Study Tour to China with the Swiss 'Seeds for the Future' Program by Huawei

Huawei's 'Seeds for the Future' Pogram

I had the pleasure to be part of the Swiss delegation for the study tour to China with Huawei's Seeds for the Future program as a representative of FHS St. Gallen again (20.-30. Aug. 2016).

Nevertheless, my postings about the tour express my personal views only. And as the working language throughout the trip was English I decided to write this post in English as well.

"Telecom Seeds for the Future is Huawei's flagship CSR project launched in 2008 that aims at cultivating local ICT talent, promoting knowledge transfer, improving people's interest in and understanding of the telecom industry, and encouraging countries and regions to participate in the building of digital communities." (Source)

A warm welcome at the Huawei HQ

In my view this is really a great program and gives students - and professors - the unique opportunity to get to know a global company quite well and thus to get an insight of a global player in the high tech industry*.

The whole group of the trip comprises 16 students from various (IT/IS related) subjects from all over Switzerland, six professors and Axel Menning from Huawei Switzerland.

We arrived in Shenzhen on Sunday night after a transfer from Hongkong airport where we flew to out of Zurich. We are staying in a Hotel on the Huawei campus in Shenzhen.

Huawei Campus

On Monday morning we started off with a bus tour through parts of the campus, where up to 30'000 people are working.

We then had our first visit to one of the really impressive exhibition halls on the campus where we got an introduction into Huawei's business and key technologies as well as potential applications.

Simon Lacey

After lunch, Simon Lacey, Global Government Affairs - International Trade and the Digital Economy Leader, welcomed us in perfect Swiss-German and French to his introductory presentation about Huawei as a global high-tech player. Simon's CV is impressive: As an Australian, he studied law in Fribourg and thus speaks French and (Swiss) German pretty well. In total, he lived in Switzerland for 15 years. Before he joined Huawei a year ago he had jobs literally all over the world, e.g., in the US, South Africa, Indonesia, Singapore, and even China before.

Exhibition hall at the HQ in Shenzhen

Simon said at the beginning that Huawei might be "one of the biggest companies you've never heard of". Indeed, the company with 170'000+ employees working in 170+ countries is much bigger than its competitors such as Cisco or Ericsson.
Simon as well as our guides in the exhibition halls - we visited the exhibition hall for enterprise solutions in the afternoon - stressed Huawei's innovation power: 44% of the staff works in R&D, the research centers are distributed all over the globe. And especially in the exhibition halls, it was stressed the Huawei pursues a strategy focusing on cooperation as well. The term ecosystem was used several times.
In the Q&A session he said answering a student's question about more personal experiences: "... the great firewall is a big burden for all people living here".

William Lo summarizing his talk

On Tuesday William Lo introduced our group to some Management fundamentals at Huawei. As a Chinese, William was raised and worked outside. China Most of his Life and is with Huawei for 5 years now. He's working at the so called HR Committee, one of three committees linked directly to the board and dealing with all issues around management or how William phrased it: "everything what has to do with people". Huawei's way of management has also been a subject of some publications, e.g., in HBR or The European Business Review. In his presentation he focused on visionary leadership, share the wealth, dedication, as well as customer centricity.

In terms of "visionary leadership" the founder of the company, Ren Zhengfei, is always present. His management philosophy is guiding the company since it's inception in 1987. Although some of the management principles in terms of employees dedication at Huawei sound rather strange from a Swiss or European point of view - e.g., not claiming even the minimum of vacations days, working every 4th Saturday an extra day -, the company's success testifies that something must have done right, so far. But William also admits that due to an increasing globalization of the company's activities as well as different values of the young people some of the principles might be subject to change in the future.

William also addressed the leadership skills of Chinese in a global context comparing China to Japan and applying the tiger mother phenomenon. It's about a more directive way of raising kids and students which might result in very good engineers but might not educate real leaders and/or top CEOs.

Some further details William added: Huawei is China's largest non-government-owned company, it is 100% owned by its employees, the founder holds 1.42% of the shares.

Q&A with Hank

After a presentation about Huawei's cyber security strategy and lunch at the employee's canteen, we headed north of Shenzhen to Songshan Lake Science & Technology Industry Park to visit Huawei's automated logistic center and wireless production line. 

On Wednesday morning Hank Stokbroekx gave an introduction into marketing in general and at Huawei.

Before lunch, the students had the chance to prepare for the final presentation in Beijing on Monday. I had the pleasure to support the group dealing with marketing issues at Huawei as their coach.

Students preparing their presentations

In the afternoon we visited the Shenzhen Museum showing the impressive development of the city of Shenzhen and had the chance to further explore the city.

Bejing hot pot dinner

On Thursday we flew to Beijing where the group visited the Forbidden City in the afternoon and had a traditional Beijing style hot pot dinner in the evening.

Friday morning we visited Huawei's Beijing exhibition hall which is the largest of all exhibition halls of Huawei in China. This very representative building is targeted to welcome high-ranked representatives from politics and business. The architecture of the whole campus follows a Mediterranean style. During our guided walk through the large halls, we focused on 4.5G and 5G developments as part of Huawei's MBB 2020 vision as well as the Internet of Things.

One of the statements was that Huawei expects a long tail market in this area as there will be no killer application.  Without giving a specific time frame and meant more as a rough estimation Huawei expects a $2 trillion market in the area of IoT, 1 billion smart metering connections, and 2 billion connections in manufacturing.

Alex giving an overview
of Huawei's IoT activities

In the exhibition halls, Huawei showcases what kind of services might be possible applying especially next generation mobile technology such as 4.5 and 5G. For example, Huawei has developed LampSite, a "radio coverage solution that supports indoor multimode deployment in large- to medium-sized sites such as office buildings, venues, and transportation hubs and semi-enclosed sports stadiums" (source) thus expanding the mobile potential.
One application scenario might be hybrid shopping solutions in the retail area where consumers use mobile Apps inside the retail store to enhance customer experience and/or customer service.

Huawei IoT Business Solution
Framework

Whereas 5G mobile communication is still under development Huawei offers 4.5G solutions to carriers offering Experience 4.0 to consumers. Huawei clearly focuses on 4.5 and 5G mobile communication as a basis for future IoT applications as the carrier business is Huawei's most important business line. Nevertheless, carriers such as Swisscom provide IoT-networks based on the LoRa technology which follows a different approach and enables different business models. The LoRa technology can be deployed decentralized without any licenses; The Things Network  demonstrates how an IoT network can be established bottom up without high cost.

Huawei's services portfolio
(Huawei, 27.8.2016)

It was mentioned by our guide as well that Huawei changed its strategy: Instead of selling technological solutions now services come first. So far, most of the offered services are targeted to the carrier market. To be successful in the enterprise business I think it is absolutely necessary to offer (industry specific) services to be successful.

Before lunch, Alex from Huawei gave us an overview of Huawei's IoT activities.

Michael Waser, Swiss embassy

After a great lunch, we went to the Swiss embassy in Bejing. We were warmly welcomed by Michael Waser from the embassy. He gave us an overview of the embassy's activities in China. It is interesting to mention, that it is the largest Swiss embassy which sheds light on the importance of the Swiss-Chinese relationship. Also, the Swiss business hub in China is the biggest one.

Fabio Müller then gave his very interesting presentation about Doing Business in China. He elaborated some mega trends in China such as aging society, the end of low-cost China, urbanization, as well as rapidly growing middle class.
Of course, doing business with China has quite some challenges, e.g., the dimensions of the country, regulation which makes it still difficult to invest in China, cultural differences in terms of quality, contracts, penalty, risk, as well as the relationship of business and private, investor concerns, especially finding the right talents, and IPR, legal and regulatory issues.
But there are also a lot of opportunities in China for Swiss businesses, for example, in the area of E-Commerce. As buying Online - mostly over the mobile phone - has huge growth rates in China and mobile payment systems are well adapted selling Swiss products Online in China has a huge potential. (The Swiss-Chinese chamber of commerce in China may be a further source of information)

Apero time

Then, Samuel Baumgartner and Tengteng Li from Wenfei Law gave some interesting insights from a legal point of view. Samuel said answering a student's question: "you can not rely on the judiciary system". This summarizes quite well the presentation; Swiss businesses have to be aware of this situation and prepared accordingly.

Finally, we had the chance to meet a group of cyclists during the Apero in the embassy: They cycled 7800 km from Moscow to Beijing!

In the evening we got Beijing duck at a really great restaurant.

On Saturday, the students were preparing their reports and presentations.

Group presentation "Marketing"

Monday was the last day of our trip - and the big day for the students as they had to present their group work.
Each of the four groups comprised four students from four different universities; at the beginning of the trip, a topic and some expected deliverables have been assigned to the groups. So it was a kind of a challenge to come up with relevant and interesting results in a rather short period of time. Each group was coached by one or two professors. The topics were Management & HR, Cybersecurity, Marketing, and IoT.

Claudio Zoller, student of the
MScWirtschaftsinformatik program at
FHS St. Gallen, receives the
Certificate of Honor for his participation
in the Swiss Seeds for the Future
program from Axel Menning,
Huawei Switzerland

In summary, it was a great and very intense trip with a lot of insights into Huawei as a global high-tech company with its roots in China as well as into the Chinese culture in general. A big thank you to Huawei making this possible.


What else is worth mentioning?
Well, in China there's always the issue of free Internet access. Technically, hotels, as well as many restaurants and shops, offer free wifi connection. But there's a challenge insofar as quite often an authentication is required either via WeChat and/or a Chinese mobile number, foreign mobile numbers are not supported. Luckily, I learned my lessons from last year and thus I opened a WeChat account already back home. In addition, our whole group got a Chinese SIM card provided by Huawei to enable easier communication within the group. As this SIM card also included 1 GB of data volume using our Smartphones on the go was possible without tremendous roaming charges.

Screenshot from www.huawei.com/cn
(30.8.2016)

As far as the access to websites and Social Media applications is concerned we faced some limitations. Services such as Facebook, Twitter, or Google search engine are not accessible at all. Gmail sometimes worked, sometimes not. Even this blog is not accessible in China as it uses blogger.com, which belongs to Google. Also, some other websites, especially news sites, are not accessible from time to time.
Despite the Chinese alternatives such as WeChat or Baidu there are quite many Chinese people which are actively using Gmail, Twitter, Facebook et al.
And also Huawei is using services such as Twitter and Facebook, for example, just in theses day when communicating from the global Huawei Connect 2016 meeting in Shanghai; there are frequent tweets sent through the official Twitter account @Huawei as well as from many other accounts of the company's divisions out of Shanghai. Furthermore, even the Chinese version of the corporate website contains links to services which are officially not accessible (see screenshot).

Of course, there are workarounds to access those sites also in China; the easiest way is to establish a VPN connection, but which reduces the performance. As a result, you have to think about which website or social media site you want to access. Experiencing this kind of censorship makes you aware what it means to have free Internet access without any restrictions.

Video surveillance in the public space is omnipresent, especially in Beijing. But this we can see in many US and European cities, e.g. in London, as well.

To enter the Beijing Metro your bags get screened like at the airport. Water bottles are being screened with a special tool, and it happened to me once that I had to take a sip out of my bottle to proof that it was water - and nothing else.

And if you want to enter the Tiananmen Square you can't just go there without screening your bags or backpacks. And in addition to checked bags and surveillance cameras, there are uninformed people everywhere as well. Obviously, the authorities are still afraid of any kind of protests.

By the way, Tiananmen means Gate of Heavenly Peace. This must be the Chinese way of interpreting the term peace.

On Tiananmen Square

On Tiananmen Square

On Tiananmen Square

An entrance to Tiananmen Square

* The trip has been sponsored through Huawei Switzerland for the students only as part of the Seeds for the Future program, but not for the accompanying professors.

(updated 31.8.2016) 

Huawei Study Tour to China - part 3

Huawei Study Tour to China
Huawei Study Tour to China - part 2

Over the weekend the students have to prepare their reports covering certain topics to be presented on Monday at the Huawei Wireless R&D premises in Shanghai. This was a real challenge to the students, as they had one day only (Saturday, Sunday as a backup) to prepare a short text and a presentation, of course in English. And, furthermore, the teams were mixed in terms of their study background (Information Systems, Informatics/ IT, Engineering Management, and others) as well as coming from different Universities from all parts of Switzerland.

On Monday: Showtime! In the presence of Jack li, VP of Huawei's Wireless R&D Center in Shanghai, the four groups gave their presentations about HR and Culture, Cyber Security, R&D, and Marketing at Huawei.n All of them had a very good and professional level especially considering the challenges they had to face.

One could summarize the main messages of the four presentations as follows:

• Huawei is a highly innovative company
• ... based on its special corporate culture.
• End-to-end Cyber Security is deeply integrated into all processes and products.
• Marketing is a real challenge in a global ICT company with three business groups based in China serving different competitive markets in the world. 

In the Enterprise as well as in the Carrier business group my advice would be to analyse and to listen carefully to the customers of Huawei's customers. In the end, the end customer, be it a business or the consumer, has a need for a solution serving his or her needs. Therefore Huawei should follow long-term trends, such as Industry 4.0, Smart Cities or Cloud based Services to learn about (possible) future market developments.
This will enable Huawei to focus on respective technological innovations at a very early stage and thus may gain a decisive competitive advantage. Technology - and Huawei is a leading technology provider - can be considered as the most important enabler, but not necessarily the main driver of many developments. An in-depth understanding of general management and business, as well as social developments, are crucial to staying on top as a technology provider.


Finally, the students got their certificates handed over through Axel Menning and Jack Li.

Jonas Hubamann, FHS St. Gallen,
with Axel Menning and Jack Li

Fabian Diehl, FHS St. Gallen,
with Axel Menning and Jack Li

After the ceremony, the group had its final joint lunch in the Huawei canteen.

Queuing for lunch

A more or less typical canteen lunch
(selection of dishes by me)

There are some other things I would like to mention after staying in China for eight days:

I like Green Tea very much, and I thought China will be the paradise for drinking and buying green tea. For buying green (and other) teas it was really a paradise; there are plenty of opportunities not only to buy but also to taste different tea flavours.
But in hotels and restaurants, I hardly got any green tea! In our hotel in Shanghai which serves Chinese breakfast I had to ask for green tea in the morning; and in most of the restaurants where we had Chinese style lunch or dinner it was nearly impossible to get a pot of tea - beer, wine or soft drinks were plenty available.

While Europe is discussing more train safety in these days the Shanghai subway screens every bigger bag or backpack like at the airport before you enter the subway station. Furthermore, in the subway system you can count an endless number of cameras.

Google is a nice way to experience Chinese pragmatism. On the one hand, popular Google services such as Gmail, Google search or Google maps are not accessible at all in China due to governmental regulation; but most of the plenty Chinese Smartphone manufacturers are using Android as an operating system like Huawei does.
And it's even very likely that the next version of Google's Nexus phone will be made by Huawei. As long as it's good for business, western Know How and technology is welcome. But services which allow free speech and which cannot be controlled by the government are unwanted and thus banned.

Overall, China is a country of contradictions. Capitalistic behavior can be seen nearly everywhere in the streets of cities like Shanghai, in and off the center. But at the same time blogger get arrested or a single person, the journalist Wang Xiaolu, found be guilty to have caused the recent stock exchange crisis in China, without any trial.

All photos are available under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license

Huawei Study Tour to China - part 2

First part: Huawei Study Tour to China

When our group arrived in Shanghai around noon on Thursday we were welcomed by our local guide saying "it's only 31 degrees, not so hot today". Ok, lucky us. On the drive to the hotel she gave a short introduction to China and Shanghai; about Mao's cultural revolution she just mentioned something like "nobody is perfect". Ok, life has to go on.

Nevertheless, Shanghai seems to be a very open-minded city. For example, even on the Intl. Airport you can find a shop called Spirit of Tibet, next to all the well known, global, high-end consumer brands.

Shop at Shanghai Intl. Airport

On Friday we visited the R&D Wireless Center of Huawei in Shanghai. The building as such is really impressive: it's about 1000 meters long (as they told us) and 10'000 people are working there. 

Huawei R&D Wireless Center

Huawei R&D Wireless Center

Like in Shenzhen the exhibition is also really impressive, the technology and its applications are being presented very professionally using multimedia booths. The exhibition raised my understanding of upcoming 4.5G and 5G wireless technologies at lot. 4.5G will be available in 2016 and the exhibition presents the new potentials for businesses, e.g., in the areas of controlling drones, mobile HD videos or for the Internet of Things. 

(See also the video by WSJ: Inside Huawei's R&D Center) 

4.5G and 5G exhibition hall

4.5G and 5G exhibition hall

4.5G and 5G exhibition hall

As recognized in Shenzhen already Huawei is not hesitant to use Online and Social Media services such as Twitter, Facebook or Google services exemplary - as well as the Chinese equivalences - in order to show the potential of their technologies in different application scenarios, despite the fact that some of these services are restricted or blocked in China by the government. 

And even on advertising posters within the Huawei premises social media services such as Facebook and Twitter are mentioned - but not the Chinese equivalents. 

Jack Li

Later Jack Li, VP of the R&D center, gave an overview about R&D at Huawei.
As we learned before already, Jack Li stated that Huawei has a very much customer oriented focus; therefore they apply the so-called ROADS framework which summarizes the main challenges in order to create an optimal service experience for telecoms users: Realtime, On Demand, All in One, DIY, Social. 

In their R&D activities Huawei also pursues Open Innovation approaches, e.g., setting up joint innovation centers with customers such as telecom operators or joint labs in cooperation with universities - but no beyond those activities.

Jack Li mentioned the corporate social responsibility activities at the end of his presentation as well.

Our group then visited the Swiss Consulate in Shanghai that shares their offices with Swissnex China. Here, first Pascal Marmier, CEO of Swissnex China, gave an inspiring presentation of what is Swissnex doing in China. Personally, I really like what and how Swissnex is doing. During a one-week study tour in 2011, I had the pleasure to get to know the Swissnex San Francisco team which has organized a great program for Swiss university representatives in the field of Social Media.

Pascal Marmier,
Swissnex China

Pascal gave a really enthusiastic presentation. Swissnex China pursues a very open strategy applying different open innovation approaches. He's really fascinated by the innovation power and creativity of the Chinese people: "A prototyping nation of >1 billion entrepreneurs". Indeed, if you still think Chinese people are only able to copy you should take a look into the literature, e.g., The Economist or MIT Sloan Management Review; the keyword is Accelerated Innovation.

Among others, Pascal mentioned some project activities Swissnex China is doing or supporting.
For example, they organize innovation camp such as the China Hardware Innovation Camp, CHIC in cooperation with Swiss universities. One of the recent results is a smart baby bottle. During the camp, the technological know-how of the Swiss students and the needs of the Chinese markets were brought together.
They also were co-host of the Lift China 2015.


In the following Anna Mattei Russo, Deputy Consul General, Head of Culture, Media and Education Section at Consulate General of Switzerland in Shanghai, and Fabio Müller, Trade Promotion Director Swiss Business Hub China, a network partner of Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE), gave us an insight into their activities about the China - Switzerland relations from 1905 till the FTA of 2014 and How to do Business in China,  including eCommerce.

Challenges doing Business in China

eCommerce Opportunities in China

Finally, Nathan Kaiser, eigerlaw.com gave us a "highly unstructured presentation" (as he announced) about his experiences in China as a Swiss lawyer supporting Swiss businesses in China.
Some of his learnings from his experiences are: "China is much more diverse than Europe is", and "China is still a communist country, it is organized top down: what is not explicitly allowed is illegal" - "but the emperor is far". He described the country as a highly regulated, bureaucratic economy, and not an open economy. According to Nathan, the law structure is more or less the same as in Switzerland, with one exception: the communist party is above all and rules by law, "they are managing the place". And: "In China everybody cheats everybody". China is a low trust country, but families are a highly trusted environment he said.
And about faking trade marks he mentioned a recent example from China: Somebody in China Has Set Up a Fake Goldman Sachs and Is Doing Business (see also the Bloomberg article)

This concluded a very exciting week in Shenzhen and Shanghai!

Huawei Study Tour to China
Huawei Study Tour to China - part 3

All photos are available under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license

Huawei Study Tour to China

In a series of posts, I will summarize and share some impressions from the study trip to China from a personal perspective.

The study trip has been organized by Huawei and especially Huawei Switzerland; the study tour group comprises 16 students from the area of Information Systems and Information Technology from Swiss universities all over the country, six professors and Axel Menning from Huawei Switzerland. 

The study tour is part of the ICT Competitive program of Huawei global which runs under the program called Seeds for the Future (Video) (Twitter #seedsforthefuture): All these programs are part of the Corporate Social Responsibility activities of Huawei global. ICT Competitive is a two-week program targeted at students from universities and has been established in 70 countries. The program for the Swiss group has been tailor-made and takes eight days, Monday to Monday.

On Sunday, 23.8., the group flew from Zurich to Hongkong where we stayed the whole day. Only in the evening, we went on to Shenzhen in mainland China. From our tour guide in Hongkong we learned, among others, these two things: "China is a country with two systems, one is free, the other isn't." and "In China everything is fake".

One country, two systems -
and two license plates

About the first Learning I made my own experiences in the Hotel in Shenzhen very soon after arrival: Very openly the hotel states that the most popular social media services, as well as Google, are restricted or blocked due to "regulations of the government". But using a VPN connection makes theses sites available again. 

Information about restricted/ blocked
Social Media sites in the hotel room

On Monday we visited different buildings of the huge Huawei campus which count 150'000 square meters in total (map). 

We started off watching the black swans on the executive campus. 

 

During the day we went to two exhibition halls, the general one and the one for the business group "enterprise solutions". We all were very impressed by the real large halls and the perfect presentations of the various products. Well done Huawei. 

In two presentations we got an introduction to the company by VP Global Public Affairs and were told some more details about the Corporate Social Responsibility activities.

Although Huawei is a Chinese company founded 1987, it is truly a global player. In total 170'000 people are working within the company. 76'000 work in 16 R&D centers around the world as well as in 28 joint innovation centers; 82% of suppliers are non-Chinese, and 87% of the financing come from overseas banks. In 2014 revenues were CNY 288.2 billion (USD 46.5 billion), an increase of 20.6% from 2013, and the group net profit reached CNY 27.9 billion (USD4.5 billion), up 32.7% year on year.

Furthermore , "Huawei continues to invest heavily in innovation. In 2014, Huawei invested CNY 40.8 billion (USD6.6 billion) into research and development (R&D), representing 14.2% of 2014 revenue and a significant increase of 29.4% from 2013. Huawei has invested more than CNY 190 billion (USD30.7 billion) in R&D over the past decade." (source)

In Europe 9900 people are working for Huawei in 44 locations, around 1600 in 18 R&D centers in 8 countries . In Switzerland Huawei has ca. 300 employees.

The company is privately hold, only (Chinese) employees may participate in the ownership plan. "There are 70,000 employees holding company shares" in 2014.  According to a 2013 research study, this creates significant advantages compared to Huawei's competitors.

More details can be found in the annual report 2014.


On Tuesday morning there were two very different presentations. First, Brad Hall talked about the cultural differences between the China and the Western countries. He discussed its implications especially on management in global companies. Here he referred to the case of the so-called Tiger Mom's explaining the different mindsets in education. He was really clear on his opinion about the challenges Huawei still has, despite its great success so far. He also addressed the issue of governments interfering the markets in order to support the development of certain industries. He clearly made the case that industries supported by respective government programs, e.g., in Japan or China, are less successful in its global development than others in the long run.

David Wang, president government affairs, talked about Cyber Security issues. In the beginning, he made a nice comparison between the roles in road safety and cyber security. One of his points was that cyber security is a rather complex issue with several players involved: "don't point your finger at just one party". As far as cyber security is concerned he explained very much in detail that a respective "cyber security strategy is built-in to everything we do".

On Wednesday Hank Stokbroekx gave us a very well structured overview of the 6 P's of marketing (products, pricing, promotion, place, people, process) from a Huawei perspective and answered the questions of our group in a long Q&A session.

Students listening to Hank Stokbroekx

During the early afternoon, the students began to prepare their group assignments.

Later the group visited one of the manufacturing plants in the greater Shenzhen area. Equipped with protective clothes we visited a production line for  PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) which was really impressive.

On Thursday morning the group took off to the next destination Shanghai.

Huawei Study Tour to China - part 2

All photos are available under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license

(Updated 1.9.2015)