Most businesses who take on a master’s student’s dissertation see it as a favour to the university.
But what I’ve discovered after working with master’s students at the Leeds University Business School, is that it’s a privilege rather than a favour.
Pham Do’s an MSc International Business student at the University who was paired with us for her masters’ dissertation.
The drive Pham brought to the University as an international student – already owning a bakery brand of her own – was remarkable.
She has big ambitions to take her own brand into new markets while working at a leading Vietnamese company expanding internationally.
She chose her dissertation topic with that future in mind: “How a UK business should adapt its marketing for the Australian market.”
But her dissertation depended on senior business leaders, who are “typically difficult to reach”.
On the 3rd of July, the university facilitated a call with Pham and our team to discuss the business leaders her dissertation needed.
Her dissertation only needed 3–5 Australian business leaders to interview, so she planned to invite 8–10.
“I think you’re missing a zero.” was my response.
Most business leaders ignore an unpaid interview request, because it costs them time and offers them nothing in return, so landing 3–5 interviews meant inviting at least 80–100 business leaders.
You don’t just send a message to 100 business leaders and expect a good Samaritan to drop out of the sky. You sit down and you craft a compelling reason why giving their time freely is something worth doing.
You also don’t simply drop your note and get a response. Business leaders are busy folks by nature. You follow up in a way that delivers value, so you get noticed, and don’t get dismissed.
That means weeks of follow ups, tracking, cataloguing.
If you’re thinking “use AI”, you clearly don’t know how business leaders operate. An AI generated message reeks of disdain. If you don’t even have the decency to write the message yourself, why should I give you my time?
If you’re thinking “automate it”, you’d do well to read LinkedIn’s End User License Agreement (UELA) because you’re one trigger away from having your account restricted (or even banned in some cases).
Those invitations were the 1st step in Pham’s research. Using Crowded Igloo as her example of a UK business expanding into Australia, Pham’s dissertation questioned whether the 2 markets are as alike as they appear at first glance.
On paper, the UK and Australia look alike, sharing:
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a language,
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the same legal roots,
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and a free trade agreement.
But Pham’s research dove deep into the “psychic distance” between them, a perceived gap in how 2 countries do business that can exist “even when the two countries appear similar on the surface”.
In 1996, researchers O’Grady and Lane studied Canadian retailers moving into the US, and found that the closer 2 markets look, the less a business investigates how the new market really differs from home.
The retailers that adjusted for the differences before entering did well, while those who treated the US as “simply a larger Canada” struggled.
Pham applied that concept to the UK and Australia, using the CAGE framework, which compares 2 countries across 4 kinds of “distance”:
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Cultural (for example social norms),
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Administrative (for example laws),
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Geographic (for example time zones and temperatures),
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Economic (for example incomes).
She concluded that the most useful habit for a business entering any new market may be treating its assumptions as “hypotheses to be tested rather than conclusions to act on unexamined”.
Pham’s road to that conclusion began with her interview questions, and a challenge I presented to her.
She initially asked if we could walk her through our full client journey and marketing process, as a base for her questions.
But I challenged her to write the questions herself first, because “in the real world, you have to be able to on your own.” Once she had her questions, we’d go through them together.
Pham gracefully accepted the challenge, taking the CAGE framework and flipping it into questions that were “natural business language rather than academic terminology”.
Together we cut what didn’t belong, so each interview spent its time where the real differences were most likely to surface.
By the 3rd of August, her questions were ready and I was the guinea pig…
After the interview, she sharpened her questions for the business leaders, using what she learned from our interview.
Pham then interviewed the Australian business leaders we’d facilitated for her dissertation. (a sincere thank you to each and every one of you who made the time!)
Finding a case firm “willing to invest genuine time and thought into a student research project”, Pham says, once felt like “a significant hurdle”, but she adds, from the very first meeting “Storm made me feel welcomed and genuinely invested in my research.”
Our sessions became somewhere she could test her ideas: “The sessions were far more than formal interviews, they were collaborative conversations where I could test my thinking and receive honest, constructive feedback.”
And about the senior business leaders who are “typically difficult to reach”? She says, “Storm actively helped recruit participants through his professional network - something I could not have achieved independently.”
The challenge of writing her own questions left her with a skill, as the experience taught her “how to transform academic concepts into business language”.
The student who once felt “uncertain about how to access real business perspectives” learned to “communicate confidently with experienced business leaders.”
Being told on the 3rd of July that she was missing a zero, she now says: “The quality of primary data I collected through this partnership was central to completing my dissertation…”
When she sent us her finished dissertation on the 11th of September, she wrote: “…I indeed enjoyed every step of this journey - your story (and your ‘Believe you can’ mindset!) stuck with me the whole way through.”
Now back in Vietnam, she says her dissertation and working with Crowded Igloo had been “one of the highlights of my year.”
Reading Pham’s words, take me back to the 3rd of July when her plan was missing a zero.
3 months later, she’s back running her bakery brand and aiming for the stars.
This isn’t the end of Pham’s story, and working with her has been as much fun as it was a privilege.
Most students and entrepreneurs will reach a moment similar to Pham’s, and they’ll either let someone else do the thinking for them or say yes to every challenge they’re presented with.
Pham said yes, and every result since belongs to her.
Pham believed she could succeed… and she did.
