Asia Management and Business Seminar Series

The Advanced Institute of Management Research and the Asia-Pacific Technology Network (APTN) are running a series of seminars focussing on the challenges for business and managers from and in Asia.

The first was jointly-presented by Professor Simon Collinson (Warwick Business School and AIM Research) and Louis Turner (Chief Executive, APTN) and they will also Chair the subsequent seminars.

Seminar 2:
Overseas M&A by Chinese companies. implications for managers in Europe and the US.

Chair: Martin Bloom, Non-executive Chairman, Renesola
Speakers:

Professor Peter Williamson, Professor of International Management, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge

John Frieslaar, CTO Key Accounts, Huawei Technologies (UK)

Date: 31 March 2011
Hosted by/Location: Fasken Martineau, 17 Hanover Square London W1S 1HU
Nearest tube station: Oxford Circus
Timing: Registration from 17:00, seminar from 17:30 - 19.15 (followed by refreshments)

Dragons at the Door: The evolving advantage of Chinese companies and options to respond by Professor Peter Williamson

This discussion examined how the competitive advantage of leading Chinese companies – the emerging dragons – is evolving. Building on the base of cost innovation - in essence, using China's low cost advantage in radically new ways to offer dramatically more for less, we examined the implications of a recent upsurge in technological innovation in China and the use of foreign acquisitions by Chinese companies to improve their competitive capabilities. This led us on to the question: How should managers in incumbent firms respond?

Professor Peter Williamson is Professor of International Management at Judge Business School and Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge.
Peter divides his time between research and consulting on global strategy, M&A and innovation and as non-executive director of several companies spanning IT through to green energy. He holds has a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard and has held professorships at London Business School, Harvard Business School and INSEAD (in Singapore).

Peter has worked with companies in China since 1983 and co-authored Dragons at Your Door: How Chinese cost innovation is disrupting global competition in 2007. His other books include: Winning in Asia: Strategies for Competing in the New Millennium (2004) and From Global to Metanational: How Companies Win in the Knowledge Economy (2001). His article "Is Your Innovation Process Global?" received an MIT-Sloan-Price Waterhouse Coopers Award honouring articles that have contributed most to the enhancement of management practice.

Huawei is the second-largest manufacturer of mobile network equipment in the world, which has expanded in a spectacular way into West European and Emerging Markets, even though there has been some politically-inspired resistance in the United States. The company has supplied kit to 46 of the world’s top 50 telecoms operators. Since 2005 Huawei has worked with BT to provide kit to upgrade the UK fixed-line phone operator’s network. John Frieslaar will give an idea of how this Chinese company is coming to terms with its new global role.
 

Further details and updates available at: www.aptn.org.uk

Presentations

 AIM -APTN Seminar Overseas M&A by Chinese companies: Implications for managers in Europe and the US
 

 Asia-Pacific Technology Network by John Frieslaar