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——Inheritance and Innovation of “ZJU Management Thought Leadership”
“In the 21st century, China will share management secrets with the world.” This prediction by Peter F. Drucker is gradually becoming a reality.
On October 18, the first International Week of ZJU-SOM officially kicked off. In the collision of ideas between management gurus from the East and the West, the Chinese academic community shared the oriental wisdom with the world again.
In just 40 years, management has taken root in China and produced fruitful results. From “Bring In” to “Sinicization” and “Going Out”, how does Chinese management thought acquire its confidence?
ZJU-SOM offers a good observation sample in its joint development with enterprises. From “Bring In” to “Sinicization”, a growth path of Chinese management thought.
In 1979, the delegation of Chinese Administration for Industry and Commerce visited five business schools in the United States and proposed that, “we should select from university graduates the excellent management talents with 5-10 years of management experience, deliver postgraduate education by adopting comprehensive training methods, and cultivate them into middle and high-level professional managers in enterprises.” The proposal was considered to be the germination of management education reform in China.
After the reform and opening up, the demands for management talents and theories led to the birth of a large number of management majors in higher education institutions. In the early days, management was a secondary discipline of economics and its educational system, teaching materials and concepts were introduced from the West. System theory, cybernetics, information theory etc. have been applied to the management of Chinese enterprises since then.
On March 25, 1998, at the invitation of Harvard Business School, ZHANG Ruimin, CEO of Haier Group, gave a lecture on Management of Chinese Enterprises to HBS students. The case of “Haier Culture Activates Stunned Fish” was included in the HBS Cases, indicating that the management experience of Chinese enterprises has been recognized by the world.
“The future development of Haier is based on an all-round innovation system,” ZHANG Ruimin said. “This system is well supported by theories generated by Professor XU Qingrui’s research team in the School of Management of Zhejiang University.”
In 2002, Professor XU Qingrui, a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, put forward the theory of total innovation management. Since then, his research team has been focusing on theoretical explorations while conducting frequently field studies in enterprises. It helped Haier in establishing a technological innovation platform that yielded more than 1,000 achievements within a year.
This naturally reveals the kinship between Chinese management thought and enterprise practices: management theories have been elicited from and refined through business practice, enabling entrepreneurs and scholars to grow together. Management theories have been produced in a bottom-up manner and are closely connected with Chinese context.
“ZJU Management Thought Leadership” Achieves Joint Development with Enterprises
On the basis of XU Qingrui’s total innovation management theory, his students carry forward the theory and promote the practice of “Joint Development with Enterprises”, which ultimately contribute to the formation of “ZJU Management Thought”, a branch of “Chinese Management Thought”.
Hikvision has been growing up together with the “ZJU Management Thought”. At an event hosted by Zhejiang University, CHEN Zongnian, Chairman of Hikvision, said that he started the business during his doctoral study in ZJU-SOM. His supervisor, Professor WU Xiaobo, helped him in the preparation period and guided him through the development of the enterprise. Since then, CHEN Zongnian has turned to Professor WU for advice at every critical moment of Hikvision.
As a student of Academician XU Qingrui, WU Xiaobo proposed the theory of “Secondary Innovation” on the basis of XU’s theory, emphasizing that when introducing technology, enterprises should continuously open up and innovate, interact with technology sources, customers, and the upstream and downstream of industries, thus developing a sustainable innovation ecosystem.
WEI Jiang, Dean of ZJU School of Management, is another student of Academician XU. His “Asymmetric Innovation Strategy” also influences China’s present and future economy.
On March 29, 2010, Geely completed the wholly-owned acquisition of Volvo at a price of 1.8 billion USD, making it a milestone in China’s automobile industry, and also a significant progress of Chinese enterprises going abroad. In the beginning, barely anyone was optimistic about this snake-swallows-elephant deal, but LI Shufu found in “Asymmetric Innovation Strategy” his theoretical basis for this acquisition.
WEI Jiang believes that Chinese enterprises have unique advantages in technological system, institutional environment, and market environment; whereas there are many asymmetric factors in global competition. “Based on such asymmetric advantages, Chinese enterprises can catch up and surpass large-scale enterprises abroad by implementing asymmetric strategies in organizational design, asymmetric strategies in learning methods, asymmetric strategies in catch-up path, and asymmetric strategies in institutional design,” WEI Jiang explained.
Wanxiang Group is another beneficiary of “Asymmetric Innovation Strategy”. In recent years, Wanxiang Group has successively completed the merger and acquisition of more than 30 American companies including Scheler and AI by implementing “Asymmetric Innovation Strategy”. It has also formed a “three-in-one” innovation system featuring the innovation of global resources integration, the innovation of indusrial chains interaction, the total innovation of enterprises.
With accumulated strength, Chinese management seeks “symbiosis and joint development” with global business.
According to the 2019 List of Listed Companies by ZJU-SOM alumni, as of March 2019, a total of 80 alumni of Zhejiang University have served as founders, actual controllers, chairman or general manager, managing or controlling 70 listed companies (including companies listed on A Shares, Hong Kong Stocks and American Stock Market) , including Hikvision, Geely Automobile, Dahua, Wanxiang Group etc.
The “Chinese Management Thought” and “ZJU Management Thought” always adhere to joint development with enterprises and help enterprises solve real problems encountered in the development. Zhejiang, a gathering land for private enterprises and start-ups, providing fertility conducing to the growth of “ZJU Management Thought”.
In 2012, Shendang Brewing Co., Ltd., a time-honored Chinese yellow wine enterprise, invited experts from ZJU-SOM and a famous consulting team from Shanghai to help explore the brand of Shendang and its historic culture in developing 8 brands of yellow wine. In April 2016, the “Planning of Shendang Wine Brand” won the champion in China Global Brand Planning Competition.
In 2017, HU Yangzhong, CEO of Hikvision, achieved the Ram Charan Management Practice Award, the highest honor for Chinese management practice. His award-winning case is Growth Point of Innovation Business Motivated by “Fluorite” Ecosystem. Like CHEN Zongnian, HU is also a student of ZJU-SOM Professor WU Xiaobo.
Seeds are blossoming and yielding fruits. By adopting the development path of introduction, innovation, inheritance and secondary innovation, “ZJU Management Thought” achieves a virtuous cycle of management education in China. The next step is “Going Out”.
On October 19, the 6th Meeting of ZJU-SOM International Advisory Board delved into the topic “Excellence through Relevance”, which can be regarded as a new beginning of the School’s internationalization strategy. According to WEI Jiang, management education in China is in a transition period, from “unconfident” to “confident”, from “merely imitation” to “theoretical creation”, from “following others’ management schemes” to “providing China’s management approaches. “Chinese Management Thought” should grasp the key period of this paradigm shift and contribute “Chinese management theory and wisdom” to the whole world.
