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Leaders from LG Electronics smile for the cameras Aug. 21, 2009, at the Renaissance Glendale Hotel & Spa, a resort next to the massive stadium where the Arizona Cardinals play football.
Everyone in the group wears a black cap and gown as the leaders take turns posing for photographs in front of a Thunderbird poster outside the resort’s main convention hall.
Graduation day has arrived after 14 months in an Executive MBA program designed exclusively for LG, and the 34 high-potential managers from the Seoul-based company are ready to celebrate. But Choong Keun Cho ’09 still has one assignment to complete before receiving his Thunderbird degree.
The Digital Appliance Division group leader at LG’s regional office in Dubai will represent his class and his company as a graduation speaker during the summer commencement.
“We’ve had lots and lots of assignments,” Cho tells the audience. “But I think the most difficult assignment for me was writing this graduation speech.”
Cho says the custom coursework taught at the LG Learning Center in South Korea and Thunderbird’s campus in Arizona has boosted his global mindset, and finding the right words in English to express his gratitude is difficult.
“I thought I was quite globally minded,” he says before the ceremony. “But I saw areas where I could improve.”
Cho, who has spent 16 years overseas for LG in places such as Germany, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, says his growth helps illustrate the power of the ongoing Thunderbird partnership.
Technology is important for LG Electronics, a Fortune Global 100 company that produces consumer electronics, mobile telecommunications, home appliances and business solutions. “But it’s the people doing the operations that matter most,” Cho says. “Therefore, we need to educate people to put them under the same vision of our global strategy.”
Overall, Cho’s group of LG classmates is the fourth to graduate from the Thunderbird program, which will produce about 150 graduates by the time the fifth cohort finishes in 2010. Most enter the program with more than 15 years of industry experience, and participants include senior executives such as LG Mobile Communications Vice President Jong Hwa Choi ’09.
Choi says the Thunderbird program bridges the gap between theory and practice and broadens the perspective of LG managers by exposing them to the challenges of other departments, companies and industries in different parts of the world.
“Everybody is already an expert in their own functions,” Choi says. “The Thunderbird program provides an opportunity for us to compare and learn from people with different backgrounds.”
10 years in the making
Beth Stoops, Thunderbird’s senior vice president of Corporate Learning, says the idea for a custom degree program evolved from a series of discussions with LG that started more than 10 years before the first classroom instruction.
Stoops began visiting Korea frequently in the 1980s to recruit Thunderbird students and develop relationships with Korean companies. Eventually she started visiting LG executives such as Young-Kee Kim, who served at the time as executive vice president and chief human resource officer of LG Electronics.
“Every time I would go to Korea, I would always make a call on LG,” Stoops says.
The company occasionally paid for its managers to enroll in Thunderbird degree programs, and feedback from the graduates was positive. LG also knew about Thunderbird Corporate Learning programs with Korean rivals such as SK Group.
“They knew of our credibility,” Stoops says. “They knew we had faculty that had experience working with Korean companies, and they knew we were at the top of our game in global business.”
But the sides could not agree on the right type of executive education program for LG. A breakthrough came in 2004, when one LG executive suggested the development of a custom executive MBA.
Stoops returned to Arizona and mentioned the idea to Thunderbird Professor Graeme Rankine, Ph.D., who had directed an executive MBA program in Taiwan and taught other Asian programs.
Rankine, an Australian who had never visited Korea, immediately supported the idea. “Going to a new part of the world was part of the interest for me,” he says.
Talks with LG accelerated, and Thunderbird finalized a contract in March 2005. Instruction started with 25 initial students in June 2005.
A degree of their own
Rankine says the biggest challenge after 10 years of nurturing the relationship was to design a custom program and solve all the logistical problems in just three months.
As academic director working with LG, his first step was to assemble a cross-functional team that included Stoops and a handful of other Thunderbird professors with expertise in global business, international studies, culture and languages.
“Faculty members were involved in designing a product that they were going to teach,” Rankine says. “This created buy-in from the start.”
What was clear was that the curriculum could not be something off the shelf. LG wanted every course tied to its mission and global vision.
“You don’t want to completely reinvent the wheel,” Rankine says. “You’ve still got to do some accounting and finance. But we wanted to make it relevant to LG.”
One key was the addition of Fernando Contreras as a senior program manager. “Fernando is the thread that runs between Korea and the U.S., between the company and the school,” Stoops says. “He’s on the ground in Korea, working and interfacing with LG.”
Rankine says the long-run view that led LG to invest in a custom MBA program shows up frequently when he visits Korea. During his most recent trip to the LG Learning Center in March 2009, he encountered 200 to 300 new employees in the dormitories.
“You’ve got to take a long-run view in the depths of a recession to be hiring,” Rankine says. “Many companies are laying off people like they are sacks of potatoes.”
Stoops says LG’s commitment to its people continues to impress her. “They really do believe in human capital,” she says. “They walk the talk.”
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