Cultural fluidity in business between cultures – Sharon Gai

Sharon Gai

Sharon Gai, a China-born Canadian who is an expert in e-commerce, digital transformation, and AI, and worked as head of Global Key Accounts at Alibaba. She explains what lessons she learned about cultural fluidity in business and society to IKNS Conversations That Matter, in places where different cultures meet, and how cultural intelligence can help.

Sharon Gai is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more stories from Sharon Gai? Do check out this list.

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More education not always better - Bill Fischer

Bill Fischer by Fantake via Flickr

Getting more patents and PhD's are not the ways to improve education, writes IMD professor Bill Fischer in Business Week. Getting faculty in with business experience is more important to improve the now lagging education in China.

IMD's 2010 World Competitiveness Yearbook reports that China's education system has been in decline since 2007 in terms of how well it meets the needs of a competitive economy, presently ranking 44th out of 58 countries—below countries such as Greece (43), Kazakhstan (35), and Qatar (14). Finland, on the other hand, which ranks 1st in this category, is a notable reference point that people speak about with respect to how its educational offerings in engineering, technology, and innovation are having a direct impact on the economic vitality of the country. Do you ever hear the same about China?

If pushing out more graduates, patents and PhD's does not help, what is the problem, according to Bill Fischer?

During my sojourn in China as an academic and as president and dean of the China Europe International Business School, I was frequently struck by the thought that China's scarcest resource might just be "practically experienced" university faculty. Far too many of the Chinese professors I observed in other schools (CEIBS insisted that any faculty had the ability to interact competently with executives) had never actually worked for a living; they were lifelong academics, and everything was "theoretical" for them. This simply does not work if the goal is to transform new ideas into practical solutions. And it is particularly devastating if we are speaking about business schools and their role in preparing a "managerial class" for competing on the world stage.

More in Business Week, where Bill Fischer explains this is not only a problem in China.

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Joining Marshall USC in Shanghai - John van Fleet

John van Fleet by Fantake via Flickr

John D. van Fleet has this month joined the Marshall University of South California as their Assistant Dean and Executive Director at their Global Executive MBA in Shanghai.
John van Fleet is one of the best-informed sources on business education in China and has been organizing high-end training programs for executives from all over the world. He is also a founding member of the China Marketing Association.

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John van Fleet is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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