From a traditional brewery to a floating farm, students learn about Dutch and Belgian entrepreneurism
Business and finance students traveled this spring break to the cities of Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Brussels in Belgium.
Northeastern graduate Derek Brown was a bit skeptical when the chief innovation officer of a Dutch farm began his presentation to Brown and his fellow Northeastern University students on a global field study in Belgium and the Netherlands during the spring semester.
“I don’t have any experience with agriculture, and I’ve never really enjoyed all of my innovation classes that much, to be honest,” said Brown, who graduated in April from the PlusOne in International Management program at Northeastern.
But as he learned about the farm – a three-story, floating dairy farm in a Rotterdam, Netherlands, harbor – Brown changed his mind.
“Now that I’m pursuing careers full-time, I’m looking at a lot of sustainability, innovation and global expansion pursuits, which is exactly what the floating farm presentation was about,” Brown recently told Northeastern Global News. “It’s something I’m very interested in and definitely am pursuing.”
Global field studies are graduate elective courses that combine intensive academic coursework during the semester with a one-week trip to learn about business practices and culture in other countries. The students also do a case analysis of a business they learned about on the trip and assess opportunities for international expansion.
Business and finance students embarked on the field trip during the spring break to Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Brussels in Belgium.
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But the book work began just a T stop away from Northeastern’s Boston campus, in the Dutch and Flemish Art galleries at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
“That art tells a story about the history, tells a story about international trade, tells a story about war and conflict – it’s always been there,” said Frank Hartmann, Joseph M. Golemme research professor of accounting at Northeastern and a native of the Netherlands who led the field study.
Hartmann said that he wanted the students on the field study to see beyond the canals of Amsterdam or the Royal Palace in Brussels and examine Dutch and Belgian entrepreneurialism. For example, the students visited a specialty chocolate factory and the brewery of a multigenerational beer brand in Brussels.
Deborah Buzuayehu, an MBA student whose family has a multigenerational business in Ethiopia, said she found the lessons around long-term stewardship, durability across generations and balancing tradition with growth, “particularly interesting and relatable,” because of her family’s business experience over the years.
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There was also some politics thrown in. Students learned how the local politics at Rotterdam Town Hall (where Hartmann’s daughter worked) compared with general governance in the U.S. While in The Hague, they participated in discussions about the electrification of public transportation throughout the European Union.
“It felt like every day was packed with super insightful company visits and then we got to see a lot of cultural things too,” said Brynn Coughlin, who will graduate with a master’s degree in international management in August.
The combination of the cultural and the entrepreneurial was particularly appealing to Coughlin during a visit to the Rijksmuseum, where the students learned from a marketing manager about how the institution was using digital technology. The museum has done everything from YouTube shorts on how they used artificial intelligence to investigate characters in Rembrandt’s famous 17th century militia portrait, “The Night Watch,” to visualizing a restoration of the painting and even enabling museum-goers to imprint the image on household items like curtains.
“I could see myself wanting to work a similar job like that in the future, even though I have never even known or even thought about marketing at a museum,” Coughlin said.
She added that “the international lens” provided by the trip would help her in the business world, as it demonstrated and emphasized how different cultural practices can influence business decisions.
Brown agreed.
“I think it was a super valuable experience,” Brown said.
