innovative ideas such projects generate.

Henkel is doing that in a project involving students at the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas and at the University College Dublin’s Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. “The students are working to develop a ‘best-in-class’ process of commercialization of consumer products across the globe,” Horn said.

The project’s goal is to find a method for leveraging consumer product trends and technologies in one country and sharing those trends and technologies with the company’s operations in other countries, he said. “As a global company, Henkel has a unique opportunity, as well as a challenge, to identify and share consumer trends and technologies around the world,” Horn said.

 Heather Sprandel, director of the George W. Edwards Jr. Career Center at the Walton College, developed the collaborative project. “It is imperative for college students to gain real experience prior to graduation,” Sprandel said. “In a tough job market and with shrinking company budgets, the career center sought partners at Smurfit and Henkel to help M.B.A. students gain work experience, build skills and solve a real-world business challenge.”

Henkel, probably best known in the United States for its Dial soap brand, operates worldwide with brands and technologies in three business areas: laundry and home care, cosmetics and toiletries, and adhesive technologies.

“Henkel is a global company and is committed to partnering business with academia to solve real-life issues and drive opportunities,” Horn said.

Manish Phogat, a master’s of business administration student, leads a five-member team from the Walton College, which is working with three students at Smurfit. The five Walton College students are Phogat, Lauren Collins, XiaoYan Zheng, Bin Liu and Devavrata Misra.

“It has been a great experience working on this project,” Phogat said. “We have the opportunity to interact with the Smurfit team and understand their perspective, and we have done research on international markets. Overall, we have had a holistic approach to the project, which helped us in understanding global dynamics of the market.”

Horn said the project came about as a result of Henkel’s longstanding relationship with the Walton College. “Every year, Henkel in Northwest Arkansas employs two interns from the M.B.A. program,” he said. “To date, many of these interns have gone on to full-time employment with Henkel. Henkel has hired seven University of Arkansas M.B.A.s since 2004.”

Phogat said team members work on the project from home much of the time and meet face-to-face two to three times a week. “I hope we can add some innovative suggestions to improve Henkel’s current process of identifying a consumer trend,” he said.

U.S. team members have been able to draw on the expertise of Walton College faculty and Henkel executives, as well as marketing officials in the company’s U.S. headquarters in Scottsdale, Ariz., and in Ireland.

“From our internships to the project, we strive to involve the students in real life business situations,” Horn said. “Both Henkel and the students win in this situation. This project brings the textbook to life for the students.”

Phogat said that was true in his case. “I’ve gotten an inside view on the U.S. market and how global a company has to think even if the target market is U.S.,” he said.

The multinational team approach will give Henkel plenty of ideas with which to work and will suit its global business, Horn said. “I can tell you, based on my discussions with both the Smurfit team and the University of Arkansas team, they are attacking this challenge with two different methodologies,” he said. “From my standpoint, this will give me far more options and things to consider in the final product.”