In March a group of 7 Dutch business owners/entrepreneurs came to Istanbul for a  training. They were all owners of fast growing companies and came here to figure out whether they should take their business international or not. For this purpose I was asked to find 3 different Turkish (English speaking) entrepreneurs in Istanbul with sizable companies of their own. Some of the Turkish entrepreneurs I contacted had or were planning to have business abroad. The Turkish entrepreneurs served as role models for the Dutch entrepreneurs with whom they had a friendly conversation about all opportunities and challenges associated with taking a business international.

The rest of their program was also centered on the topic of international business and communication, with two Dutch trainers present the first day started with a session in which texts and profiling exercises by Hofstede were used.

At noon I collected the group in Taksim and we walked to Galata tower. After climbing the tower to admire the view and to give the group a sense of place and orientation, we had lunch in Guney restaurant.

14.00-14.30 travel to Kariye Museum (Chora church)

14.30-15.30 Kariye Museum (open till 16.30 hours) explanation of the mozaiks and a short lecture by Resit Ergener about the relationship between economy and religion now and in the past. (Dr. Rashid Ergener is an economist with degrees from Yale and Oxford. He had a 20-year career as professor of economics at the prestigious Bogazici University in Istanbul)

15.00-15.30 travel to Sultanahmet

15.30-17.00 via Rustem Pasja mosk we walked through the Spice (Egyptian) Bazaar where we discussed internationalization and our first impressions in the historic space of Pandeli

19.00 Turkish cooking class and dinner

The program the next day was:
9.00-10.00 Zeynep, an urban planner and PhD candidate at ITU spoke about the urban development of Istanbul and the shift northwards of the city business center

15.00-17.00 Visit to the campus of Bogazici Universiteit for a presentation about the  Turkish financial situation by Professor Mehmet

17.00-19.00 boatride from Rumeli to club Reina

20.00 dinner and clubbing at Reina