To understand the sake industry, Japan\u2019s history and the Japanese business market, students toured a sake brewery, conducted live market research at Expo 2025 and learned from their Japanese teammates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Students from both universities also participated in workshops to develop their business ideas, pitching skills, teamwork and cross-cultural communication.<\/p>\n
Key lessons learned <\/p>\n
Three insights stood out to Chen during the learning process.<\/p>\n
\u201cBuilding a great product is only half the battle. Being able to clearly communicate its unique value is just as important,\u201d said Chen, who starts her third year in business technology management this fall.<\/p>\n
She also discovered the importance of designing open-ended market research questions that uncover real insights rather than steering people toward expected answers.<\/p>\n
\u201cCultural differences shape everything,\u201d she says. \u201cI gained a deeper appreciation for how business values and consumer expectations vary between Japan and Canada, and how that impacts product positioning and marketing.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Grewal, the experience highlighted the importance of cultural intelligence in entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to think beyond just business and consider emotional connection, tradition and storytelling,\u201d he says. \u201cBeing in a group with Japanese students, I was able to learn more about the culture firsthand, ask questions and enhance my personal and professional growth. My Japanese teammates were terrific. They were very kind, caring, curious and possessed a high level of intercultural sensitivity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pitching on the world stage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To understand the sake industry, Japan\u2019s history and the Japanese business market, students toured a sake brewery, conducted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[28,158],"class_list":{"0":"post-75812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entrepreneurship"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}