After experiencing so much Cypriot culture yesterday, we switched courses today, learning more about business on the island.

We started the morning with a beautiful drive to the city of Limassol where we met with the pharmaceutical company, Medochemie. Medochemie was founded in 1976 and is now headquartered in Limassol. It has become a global company with manufacturing plants in Cyprus, the Netherlands, and Vietnam.

During our visit, we learned about Medochemie’s supply chain. We covered many important topics such as Quality Assurance (QA) and Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and how they relate to supply chain. For example, QA and GMP are monitored closely by the government and the company at all stages of development and distribution (from raw materials to the customer) for the safety of the customers. It is important to monitor each stage because each step of the supply chain directly affects the next.

We also learned more about what it means for Medochemie to be a global company. For one, it means carefully considering where in the world is best for them to operate. Cyprus was chosen because of its central location in the globe, the Netherlands was chosen because of its connection to Europe, and Vietnam was chosen for its rapid development and low operation costs. Being global also means having to follow regulations throughout Europe and the world. Similarly to reporting to the FDA, Medochemie has to meet certain regulations in Europe to deem their product safe. Such cooperation with governing bodies goes all the way to the packaging for the product. Each country the product is sold requires slightly different packaging to better reflect the country.

In the afternoon, we traveled back from Limassol to the University of Nicosia, where we learned about the online gaming company, Wargaming. Wargaming was founded in 1998 and now has locations in 5 continents. The company experienced rapid growth in 2010 after the release of its most well known game, “World of Tanks”. World of Tanks has continued to be popular ever since its release, and because of that Wargaming has shifted away from game development and more towards improving its current selection of games.

However, when the company is in the development process, they face a problem known as the “toxic positivity problem”. In each stage of a game’s development, from the initial idea and prototype to the final product, the game needs the “greenlight”, which can be considered the go ahead to keep spending money on developing the game. The toxic positivity problem makes it easier for each stage to be greenlighted because people are more willing to go along with others’ ideas. I think this is an interesting problem because of how it demonstrates the influence of culture in business. People’s way of thinking has directly influenced the product. Solving this may be difficult because the root of the problem is in the culture’s way of thinking. However, Wargaming believes they can address this interesting issue through feedback by experienced players and competition among employees. This is all in effort to create the best product as possible and create as much profit as possible.

To conclude, our visits to Medochemie and Wargaming introduced me to more than just each company’s product. They demonstrated the interesting problems companies have to face in all areas, from production to release. It was interesting to learn how they were addressed and to see just how much ingenuity it takes to make a global company run.