CEIBS threw a Chinese New Year dinner in London’s China Town last night. CEIBS (China Europe International Business School) is China’s top-ranked business school – it’s in Shanghai with a campus in Beijing too.
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There was yummy food aplenty, though some of it ended up on the (carpeted) restaurant floor of the poshest of Chinatown restos, the Imperial China, complete with footbridge and fish pond in the entrance.
Greeting us at the door was none other than the Dean of CEIBS himself, John Quelch.
Fresh from the World Economic Forum, he was full of beans about the Schools’ strong showing at Davos – CEIBS sent five representatives, which was apparently five times more than any other Chinese business school.
Quelch said he had even sold an exec ed program to a Rio Tinto boss while queuing to go through security – let’s hope he teaches some classes on salesmanship on the CEIBS MBA. Oh, he also has a CBE and used to be a senior professor at Harvard, where he was one of the most prolific authors of case studies.
Also in the crowd were assorted alumni (all male – come on CEIBS!), some charismatic professors and media types including MBA news queen Della Bradshaw (editor of the FT Global MBA rankings, which came out that very day…).
Ms Bradshaw’s wise words: US schools are making a come back in the rankings thanks to great job placement figures. Hmmmmm… we did hear rumours that some US b-schools are adept at massaging their placement figures, Enron-style, but we shall return to that can o’ worms at a later date…
CEIBS, by the way, dropped slightly this year from 21st to 24th in the world, but it’s still in the top 25 for the eighth year running.
The faculty were pretty awesome: energetic, full of ideas and with several research projects on the go. Most of them seemed to have taught at at least ten major business schools around the world.
The suave, Savile Row-suited Prof. George Yip, originally from Hong Kong but educated at a British boarding school and Cambridge and Harvard Universities, was Dean of the Rotterdam School of Management before he joined CEIBS as Co-director of the Centre of China Innovation. Thanks to him several major Dutch firms have invested in research at the Centre. MBA students are running one of the current projects, which look in-depth at China’s 50 most innovative firms and asks how they became that way.
Prof Yip said that one of the reasons Chinese firms are so competitive internationally is that they are willing to invest in creating products for niche markets – e.g. developing a TV that can be used both indoors and outdoors for the Nigerian market – something western firms sniffed at. Chinese companies can throw 200 engineers at developing new products AND cheaper ways of making those products, without breaking a sweat. A Chinese firm recently developed a way to replace double welding with cheaper singe welding on shipping containers.
Mike Thompson, Professor of Management Practice and Director of the Centre for Leadership and Responsibility, sported a red and gold New Year’s tie and talked about his “wisdom” study. Prof Thompson interviewed a number of CEOs and Board members to establish what wisdom meant to them. He got some pretty profound answers and argued persuasively that those who are truly wise are those who are true to themselves (i.e. to who they are and who they’ve always wanted to be). He said those unhappy in their job would eventually take decisions that would win them something in the short term but wouldn’t be able to visualise the long term goal. Jeepers – sound familiar to, uh, MOST people out there?
Katherine Xin, Professor of Management and Founding Editor-inChief of the Chinese edition of the Harvard Business Review, talked about the demand for Chinese nationals with international experience. These bi-cultural, bi-lingual, highly educated youngsters are who the talent war is being fought over in China, by Chinese firms and foreign multinationals alike. Prof Xin has advised blue chip firms such as Acer, China Telecom, BMW,Toyota and Johnson & Johnson on strategic human resource management and developing leaders.
Now to the eating of the Chinese New Year’s feast, which featured fried seaweed, spring rolls, pork chops, sesame toast and duck pancakes – and that was just for starters. As dinner was served, the evening took a Fawlty Towers-esque turn, as guests both Chinese and Western attempted to use chop sticks with limited success. We spied one professor flinging two slippery pork chops onto the floor – let’s hope they were spotted by the cleaner!
Meanwhile, a Wall Street Journal correspondent struggled to eat a spring roll with two chop sticks AND a fork, and a German-born CEIBS grad now heading up a large team at Barclays decided he’d had enough, picked up the pork chops with his fingers and devoured them ‘cave-man’ style.
The really impressive shenanigans were seen on the other table, where a sweet chilli prawn took a dive into a glass of water en route from the dish to one guest’s plate.
Chinese table manners aside, CEIBS is launching its first ever specialised MBA, a 21-month Finance MBA, beginning September 2012. Falling hot on the heels of another Finance MBA in Shanghai, the new programme will provide the rising stars of Chinas financial sector with access to the latest theories and practices, and build a talent pipeline to help establish Shanghai as a world financial centre by 2015. Watch this space!
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