Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
I am still in awe at how informative and valuable these business meetings have been here in Beijing. I never thought that someone with as high a rank as James Boyken would be the one giving us a rundown of how IBM fit into the Chinese model. It was very insightful to learn about how much successful companies needed to adapt in order to survive in the Chinese market.
An interesting I noted about IBM is that although its primary business had been mainframes and hardware, it's moving away from that model and going towards one that sells intellectual property. It now provides a wide range of services and consultation, which allows it to be competitive in almost any market without making itself look threatening to the local businesses. The change in direction for a company the size of IBM, must've been a very hard and long process so I'm suspecting they must've had an amazing leadership team decades ago that forsaw this problem. International business is a lot more complex than I had originally suspected before going on this trip.
The USCBC meeting was really inspiring. It was very refreshing to see professionals closer to our age, making such a large impact with multinational firms, a lot of which were engineering companies. I also liked hearing that engineers with global experience were in high demand. It kind of sucks that engineers need to be multi-dimensional nowadays in order to be competitive, but at least I'm putting myself into a position to get a job in the future market.
- comments