Observe CEOs of multinational companies in China for 20 years
[Applause]
my first job
was as business news reporter
and i did this job all through my 20s
i started in the united states in the
cities of
portland and seattle and then i
was a business news reporter in greater
china
in taipei and shanghai
and during the time i did this job i
used to tell people
i have the best job in the world
the reason i said that is that as a
business news reporter
you get paid to meet interesting people
to ask them questions and to learn from
them
it’s the only job i know where just a
few minutes
after meeting a total stranger you shake
hands with them
and you can sit down and ask them
anything you want to know you can ask
them
what are your dreams you can ask
why do you do what you do and
my favorite question you can ask
what mistakes have you made and most of
the time
they’ll tell you so after i hit
my 30s my career started to take another
path
i went back to business school and i got
my degree
and i started working for big
multinational companies and most
recently
just 18 months ago i got my doctorate
and i started my current job which is
business school professor and corporate
consultant so even as
my job has changed in recent years
i still kept my connection to the best
job
in the world and i did that by doing
something
on the side which is writing business
books
so i’ve written three business books
and i guess you can figure out the
reason i love
doing that even though it’s an extra
side job
is that it keeps me connected
to the interview process when you
meet interesting people ask them
questions
and learn from them but why have all
three of my business books been about
china i’m not chinese
the reason is that i’ve been frustrated
my frustration comes from the fact that
every time i go back to my home country
in the united states i meet people
americans and they ask me
what’s it like living in china they say
what’s it like working in china
but when i start answering them after
just
one or two minutes their eyes glaze over
and even
members of my own family they start
looking at their watch so rude
the problem is that people outside
china don’t realize the importance of
china
and even people inside china don’t
realize the importance of china
i’ll give you an example the reason for
that
is because all of you living and working
here
you don’t see the changes that were
experienced
every day one example
is how many of you use your phone
to pay for everything raise your hand
you never use money or credit cards
okay this seems normal to us
in china but i can tell you this is not
how things are done in the rest of the
world
not yet china is changing
incredibly fast and if there’s
one thing i want all of you to remember
from my
speech it’s that all business leaders
and future business leaders should be
following
china today and i’ll try to prove that
to you
by introducing you to several people the
first
one is my co-author this is
juan fernandez he’s a professor
at zhong o gojiwanshan
c-e-i-b-s and here you can see juan and
i
showing our love for china by wearing
chinese clothing so juan and i have
known each other for many years
and i’ve written all three books with
him
and the way we write the books is simple
we first start by making a list of all
the companies
we want to include in the book
so in china’s ceo 2 these 25 companies
are the ones we included they’re all big
multinationals with successful
operations
in china and next
we find out who is the china ceo
and then we set up an interview and we
do
my favorite interview process for this
book
we asked questions like what kind of
skills
do you need to run a big multinational
in china and also what advice would you
give
to your successor and also
my favorite question which is what
mistakes
have you made but there was a big
difference
between our first book and our second
book
in our first book the 20 ceos we
interviewed
among them none of them were chinese
and none of them were women
but in the second book written in 2020
eight of the people we interviewed were
chinese
and four of the ceos we interviewed
were women so big positive changes
and these are the companies that now
have a chinese
china ceo and these are the companies
that now have
a woman ceo
so let’s meet the first china ceo
she happens to be both a woman
and chinese this is frida jong
she’s the china ceo of ikea
and frida was born in 1970
in the chinese city of qingdao
and she told us that she had a very
common childhood for people her age
coming from her home city like many of
her peers
when she hit her teeny teenage years
in the 1990s her parents
who were working for a state-owed
enterprise
they were working for a plastics factory
they lost their jobs
the plastics factory went out of
business and making things
even worse frida’s father tried to start
his own company
but that failed and this was hard on
frida
because she had big dreams at the age of
18
she knew she wanted to work as an
accountant
for one of the big four accounting firms
but she faced two obstacles
first was lack of money and second
was lack of english skills and
to teach herself english she started
learning by herself on the internet
probably using an old-fashioned computer
like this so let’s hear how she got her
first job
with ikea she told me that when she
found
an ad for ikea printed
uh online she had no idea what kind of
company it was
ikea was very new in china and the way
she prepared for the ad
she told me that she stayed up all night
for three nights the night before the
interview
and she memorized the entire website
on life story of ikea
she memorized the history of ikea
the product line division and mission
statement
so during the interview when the hr
director
casually asked her what do you know
about ikea
frida jong opened her mouth and recited
the entire website she got the job
and not only was she hired as an
accountant
at the age of 22 but just
one year later at 23
she became finance manager for north
china
and shortly after that she became the
first chinese
to join ikea’s china management team
and now she’s the china ceo
so frida’s story of extreme
passion and extreme perseverance
to me prove my point that
all business leaders in the world
and all future business leaders should
be studying
china today let’s meet the next
china ceo this is alain crozier
the ceo of microsoft china
and i asked alan when we started our
interview
i asked him what are your biggest
challenges
he told me the biggest challenge is that
people in the home country of microsoft
in the us they misunderstand china
he told me at the top levels of
microsoft
they know china well but if you go one
or two layers below that many people
misunderstand china they still think
that china is a factory to the world
or that china is a copycat nation
but alan says china is actually
very innovative rampantly innovative
and he used one example to explain that
to his chinese colleagues
one of his favorite examples is about
china’s share bikes how many of you
remember
seeing the first share bikes on the
streets of our cities
back in 2017. remember that
and first they were neatly lined up in
front of
our favorite metro station but pretty
soon
we found them in messy piles like this
but alan says actually the share bikes
can teach us a lot about innovation
in china he reminds us that share bikes
were actually developed in europe
but the european european system had
two major flaws the first flaw
was that the bikes had to be picked up
and dropped off from physical bike
stations
that made them expensive to create
and secondly the bike users had to use
a code that was not user friendly
so chinese innovators took this
okay system and made it really great
that’s because they stopped using the
bike stations
you could drop the bikes off almost
anywhere
and you could all get the bikes using an
app
we all already had
so this kind of incremental innovation
taking something that’s okay and making
it
really great is one thing
that alan says is now rampant in china
and he says this kind of incremental
innovation
has laid a foundation for true
innovation
which he sees now coming from chinese
companies
doing ai internet of things
facial recognition voice recognition and
many others
so this is my second proof that
all business leaders and future business
leaders
should be following china today
and let me introduce you to the third
and final
china ceo he comes to us from l’oreal
and l’oreal is one of my favorite
companies to talk about
because i interviewed them both
in the first book and the new book and
today
l’oreal is a huge multi-billion euro
company
so let’s meet the current china ceo
stefan
render knitch he told me two important
things
about china first is that
no other country in the world has the
combination
that china has of fast speed
and huge scale he said
there’s many countries in the world that
are growing fast
like those in southeast asia and there’s
some markets that are already big
like united states but only china
is both fast and grand
he said china is the kind of place
where a company like l’oreal which is
already
a multi-billion euro company can grow at
double digits or even
30 per year and the last quote
that he gave us is actually something
for all of us
living and working in china or those who
want to work more with china
because it’s about your career he told
us
that all top talent of l’oreal
they must work in china before they can
go
to the top of the company globally so
he said that you must know
china from the inside it’s not something
you can
theorize you must connect with chinese
people
this is an absolute must and actually
stefan is an example of his own quote
because just a few months after i
interviewed him
he became he rose to a global position
he is now vice president north america
for l’oreal so let me recap
the three reasons why i say
all business leaders and future leaders
should study china now the first reason
is about the extreme passion
and extreme perseverance of business
leaders
like frida jong of ikea
the second is about
the rampant innovation and rampant
improvement going on in china’s consumer
technology
as we heard from alain crozier of
microsoft
and third is china’s unique position
in terms of having both speed and
scale and because companies like l’oreal
are requiring their global executives
to work in china first
so with that i believe that anyone
who wants to be a business leader can
benefit
greatly from studying what’s going on in
china
in fact i believe that if you do study
what’s going on in china you will be
the kind of business leader i interview
in my books in fact i’ll even go
one step further and say i strongly
believe
that many people in this room and
listening to this speech
are future china ceos
and with that in mind i look forward to
meeting you asking you questions
and learning from you when i write china
ceo 3.
thank you