2019 Outcomes of the Maryland Global Export Consulting Program at Maryland Smith

Marina Augoustidis, assistant director of CIBE programs at the Center for Global Business, Robert H. Smith School of Business, writes about the 2019 Maryland Global Export Consulting program.

The Center for Global Business (CGB) at Maryland Smith successfully completed its third year of the Maryland Global Export Consulting program, a collaboration between CGB and the Maryland Department of Commerce that offers Maryland-based companies the opportunity to work with a team of the school’s MBA or undergraduate students to address challenges companies are facing in going global. This year, two teams of MBA students and one team of nine undergraduates applied their classroom learning to real-world settings and provided data and recommendations to Maryland healthcare companies seeking to take their goods into the global marketplace.

One team of MBA students worked with RoosterBio Inc., a private regenerative medical technology company based in Frederick, Md., on a market prioritization assessment of countries in the Asia Pacific and Europe. The mission of RoosterBio Inc. is to accelerate the cell-based bioeconomy by providing standardized stem cell product platforms that enable rapid clinical and commercial translation. After months of research and data analysis, the team recommended three countries from which RoosterBio could create a complete go-to-market strategy to export their stem cell product platforms.

The undergraduates of the Smith Global Consulting Fellows program consulted on a project with Restorative Therapies (RTI), a Baltimore-based company that provides customized functional electronic stimulation (FES) for neurological impairments. The project included research and the identification of target distributors, healthcare facilities, and the competitive landscape of four European countries and China. The team’s final recommendations included details that RTI will use to negotiate contract terms, build performance measures for each distributor, and inform their global expansion strategy.

The other MBA team worked with the Columbia, Maryland-based company ACell, a regenerative medicine company that develops and manufactures products designed to facilitate the body’s ability to repair and remodel tissue, to assess the international veterinary market to export their surgical wound treatment. The team conducted secondary research on a preferred group of 10 countries and considered the rankings of ease of doing business, regulatory approvals, and market demand. The final deliverable to ACell’s executive team took place in May and included details about the top three most viable markets and an entry strategy for those markets for the client’s veterinary product line.

All of the clients of the Maryland Global Export Consulting program have indicated they intend to follow through with each of the teams’ recommendations and that the program has been beneficial to their global reach and international expansion. Students of the program continuously emphasized the practical, real-world consulting experience they have gained and the opportunity they have had to contribute to companies with a real need. As Dhivyan Karunakaran, an undergraduate student on the RTI project team, reflects, "The Maryland Global Consulting program gave me the exciting opportunity to work with a local medical device manufacturer that is expanding into the UK, France, Germany, and Italy. Throughout this engagement, I was able to apply the concepts I learned from a global business strategy course to examine the competitive landscape of the four European countries the firm is targeting."

Maryland-based companies interested in working with an undergraduate or MBA consulting team on the Maryland Global Export Consulting program through the Center for Global Business can visit the program page or contact global@rhsmith.umd.edu. Students interested in enrolling in the program should also contact CGB at global@rhsmith.um.edu.

This program was funded in part by CIBE, a Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education.