Reflective Journal 2: Management Consultant Project Reflections

During our CDE lessons for weeks 3 and 4, we were supposed to present a group project presentation on a management consultant scenario. My group consisted of myself, Gao Yang, Ming Chuan and Yi Kun. After much deliberation, we decided to help a company called Meizu. Meizu is 1 of the top 10 smartphone manufacturers in China and expanded into the smartphone market in 2008. Meizu has set up HK branch in 2011 to explore potential global marketing.

After analysis, we realised that Meizu not trusted and known by the US consumers. US consumers have a sort of stereotyping concept that China products are of low quality. They would rather support the Home team which mainly are the competitors of Meizu e.g. Apple. Apple and Google are constantly improving themselves to suit customers’ needs, gaining their trust. Furthermore, Meizu has lack of support outside China. We also came up with some solutions to the problems.

• Meizu should set up a headquarters in the US. 
• Meizu should work with the telcos in the US to make their phones more popular through advertising and campaigning,. e.g. AT&T, Verizon. 
• Meizu should hire people in the US and have better working benefits like Google. 
• Meizu should be unique (e.g. own operating system). 

As a presenter, I felt that we were one of the better groups who had really did our best. We had indeed spent a lot of time and effort into the presentation, trying to express our knowledge and thoughts. However, the audience was not really attentive and quite restless. Some people were focusing more on their electronic devices, most probably doing last minute work. I felt sad that most of the people were not listening to our presentation. Isn't it basic respect or courtesy to give the people who were presenting your fullest attention? After the presentation, we had room for improvement such as the solutions were not detailed enough and the target audience.

As part of the audience, I thought that some of the presentations are very well prepared and the presenters were enthusiastic about the presentations too. I must also admit that the sometimes the presentations are quite boring too as they were either too wordy or too long. Group 1 presented on Youku Tudou. They had analysed all 4 companies including YouTube which is Youku Tudou's main competitor if it expanded to the US market. However, their group mentioned only brief details of their suggestions. Group 2 presented on WeChat. Their presentation was short and sweet and had really good in-depth analysis on the company. However, I would like to point out one of their suggestions was flawed. They mentioned that they should hire the employees from rivals in China, but isn't that poaching? Group 3 presented on Li Ning. I felt that their presentation had also a good analysis of the company. Their suggestions were quite brief. Their 'Great Plan' was very good plan and estimated the problems and challenges that Li Ning might face and also come up with predictions as to when it would break into the US market, etc. Group 4 presented on Geely. Their group was the last group to present therefore it was rather plain except for the fact that they handled the Q & A session very well and all my doubts were answered. Group 5 did on Qihoo. I liked the design of their slides. The unique part was when they had a demonstration of the company's product and showed us through. Their way of engaging the audience was better than the rest of the groups. Group 7 did on XTEP. Their presentation was quite unclear and I had to ask them some questions after their presentation. They did not mention how to improve the design and what they define by creative if there was a test for it. Group 8 did on Baidu. I was already very familiar with Baidu thus the group did fine. They did not address the publicity issue.

In conclusion, I feel that I have indeed benefited from the presentations a lot and learnt more about the different Chinese companies that I have heard from. I feel that Chinese companies would find it difficult to expand to the US market mainly because of this 'China Firewall'. The government does not really approve of the companies' expansion as they feel that China is already the best and also did not want influence from the West, therefore resulting in a very conservative Chinese market. However, the US market is much more free and easy. Overall, I feel that the presentations were also quite good however it would be better if the audience gave more respect to the speakers. In the future, I hope to have more of such activities but with a better environment.

Reflective Journal 1: CDE Course Thoughts & Reflections

The first 2 lessons of my Cultural Differentiation Elective (CDE) have been amazing and quite interesting. I have finally broke free from my usual and boring lower secondary humanities which were quite dry. I don't mean to say that they were boring but Humanities are always very dry and I just have to get used to it. Geography and History for the past two years were fine and okay. However, since I have applied for CSE-BSP, I have thus taken a fresh new start and a new Integrated Humanities Elective (IHE) which is the Cultural Differentiation Elective. I hope to have a fun and joyous journey in this year learning this new elective!

In our first lesson, Mr Karplus, our CDE teacher, roughly showed us our SOW or our syllabus. He showed us our CDE wiki and some case studies we were going to look at.  For example, the topic titled "Dichotomy between China and the USA" looked interesting as I thought how do China and the USA differ exactly and many more questions. It would answer all of my questions and get a deeper insight into the topic.

Then, Mr Karplus started the first lesson asking as what we thought CDE was about. We all had different views to the subject, but had a similar concept of what the subject was about. He also showed us the differences between the West and the East, showing us Google searches if he searched American Culture and Chinese Culture respectively. The search results were quite stereotyped. For example, American Culture revealed pictures of hamburgers and the US flag, while Chinese Culture revealed ancient art and calligraphy. Mr Karplus then went on to show us the differences between Chinese and American values. For example, American values include consistent persistence, success emphasis, work for work's sake, efficiency and practicality, Science & Technology, progress, material comfort, humanitarianism, freedom, democracy, equality, racism and group superiority. I was quite shocked to learn all these values as most of them were quite different from the Chinese values we were taught when we were young. For example, the education in the West was much lax than the education in the East. Young people in the West were allowed romantic love while the young people in the East are more restricted in terms of relationships. I felt that it was quite amazing as I had learnt so much just attending the first lesson. Moreover, my peers had also asked intelligent questions in which the whole class benefited from. The East and the West have similar and different values at the same time.

In our second lesson, we started our first case study on "Google Way". Mr Karplus showed us 2 videos of Google. I would expect such a famous and big company to have long and tiring working hours, heavy workload and stress but surprisingly, it was not! I was stunned to realise that the Google workers have freedom and relaxation. They have a lot of facilities for the workers in order to come up with ideas for the company. For instance, Google had many cafeterias for the workers to have their meals, massage rooms, swimming pools and almost all the 'relax' facilities in the world. However, I know that life couldn't be so good in Google so I took the video with a pinch of salt. Google has planned to make the workers happy. Even the long queues Google is deliberately having in their cafeterias. All these facilities provided and benefits has a motive to it which is to get the employees to mingle so as to share their latest ideas to come up with something new. This is a ingenious way of getting their employees to perform to the best of their ability, with emphasis on quality over quantity. The second video was a more perceptive video in the sense that it not so much focused on the benefits of Google, but however had more interviews of the high ranking positions people such as the CEO of Google and basically all about Google. It had certainly differed from the first video as this video was more on the neutral side.

Overall, the first few lessons have been thought-provoking and interesting, and I definitely look forward to more lessons in the future.