AUGUST 2006
Student Exchange Builds Relationships
Tsinghua University in Beijing partners with Stanford to broaden student perspectives.
by Pamela Yatsko
Twelve GSB and seven Tsinghua students join Professor Kenneth Shotts at Yi He Yuan Garden, also known as the Summer Palace, during a spring break visit to Beijing in March. Fifteen Tsinghua students also visited Stanford and its surroundings in January as part of the exchange program that was partly planned by Adrian Li and Ivan Jakovljevic,
both MBA ’06.
Adrian Li knows one thing for sure: Had he not participated in the Business School’s new China exchange program, the China-oriented product he was developing for a business plan design class would have flopped. “We found it very difficult to access consumer research,” the second-year MBA student recalled. Instead, Li’s Chinese “buddy” on the program introduced him to a classmate in China with profound knowledge of his target market. “We got far greater insight into how our product would be received and what direction we would take it in,” he said.
Li’s experience illustrates one of the ways in which the Business School’s innovative exchange program with Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management in Beijing has enriched participants’ MBA education. The program provides an unparalleled opportunity for students from both sides to learn quickly about a foreign country that is a focus of international business. It also allows students to begin building strong networks with future business leaders in that country—networks they can draw on throughout their business careers. According to Tsinghua student Victor Tseng, “We were able to develop a special, lasting friendship.” Stanford alumnus Chi-Hua Chien, MBA '06, added, “Every GSB student should have this opportunity.”
The Stanford–Tsinghua Exchange Program (STEP) is an initiative of Stanford’s Global Management Program, which seeks to prepare students to manage effectively in a global environment. It grew out of student demands for greater global coverage in the Business School’s curriculum without extending the duration of the MBA program beyond two years. STEP does this by putting a unique twist on the exchange concept: It paired 15 second-year Stanford MBA students with 15 business students from one of China’s top universities. “The learning experience that was gained from this was far greater than anything I could have picked up from a book or class,” Li said.
Student partners first became acquainted with one another in November and December 2005 by working together via email on joint business topics. They then solidified relationships through weeklong country visits, first to the Bay Area in January and to Beijing in March. With their buddy as their guide, the students attended classes, presented joint project findings, visited local companies, and socialized—at restaurants, at nightclubs, at basketball games, and even while traveling from one event to the next.
This setup engendered intense camaraderie. After LaShawn James of Atlanta returned from Beijing, for instance, the Tsinghua students showered him with emails expressing a desire to maintain their new friendship for years to come. “If you’re ever in Beijing, give me a call no matter what time,” he recalled them writing. “If you’re 50 years old, still give me a call.”
Such personal relationships could prove invaluable to participants who pursue business opportunities in their target country after graduation. This may hold particularly true for the Stanford MBAs since connections, or guanxi, tend to be even more important in China than in countries like the United States. “Insiders may be able to know what is going on in a way that outsiders can never know, and these Stanford MBAs will be able to tap into that knowledge,” Kenneth Shotts, associate professor of political economy at the Business School, explained.
The program’s emphasis on relationship building also deepened participants’ knowledge of their target country, with home country counterparts continually offering insights that made their academic studies more meaningful. For instance, the Stanford students visited Chinese retailer Gomei, where they saw dozens of manufacturer-sponsored booths featuring cutting-edge plasma screen television sets selling for thousands of dollars apiece. Chien wondered who was buying them in a country where the average new college graduate makes US$375 per month. A Tsinghua student told him that even though maybe only 5 percent of China’s population could afford the sets, 5 percent of 1.3 billion people still constituted a sizable market. Said Chien, “The sheer magnitude of the market size was a frame of reference new to most American students.”
He then juxtaposed that experience against a similar one that took place while walking in the Beijing subway with the Tsinghua students. One of them explained why the city still hired attendants to collect subway tickets manually rather than automating the task: Too many people would lose their jobs, aggravating social instability. So when a macroeconomics professor later discussed in class the problems China was having with income disparity, Chien’s understanding was far more profound. “The interaction with the students is just so remarkable,” he commented. “The simplest little things [from these conversations] just alter your worldview and help you internalize what that environment looks like.”
Such encounters helped LaShawn James realize he was approaching his international business studies from an “American-centric” viewpoint that would inevitably lead him to faulty conclusions. For instance, he initially thought it crazy that Gomei, the Chinese retailer, delivered online purchases to customers’ homes within three hours: A similar service in the United States would be too expensive to be popular. But after the Tsinghua students explained just how little a messenger costs in China compared to the United States, he understood why the Chinese company’s strategy could work. As a result, he now considers a country’s macroeconomic situation, history, and local environment when analyzing companies, rather than “taking for granted that it’s just like here in the U.S.,” he said.
Adrian Li’s interactions with the Tsinghua students likewise brought home a discomforting personal realization—in this case changing his post-MBA career strategy. Previously he had expected that because of his Western education and an understanding of China derived from his Chinese parentage, he would easily land an excellent job in China. Seeing firsthand the high caliber of the Tsinghua students quickly dispelled those illusions. “With their local knowledge, they’re probably in a far better position than I am to enter the China market,” he remarked.
Li now plans to start his own company in China, but only if he can find a local partner. “I’m going to go in and say, look, I need to have one of you aboard to help me build a business and to gain your insights as well, so that we can share in whatever we create,” he explained. Armed with the tools that STEP has provided him, including a deeper understanding of his future Chinese customers and employees, Li feels better prepared to undertake this challenge.
Intense interactive learning like this is exactly what the Global Management Program (GMP) envisioned when it first began thinking about STEP in 2004. With feedback on the program so positive, GMP hopes to expand it in future years to include many more Stanford MBA students. According to GMP faculty director John Roberts, “This is an effective way of helping students learn a lot about China in a hurry.”
