Bernhard Dachs, Global Executive MBA 2026
That was my first question when we heard about the trip. I’d never been. I watched the World Cup this summer like everyone else, but past football, Nacho Libre and the food, I honestly didn’t know much about the country. I did expect to come home with a different view since a week somewhere new tends to do that. But the vibrancy of Mexico’s economic hub surprised me more than I thought it would.
The lectures started once we arrived. One question stuck with me all week: what is the value I offer and what do my customers actually get? It’s easy to lose sight of that in the middle of discussing globalisation strategy and frameworks. I kept asking it after every company we visited.
What the companies showed me
We visited three companies. Two of them, Grupo Bimbo and Cemex, started in Mexico and built global businesses from there. The third, Novartis, went the other way and chose to come to Mexico.
At Bimbo, what stood out was the weight they placed on culture and the rule of law. Hearing the company directly talk about how much both matter in Mexico made the theory from class feel more applicable.
Timing and patience
Culture came up again at the innovation forum, this time from founders and business leaders rather than a multinational. The theme I heard most was that timing is everything, something we’d also discussed in class. Get it right and a business takes off. Get it wrong and you wait. Waiting is easier said than done when investors want results, and that tension between patience and investor pressure remained a recurring theme.
Listening to the founders, I also noticed how much comes down to interpersonal relationships and trust. This one I know from my work in real estate. Half of what gets done in my job depends on partners I have no formal authority over.
Was I wrong about Mexico?
One thing is for sure: the traffic really is a headache – I can confirm that first-hand. But I’d underestimated the place. Mexico has a deep industrial base and sits right next to the world’s largest consumer market. One of our evening speakers talked about how to bring Mexico forward and put a plan in place to take the country to its next stage. You heard some version of that all week, in the lecture room and over dinner.
I still think about that first question from class. What’s the value, and what does the customer actually get? I heard a variety of different answers in Mexico City. What I do know is that the trip helped me get closer to my own answer.
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