Building University Relationships in China

Abstract

Gridley! Gridley! Get in here; we're in crisis mode! We need someone to develop relationships with Chinese universities pronto. Our competitors are ahead of us and if we don't move fast, all the good technology will be gone. Here's an emergency 24-hour passport application and a plane ticket to Beijing. We have a Chinese etiquette consultant coming in this afternoon to put you through his four-hour charm school. It includes a copy of Sun Tzu's Art of War. They tell me it's a great read for the plane. We don't have much time. I'm sure you can sign up the two leading universities in five days. Good luck! So begins the tale of Gridley's trip to China.Wewill follow him during his five-day stay and describe the things he did right and the things he could have done better. Day 1-On Way To the Airport Smart move-help the Chinese prepare for the visit The Chinese consultant said one thing that resonated with Gridley: the Chinese are planning to do business with you, they will know more about you than you will about them. As a result, Gridley thought it prudent to notify his Chinese hosts that he was coming and describe, in broad strokes, his interests. Later he was surprised to learn that both universities he visited had investigated the history of his firm in China. They knew how many students his firm hired, who they were, a sense of their promotion history, and whether they were still employed. Day 2-China! Smart move-leverage in-country resources The good news is that Gridley works for a large multinational company with labs and other facilities in China. He wisely leveraged that in-country knowledge by linking up with an in-country executive to be his native guide. A native guide does more than speak the language. He understands the relationships between Gridley's firm and the Chinese government. Chinese universities are closely tied to the government. If a firm has long established relationships with key managers in the government, they can act as a sponsor for the university initiative. It's easy to underestimate the importance of university/government relationships. These institutions interact in complex ways, have multiple areas of overlapping interests and support/hinder each other based on factors that are not obvious to the Western observer. The native guide also understands the relationships between Gridley's firm and the university. Two local managers from Gridley's company have personal relationships with senior university administrators. These two managers are valuable entry points. To capture the richness of these contacts, Gridley and the native guide sketched a relationship map based on the diagram, next page. For each leg of the triangle, they identified the personal relationships that existed between the firm's management team and senior Chinese administrators in the government/university, as well as each party's needs and available resources. The next step was to complement the relationship map with a needs assessment of the two universities and the Chinese government. Both institutions are seeking resources to meet academic, social and technical needs. Wisely, Gridley and the native guide do not focus on money. While money is important, it is a secondary, or even a tertiary asset to Chinese universities. Leading schools have amassed funding levels in a few years that rival the endowments of leading Western universities. The purchasing power of this funding (provided in Western currencies and spent in China) multiplies its purchasing impact by a factor of three. Chinese universities are not short of funds-they are short of students, faculty, high-quality jobs for their graduates, and breakthrough projects that lead to publication in prestigious journals. Gridley and the native guide looked at each leg of the triangle and asked: * What resources do the Chinese government/ universities need? Do we have assets that fill these needs? …