Designing Innovation, Leading at Scale: Reflections from Brazil
By Cynthia Jiang, Class of 2026/2027
Participating in the UCLA–NUS EMBA Brazil Immersion was both an intellectually stimulating and practically inspiring experience. As part of the program, I opted to pursue UCLA’s Global Immersion, which allowed me to expand my exposure beyond the core curriculum and engage more deeply with global business contexts.
As someone deeply involved in the consumer goods and manufacturing ecosystem, the immersion offered several moments that strongly resonated with my current business focus and future plans.
Rethinking Innovation After Visiting Natura
The visit to Natura left a particularly deep impression on me. I have seen many companies speak about innovation, sustainability, and purpose. What Natura demonstrated was something more difficult: how these ideas are translated into systems that people can actually work within.
Walking through Natura’s laboratories and production facilities, I found myself paying close attention not only to the technology, but also to the flow. The way physical spaces, teams, and processes were connected made it clear that innovation here is not treated as a separate function. Instead, it is embedded in everyday decision-making. The labs were designed to encourage transparency, interaction, and iteration, removing unnecessary barriers between experimentation and execution.
This visit prompted me to reflect on a question I have been grappling with for some time: how do we design innovation spaces that truly support learning, rather than simply showcasing creativity? For organizations building innovation centers, including my own, the challenge is not about generating more ideas, but about creating environments where ideas can move efficiently toward validation and action. Natura offered a concrete, operational reference for what that can look like.
Learning from JBS: Discipline Behind Scale
In contrast, the visit to JBS shifted my focus from innovation systems to operational discipline. JBS operates at a scale where complexity is unavoidable—across supply chains, regulatory environments, and global markets. What struck me was the level of leadership attention required to maintain consistency and resilience at this scale.
This experience reminded me that purpose and innovation, while essential, cannot stand alone. They must be supported by strong execution frameworks. As leaders, it is tempting to focus on vision and strategy, but JBS reinforced the reality that scale magnifies both strengths and weaknesses. Without discipline, even the best strategies lose their impact.
Seeing Brazil Through a Digital Lens
The session with B.O.B further expanded my perspective on Brazil’s market potential, particularly in e-commerce and digital adoption. Prior to this immersion, it would have been easy to view Brazil primarily through its challenges—regulatory complexity, infrastructure gaps, and volatility.
What became clear, however, is that Brazil also represents a market of immense opportunity, driven by a large, digitally engaged population and rapidly evolving platforms. The discussion pushed me to think more carefully about how companies assess emerging markets—not just by size, but by readiness, behavior, and local dynamics. It reinforced the importance of resisting simplified narratives when making strategic decisions.
What Stayed with Me
Beyond individual company insights, what I valued most was the collective learning environment. Sharing observations with classmates from diverse industries helped surface blind spots in my own thinking. Often, it was not a single answer that mattered, but the quality of the questions we explored together.
Personal Reflection
For me, the Brazil immersion was not about finding immediate answers but about sharpening the questions I ask as a business leader. How should innovation spaces be designed to truly support experimentation and execution? How do companies balance purpose with operational discipline at scale? And how should leaders approach complex, high-potential markets like Brazil with both ambition and humility?
This experience reaffirmed my belief that meaningful learning happens at the intersection of observation, reflection, and dialogue. Brazil offered powerful examples of how organizations innovate, scale, and adapt—and the immersion provided the space to connect those lessons directly to my own leadership journey.
Looking Ahead
For prospective students considering the UCLA–NUS EMBA, this experience reinforced how much ownership we have in shaping our own learning journey. Whether through global immersion trips or by selecting electives with partner universities, the program offers multiple ways to build an EMBA experience that reflects individual interests, industries, and aspirations.
You can do this too! Design an EMBA path that stretches beyond the classroom, deepens global exposure, and challenges how you think about leadership in practice.
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