DOS (Continued)
Entrepreneurial Marketing: Creative Approaches to Winning Customers and Capturing Markets

In January 2006, IBC Group, BG Kazakhstan, USAID Carana, and the Beyster Institute sponsored a 1 day training program designed to help 30 start-up entrepreneurs across the West Kazkakhstan Oblast use creative marketing strategies. To build successful companies, entrepreneurs must learn how to do much more with marketing while spending much less. By focusing on the unique marketing challenges and opportunities in fast-growth, entrepreneurial firms, this training conducted by Entrepreneurial Expert, Dr. Liu, showed entrepreneurs how to utilize innovative, powerful and cost-effective marketing techniques to win customers and capture markets.

Great marketing begins with a fundamental understanding of your market. Consequently, this training addressed what entrepreneurs need to know about their customers and provided practical tools for helping entrepreneurs gain and keep customers!

Trainer:
Dr. Alex Liu is an expert of international entrepreneurship, and now serves as the Director to the RM Institute for Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation. Alex started his entrepreneur career from consulting for a Silicon Valley venture capital firm NED in 1993. Then, he founded a non-profit group CATE to organize entrepreneurship development conferences and programs. Through CATE, Dr. Liu trained more than 100 business executives for China’s high tech development zones. His entrepreneurship development conferences were attended by many famous leaders such as the president Ramos of the Philippines and Yahoo’s co-founder Jerry Yang. Most recently, Dr. Liu served as a director for TEN – the well-known organization that incubated eBay.

Our final training will be conducted in April 2006 and will focus on project management, time management and team building. The training will be conducted by a company from the UK called Lighthouse. This training will utilize new e-learning techniques in order to bring new training methodologies to our training series. This training has help us to develop a bridge between our mini MBA series and the KACEBI program – KACEBI is also outlined in this DOS.

MS SharePoint Portal Server training

The main goal of the training was to prepare specialists for the implementation of the second phase of the KPO intranet project. This training was sponsored by Karachaganak Petroleum Operating b.v. The training was conducted by ALSI Computer Company. During the training, the trainees were taught the work with the MS SharePoint Portal and an emphasis was placed on the administration and customization of the system.

After the training four participants started their work on the KPO intranet portal.

KACEBI:Kazakhstani American Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation.

I worked with US Peace Corps Volunteer, Becky Long, USAID CARANA, Eurasia Institute and IBC Group to develop the center. I focused on helping with the following: 1. initial planning of the program 2. initial funding of the project 3. support for official preparation period. KACEBI will offer the first MBA in West Kazakhstan and the first degree in entrepreneurialism and business innovation in Kazakhstan.

Overview of Project and Phases:
KACEBI stands for Kazakhstani-American Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation. The Center plans to officially open in the fall of 2006 as a part of the West-Kazakhstan Institute of Languages and Management Evrazia. Since its founding 10 years ago, Evrazia Institute has proved itself to be a prestigious institute of higher education. In 2005, the Institute ranked 7th place among 96 private and public institutions of higher education in Kazakhstan . IBC Group is an organization consisting of 3 divisions (Business Incubator, Loan Fund, and Internet Division) with the common aim of helping entrepreneurs. These two organizations recognize that KACEBI would have a positive impact on business development in the region of western Kazakhstan, and so they are teaming together with USAID Carana’s Business and Economics Education Project and international partners in order to create KACEBI!


Vision: to establish and develop a center for entrepreneurship and business innovation that encourages entrepreneurial activity and economic development in western Kazakhstan while positively impacting the business and economics education system and becoming a model center for the region.


Project Overview - for KACEBI’s first 3 years of operation

Phase I: January through July 2006 – preparation period (helped team obtain initial $140,000 in funding for project)•Trip for Evrazia Institute and new KACEBI staff to a Center for Entrepreneurship in America.
•Visits to Uralsk, Kazakhstan by 3 American professors in spring and summer for instructors’ training and then evaluation of instructor’s knowledge.
•Course materials to be developed with partner universities abroad by mid April 2006.

Phase II: First year: pilot period – August 2006 – May 2007
•Start of program with 1 year Certificate in Entrepreneurial Management for current and aspiring entrepreneurs.
•Begin offering a variety of short-term trainings and several outreach activities to connect with entrepreneurs and companies in the region.
•Invite one full-time entrepreneurial expert from abroad to work in Uralsk for 1st year of operation in the role of Academic Director and assisting in the planning of the Bachelor’s program.

Phase III: Second year – September 2007 – May 2008•Start addition of 4-year undergraduate degree program for a Bachelor’s of Business Administration (BBA) with concentrations available in Entrepreneurship and in Business Innovation.
•Expansion of outreach activities.
•Invite another expert in entrepreneurship from abroad to come to Uralsk and work for the 2nd half of Phase III to assist in the planning of the MBA program.

Phase IV: Third year – September 2008 – May 2009•Begin addition of 2-year graduate degree program for a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) with concentrations available in Entrepreneurship and in Business Innovation.
•Invite an expert in entrepreneurship from abroad to come to Uralsk for a shorter-term stay.
•Two BBA or MBA students to visit an American partner university for 1 month.