I first went to China in the summer of 2009. It was a trip sponsored by my undergraduate school to present research for a program I participated in. I was interviewed after the trip by the school newspaper and they asked about the opportunity the program had given me.
My closing sentiment was that you cannot raise your hand when the opportunity is offered if you are not in the room. Being in the right place to be able to jump on these opportunities is essential.
I felt equally fortunate when Ray Friedman, the Owen guru of business in China, mentioned the opportunity to partner with a business and to perform some exploratory research about potential Chinese expansion or partnerships. The program consisted of a course called Doing Business in China, followed by a trip during Spring break. It was to be self-funded, but the opportunity to boost my knowledge of the Chinese business climate and to strengthen my credentials was too much to pass up.
We first had to find a company or startup that required research in China, and once we established that relationship, that company was to guide our data collection and reporting requirements.
My team ended up working with an Owen EMBA alum named Ramesh. He owns a consulting company that has a contract with a retail chain in India, a chain that’s about to expand from six stores to 30 in short order. The boost in product sources will be an immense challenge, and our task was to find and meet with Chinese manufacturers of kitchenware.
The setup beforehand was grueling and required several late nights of work. Our first lesson was that if you sent 70 emails to different businesses in China, you can expect approximately zero responses. Culturally, it is just not something they do. It was confusing to us because we used the website Alibaba, which listed the potential manufacturers and provided a contact screen that we could fill out to send an email to a company contact. It seemed like a logical way to aggregate Chinese manufacturers and to connect them with potential international clients. You can imagine our frustration when these seemingly official channels failed to produce results.
Then a fortunate coincidence happened. I was taking New Product Development and a guest that works in a product design company responded to my question about these frustrations and told me that IMing is the only way to get a response. Alibaba had an IM option next to each company which we had not noted before.
Three hours later I had two appointments setup with manufacturers for visits, and had fostered two other potential relationships. To my above point, I was “in the room” for this opportunity to learn how to solve an important problem for my project.
Talking with companies in China required some 2:00 a.m. bedtimes, but the excitement of creating relationships on the opposite side of the world and developing business ties in a market that is very different than my own was worth the sleepy mornings.
My advice for anyone who is considering where they want to pursue their MBA is to keep this lesson in mind. Which rooms do you need to be in to be able to raise your hand when an opportunity is offered?
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