Pepperdine students gather after their first morning's lecture at The Gleaner Company Ltd's North Street, central Kingston, offices on April 27. Also pictured are Morin Seymour (right), chairman of PALS Jamaica, and Christopher Barnes (third right), deputy managing director of The Gleaner Company Ltd. - photos by Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer

With the United States economy currently re-sembling a popped balloon, a group of American business students from Pepperdine University in California are casually peering over the fence to see whether Jamaica's businesses have any ideas worth nabbing.

The two dozen graduate students are in Jamaica on a one-week course titled 'Doing Business in Developing Nations'.

The group is being led by Margaret Phillips, associate professor of international business at the university, who told The Gleaner that the aim of the course is "to expose students to a variety of different organisations and the issues that are addressed by developing nations".

Nearly all of the graduates have experience in real business and are looking to expand their awareness of how things happen overseas. However, with the state of the US economy, Phillips hopes they might also take something home with them.

Ability of jamaica

Two students from Pepperdine scan through copies of The Gleaner.

"We don't have the nimbleness that I believe Jamaica has," she said. "For example, the ability to constantly bounce back from natural disasters."

Despite only having been in Jamaica for a matter of hours, Kingston life was clearly already rattling some cages by Monday morning. There were quite a few drooping eyelids, explained away as due to "unusually loud music" being played across the road from the hotel late into the night. Faces blanched slightly when the students learned that 'unusual' is far from an appropriate word in this regard. Kingston provided its own cure for their drowsiness by occasionally punctuating the lectures with the sound of violently screeching brakes and car horns, jerking more than one out of their reverie.

Lectures on Monday were hosted by The Gleaner Company, with talks from Dr Peter Phillips, former minister of national security; Paul Robinson, assistant commissioner of police; Frank Whylie, general manager of Jamaica National Small Business Loans, and Janilee Abrikian, general manager of PALS (Peace and Love in Society).

The group has been here all week to try and get a feel for how businesses operate over here and the challenges they face. So, if you've see a bunch of tired-looking Americans buying earplugs, you now know why.

oliver_hugo.clarke@gleanerjm.com

The graduate students from Pepperdine University make notes during a lecture on troubled inner-city areas. Also pictured are Morin Seymour (back left) and Cosma Earle (second, back left), chairman of Silver Sands.

Janilee Abrikian general manager of PALS (Peace and Love in Society) (standing) speaks with students from Pepperdine University, Malibu, California, on their first day of a study tour to Jamaica.