Vietnam Required Reading List
Godes, David B., "Glass Egg Digital Media," Harvard Business School (6 March 2008).
http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/access/9142992
The Glass Egg reading is a case study from Harvard Business School consistent with the case study approach often taught at the graduate school level. Please refer to the email sent to each student directly from Harvard Business Publishing to access the Glass Egg case from the Harvard Business Education site and/or refer to the URL above.
I have chosen the Glass Egg reading for several reasons, not the least of which is that we are scheduled to visit Glass Egg on Tuesday, 17 May, where we will be briefed by and we will talk with the individuals mentioned in the study: Phil Tran, CEO, Steve Reid, CFO, with whom I met in March, and/or Charles Speyer, COO. In fact, this will be our third visit to Glass Egg and it has, in the past, proved to be one of our more popular company visits.
The Glass Egg study was also chosen because it provides us with a case study model that we can apply to the other companies we visit, a model that we can use to understand and to analyze those companies, and a model that we can use to construct our pre-departure as well as post-trip powerpoint presentations and to write our post-departure company reports.
Pham, Andrew X., Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam (New York: Picador, 1999).
I think this book will provide you with an insightful look at contemporary Viet Nam through the eyes of a Viet Kieu, a foreign Vietnamese, who returns to his native land only to find himself a stranger in the land where he was born and from which he fled after the fall/or the liberation of Saigon, today known as Ho Chi Minh City. In fact, many of the people we will meet on our program are Viet Kieu who fled the country as refugees yet who have returned to their homeland and created the companies we will visit to include: Glass Egg Digital Media, Ascenx Technologies, and Viet Thai International, to name but a few.
The book is an easy read and, in that regard, you may want to save it for the long plane ride over. In any case, there are passages on Pham's arrival at Tan Son Nhat International Airport where we will arrive on Sunday evening, 8 May, and chapters on the experience of a foreigner trying to navigate around the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, so you will have some sense of the setting that you are about to enter. The book also provides us with an historical perspective of Viet Nam set within the background of America's Vietnam War, or Viet Nam's American War.