For the very first time in history, the largest oil field in China - DaQing - sent a group of executives to the Silicon Valley for a five week Executive Training Program at San Jose State University; China America Management Consulting Corporation was responsible for making the connection. GEP was given the honor of arranging two days of site visits for this group as part of their training program.

The objectives of the delegation was to meet with companies to learn about innovation policies and practices, innovation management concepts and, of course, learn about the newest and latest product innovations the companies have to offer the market.

GEP successfully arranged visits to Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, VeriSign and the famous IDEO; the delegation was particularly impressed with IDEO. We even arranged a luncheon with a few senior people from Sun Microsystems who are responsible for partnering with start-ups in the Valley.

GEP was proud to work with DaQing, San Jose State and the China America Management Consulting Corporation to provide for this Professional Study Tour™. It was a pleasure to spend time with the group and watch as they explored the companies and learned about how innovation is created and fostered here in the Silicon Valley.

The Lyles Center of Entrepreneurship at Fresno State University sponsored a one-day Professional Study Tour™ on November 30th, 2007 for students in their Entrepreneurship Mentorship Program. The group consisted of 18 students, 3 mentors and the Director of the Lyles Center-Tim Stearns.The theme of the study tour was “Concept to Corporation.” The objective was to meet with large, successful organizations to learn about their trials and tribulations during the start-up to IPO process. During this one-day trip, GEP provided visits to Cypress Semiconductor, Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV) and Sun Microsystems.

GEP was proud to work with Fresno State to provide their student group with a Professional Study Tour™. The students were an excellent group of knowledgeable and ambitious student entrepreneurs and we were honored to service them.

For the first time in the history of Estonia, the government sponsored a program which sent a group of 17 business executives and government officials to the United States with the purpose of meeting companies in both Seattle, Washington and the California’s Bay Area’s Silicon Valley. As this was a very historic and important trip, even the Vice Major of Tallinn(capital of Estonia) honored us with his participation. The visit was made possible by Enterprise Estonia.The delegations objectives were to meet with companies to learn about business development opportunities (especially in Estonia and the U.S.) and to learn about the Silicon Valley business environment; how this region developed and what public and private sector has done to foster its growth.

While the group was in Seattle, they met with Microsoft and Boeing; this was independent of GEP. While in the Silicon Valley, GEP arranged visits to Cisco, US Market Access Center, Google Inc., Plug and Play Tech Center, City Hall in San Jose and San Jose State University. To end the trip, we arranged a luncheon at the famous Mountain Winery in Saratoga which overlooked the entire Bay Area. The group arrived on September 11th and departed on September 15th, 2007.

The executives and government officials learned a great deal from this trip and the discussion between the executives and companies such as Google and Cisco were very productive and may just lead to some business opportunities in the future. Both the group and the hosting companies found the introductions and dialogue significant to their business development. And, in fact, this was a historic visit for both Cisco and Google as they have never had a group from Estonia visit them.

GEP was proud to work with the government of Estonia – Enterprise Estonia - to provide this group with a Professional Study Tour™. It was a pleasure to spend time with the group and watch as they explored the companies and business opportunities and the famous Silicon Valley.

Thanks to our partnership with International and Extended Studies at San Jose State University, Global Educational Program provided a Professional Study Tour™ for a group of Russian Executives in the Telco space from July 11th to July 13th, 2007.The delegations main objectives were to see the most modern technologies Telecommunications and IT companies in Silicon Valley had to offer their companies, learn about business development opportunities, learn about Silicon Valley incubators and network with some of the top executives in the Valley.

GEP is extremely proud to announce we were able to expose our delegation to all of their main objectives. The delegation met with Orange-France Telecom’s R&D Center located in South San Francisco, T-Ventures (which is the venture arm of T-Mobile), Sun Microsystems, LiteScape Inc., US Market Access Center and Enterprise Law Group.

Additionally, GEP provided the group with a networking event at Plug and Play Tech Center where they were able to network with fellow Russian Executives based in the Valley and received presentation from “hot’ start-ups in the Telco space.

GEP was proud to work with its partner – IES at SJSU - to provide this group with a Professional Study Tour™ that focused on the Telecommunications Space.

Enterprise Estonia, a government funded program, brought a group of journalist from Estonia to the U.S. for a conference on Innovation and Journalism at Stanford University from May 21st to the 23rd. As they traveled such a great distance and happened to be in the innovation capital of the world, Enterprise Estonia asked GEP to schedule some visits for them to compliment their conference. The journalist objectives were to learn about the innovation policies and concepts of companies in the Silicon Valley, learn how the media is involved in this process and network with fellow peers. GEP was proud to provide a day trip to Red Herring, the San Jose Mercury News and Socialtext Inc. for this group. The journalist were able to meet all their objectives and make a connection with some of the top organizations based in Silicon Valley.

MBA students from ESCP-EAP getting a degree in Innovation and Entrepreneurship came to California for their Spring Break to learn about entrepreneurship in the famous Silicon Valley. The students arrived on March 24th and departed on April 2nd

Foregoing a traditionally Spring Break, these students opted to travel to the California Bay Area on their own budget to meet with entrepreneurs, start-up companies and large corporations to learn about Silicon Valley and what makes this area so unique.

The students visited such organization as Google, eBay, Solus, Plug and Play Tech Center, Applied Materials and even meet with Mr. Eric Benhamou. GEP was honored to provide partial service to this group of students and assist with making arrangements for some of their site visits and lectures.

Approximately 85 MBA students from MIT visited Plug and Play Tech Center on Thursday, January 5th 2007 as part of their annual Tech Trek to Silicon Valley. The students toured the Center, enjoyed a complimentary cocktail and networking session and received presentations from several start-up companies based at the Center.The companies that presented to the group were Adesto Technologies, Retrevo, SigmaQuest, and AnswerU.com; the founders of AnswerU.com happen to be alumni of MIT Sloan.  The presenters addressed issues surrounding experiences in their start-ups and provided valuable advice on how and when to start your own business.  Of course, not surprisingly, they spoke about the culture of Silicon Valley and how most of them moved to the California Bay Area specifically to start their business. 

Global Educational Program was happy to arrange MIT’s visit to Plug and Play Tech Center on the Center’s behalf.  The students commented that hearing from start-up companies was a great why for them to balance their experience between large organizations and start-up companies; which is truly representative of the Silicon Valley culture.  GEP also assisted in arranging visits for MBA’s from Cornell and Harvard to the Center.

“Our visit to the Plug and Play Center was fantastic. Students heard from experienced, successful entrepreneurs and got a ground-level view of what high-tech start ups in Silicon Valley are really like. This was one of the great highlights of our trek, and we’d like to thank Syed and Shobeir at the center and Chris at GEP for setting up this terrific event.”

               ~Glenn Wilson, 2007 Tech Trek to Silicon Valley Program Coordinator

Thanks to our partnership with Explora International, Global Educational Program provided a Professional Study Tour™ for a group of government officials from the Vietnamese Ministry of Science & Technology on November 8th and 9th, 2006.

The delegation wished to learn about innovation and entrepreneurship, the linkage between R&D and large universities, the legislative aspects that foster innovation and entrepreneurship and the Tech Center’s in Silicon Valley that serve as a resource for start-ups to become successful.

GEP is proud to announce we were able to expose our delegation to all of their required study themes in just two, very compact, days. We had them meet with a non-profit tech center, a profit driven tech center, a director of a center for entrepreneurship who is also a prestigious and prominent author and a government official from the City of San Jose.

We were honored to be given the opportunity to serve this delegation and we look forward to providing Professional Study Tours™ to delegations such as this in the future.

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