Beijing, April 10, 2008 – IE Business School, a top ten European business school, brought a group of 22 executives to Beijing for intensive training between 31 March and 3 April 2008. The four day modular course on Chinese business gave participants condensed knowledge and optimism about working in partnership with Chinese firms.
The program, “China: an Inside View”, is the second Executive Education residential program IE Business School has conducted at Cheung Kong GSB in Beijing. Following from the success of 2007, this year’s course offered intensive classes, case studies as well as Chinese and multinational company visits. With increasing synergy between Cheung Kong and IE, both b-schools see scope for further development of ties, with Cheung Kong EMBA students due to visit IE’s Madrid campus later this year.
“China: An Inside View” tackled real China business cases in and outside class. Those students who had never been to China before remarked that their “perspective on China had completely changed.” Those who had experience in China engaged with professors on another level, stimulating classroom discussions with a range of issues from their own industries. “Interacting with other people from the program” was mentioned as one of the major benefits of the course.
For the lecture component of the program, participants were exposed to a wide range of topics including Mergers and Acquisitions in China, Marketing, Globalization of Chinese Companies and Financial Markets in China. In the words of one businessman, the program stood out from the crowd with its “professional professors” who presented a very full picture of the specially selected topics.
The company visit afternoon took place in Beijing’s Economic and Technical Development Area. Concentrating on the medical care sector, the IE group first visited Chinese pharmaceutical producer Tongrentang, witnessing both state of the art pill production and handmade manufacture. A visit to GE Healthcare provided the counterbalance, with its American style precision and technique played out on a factory floor of CT scanners and X-ray machines, being methodically assembled and tested.
After the residential course at Cheung Kong GSB, IE students left Beijing for their workplaces in Spain, Austria, Ecuador and Shanghai among others, ready to explore the options raised in class in their real life encounters with China, and impressed by the dynamic business environment of Beijing in 2008.