History of the Global Consulting Practicum
Founded in 1978, the predecessor of GCP, the Wharton Multinational Marketing and Management Program, was established at the Wharton School to assist foreign businesses with the challenges they encounter when attempting to penetrate the American market. That program had a four-fold mission: to provide students with valuable hands-on experience applying the concepts, tools, and paradigms they learned in their classes; to educate multinational marketing executives; to enrich the multinational experience of the Wharton and partner faculty; and to foster business growth through increased international trade activity.
The Wharton Recanati Partnership, the pilot partnership, was formed in 1978 between the Wharton School and The Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration at Tel Aviv University, supported by the faculty of both schools, to help the Israeli companies enter or more effectively penetrate the U.S. market. In 1988, the Partnership was partially endowed by the Paul P. Dosberg Foundation, Inc. In 1992, Israeli companies were offered the opportunity to add strategic entry plans for the Canadian market, joining with the Schulich School of Business of York University of Toronto, Canada, in a tri-national effort, The Dosberg Wharton-Recanati-York Partnership.
Professor Leonard Lodish was a founder of the program in 1978 and has taught the program throughout its history.
Expanded Goals. During 1997-98, Wharton began a major expansion of the GCP. Building on the twenty years of experience with the Wharton Multinational Marketing and Management Program and partnerships with the Recanati and Schulich Schools, the GCP was formed to include those partnerships and others. The goal is to expand the program globally through relationships with leading universities and business schools in Latin America, East Asia, and India. Eventually, over 120 Wharton MBA students in the program and over 120 international MBA students from leading international business schools will participate annually. In addition, about 30 advanced Wharton MBA students would act as facilitators for the consulting teams.
Initial Accomplishments.The first partnership to be established under the new Global Consulting Practicum was with the Universidad Adolfo Ibañez in Chile: one of the top 5 MBA programs in Latin America. Within this partnership, international student teams undertook two projects during 1997-98, two in 1998-99, and two in 1999-2000. In 1999-2000, a partnership with the EGADE School of the Monterrey Institute of Technology (the number one MBA program in Latin America) began with two projects. In 2000-2001, the Wharton-UAI program increased the number of client projects from 2 to 4. In 2001, Wharton began a GCP partnership with the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and the most recent partner to enter in 2003 was the Universidad del Pacifico in Peru.
Also, in 1998-99, leading strategic consulting firms began to support and participate in the GCP. In 1998-99, the firms provided 5 Workshops in “consulting basics” to students and young consultants to coach teams. The Workshops titles were: Project Definition and Structuring by Booz-Allen & Hamilton; Work Plan and Interview Hints by Andersen Strategic Consulting; Creativity in Project Definition by BCG ; Managing Client Relations by AT Kearney; Presentation Effectiveness by Bain. In 1999-2000 and 2000-2001, the workshop program and collaboration with strategic consulting firms were further developed.
Plans for Expansion. The vision is to substantially increase student enrollment through Wharton partnerships with schools in the Mid-East, Asia, and Latin America (4 to 6 projects per school) within the next ten years.
For a visual depiction of our current partner countries click here.
