On April 16, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) held a forum entitled "Economy Growth and Innovation" in Tianjin in collaboration with Tianjin Federation of Industry and Commerce. Two renowned professors from CEIBS, Prof. Wu Jinglian and Prof. Atuahene-Gima Kwaku delivered keynote speeches on "economy growth" and "innovation" successively to the audience of more than 500 business executives and government officials in Tianjin.
In the opening speech, Prof. Liu Ji, Honorary President of CEIBS, said that the school was very pleased to hold this forum to share cutting-edge knowledge and the latest research of the school's faculty with Tianjin's business community and the government. Tianjin Mayor Dai Xianglong attended the forum and made welcome remarks.
Dai Xianglong: Innovation is the core of economy growth in the modern society
Mayor Dai pointed out that since 1980's, innovation featuring informalisation and hi-technology has become the number-one driving force for economic growth, and now China must push forward with its own innovation in systems of knowledge, technology and management.
"Innovation is indispensable for realising the Eleventh Five-year Plan though many other efforts are also necessary," Dai emphasised. "As pointed out by Tianjin's Municipal Development Plan," he added, "it must mainly rely on innovation instead of preferential policies to achieve the goal of building Tianjin into an international port and North China's financial and ecological centres to better serve and promote the development of the cities on the coast of the Bohai Sea."
Wu Jinglian: How to transform economy growth pattern
Prof Wu Jinglian, Baosteel Chair Professor of Economics at CEIBS, delivered the keynote speech entitled "The Eleventh Five-year Plan and Transformation of Growth Pattern". Prof. Wu holds the view that the crucial priority of the Eleventh Five-year Plan is to realise the transformation of the extensive growth pattern into the intensive one. The key to the successful transformation is to unswervingly stick to the reform and opening-up policy.
Prof. Wu believes that the extensive pattern could not allocate resources effectively, and instead it would cause energy shortage, aggravate employment difficulty, and slow down the development of service industry; it would also trigger short-term or long-term financial crises since the ineffective over-investment mainly on bank loans will lead to nowhere but accumulation of bad debts and financial risks of the banking system. Prof. Wu thinks that systematic problems clogging the transformation of the growth pattern have not yet been removed, which are: 1) the allocation of important economic resources is kept in the hands of government; 2) the government performance is measured mainly by the GDP growth; 3) there are defects in the fiscal system; 4) the distortion of factor prices. The above four problems make government officials at various levels prone to return to traditional growth pattern. In recent years, the gap between the requirements of the economy growth and the actual development of the market system has led to the aggravation of those problems.
The prescription made by Prof. Wu is transformation of the growth pattern, ie to speed development of advanced manufacturing and service industry, to accelerate industrialisation with informalisation, and to realize the shift of redundant labours in rural areas from agricultural industry to non-agricutural ones. "It's of uppermost importance to change the governmental function," Prof. Wu said. "Now the governments at various levels still meddle in others' business but fail to do their own business well. In order to ensure a sound development and effective operation of market system, the government must play its due role, namely, to ensure a legal environment based on rules of law and fair legal enforcement, to keep macroeconomic stability by aggregate means, to provide compulsory education, and to build a basic social security network, etc."
Atuahene-Gima Kwaku: The paradox of managing innovation in China
Dr. Atuahene-Gima Kwaku, Professor of Marketing and Innovation Management at CEIBS, has been famous for his research on enterprise innovation management in recent years. In his keynote speech "The Paradox of Managing Innovation in China", he gave out his view that innovation competency is the real source of competitive advantage for firms, so every organisation needs one core competence-innovation; innovation is the key factor for success in China and even in a greater area.
Prof. Atuahene-Gima has found that though the management and employees in all companies agree that innovation is critically important, their focus on profits has squeezed out their attention to innovation. He found that in the firms he studied, few have found ways to use innovation as a central strategy; top management is lack of innovation as an organisational mindset, lack of assessment of creativity and innovative capability of employees, lack of reward systems to recognize creative and innovative employees, and also lack of training of employees in best practices in creativity and innovation.
"Innovation can be divided into two types, i.e. product innovation and management innovation. Product innovation can be rewarding to the firm, but can not bring growth to it," Prof. Atuahene-Gima said. "Therefore, a more balanced way should be adopted in developing skills of management innovation, because this type of innovation can bring potential for firms' development." At last, he shared with the audience one of his research achievements-the TAO Model of Innovation.
CEIBS Executive Forum Adjusts Itself to Different Areas
CEIBS was the organiser of this time's forum. The school's marketing and communications director, Dr. Snow Zhou, said that as an academic institution, CEIBS regarded creating and disseminating knowledge as one of its top tasks. "The year 2006 is the first year to implement the Eleventh Five-year Plan, so it's a critical year for China's future economic development and its direction," Dr. Zhou commented. "CEIBS is proud of its world's renowned faculty team of which Prof. Wu and Prof. Kwaku are outstanding representatives. They possess world's cutting-edge management ideas and research achievements, which the school is willing to disseminate to different areas of the country. We hope to have more opportunities to communicate and exchange with government officials and business practitioners in the areas other than Shanghai, so as to benefit them for their success." Dr. Zhou also talked about themes of the school forum, saying that they would be adjusted to cater for real situation and current challenges of the economic development in different areas.
CEIBS is a non-profit joint venture established in 1994 between the Chinese Government and the European Commission. It is the leading China-based international business school with main objective of contributing to the economic development of China and its integration into the world economy by preparing highly competent and internationally-oriented business leaders. After nearly 12 years' endeavor, the school has now become one of the top business schools in Asia. CEIBS is the only Asian business school that achieves the Financial Times' global ranking for its MBA, EMBA and Executive Education programmes, with its MBA programme ranked 21st early this year, its EMBA programme 13th in October 2005 and its Executive Education Open programmes 37th in May 2005.
