That’s Rick King standing in the background with his arm pointed at a power point presentation. At the time of this photo Rick was delivering the summation talk of a week of business conferences. Rick is the Chief Technology Officer at Thomson Legal & Regulatory in Eagan. He’s also an Eden Prairie resident. He’s also the chair of the City’s Flying Cloud Airport Advisory Commission.
Rick invited me to Thomson’s office campus in Eagan today to sit in on a private lecture plus Q&A session with Minnesota native and very hot author right now James McGregor, author of One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China. Thomson was retained McGregor as a consultant to assist the company in developing its own “China strategy”. Rick invited me today because he has been watching the Habitat For Technology, School District, Chamber of Commerce, and City in Eden Prairie all work together on a China initiative of our own with Loudi, China. He thought I would enjoy the lecture, and maybe learn a thing or two. He was right, on both counts.
McGregor’s was a very engaging speaker as well. It was a relatively small group setting for his speech. I’d say there was 60-70 people in the room. The attendees were all part of the technology support wing of Thomson. Many had come from across the country at other Thomson offices to be part of a week business planning and team building. McGregor was the keynote speaker of the final day.
McGregor said some things today that surprised me about China. He said some things I had not expected to hear. For example, he said that the China is not a nation of “collectivists”, but really a nation of conformists. He said the drive among the Chinese to be successful in business is as strong as it is here in the US. McGregor also said that China is taking a serious look at changing its “stuffed duck” education system in which teachers try to stuff as many facts as possible into a students head and students are rewarded for excelling a rote memorization. While we may be looking at Chinese students and admiring their math and science skills, they are looking back at us an admiring our creativity and problem-solving skills. They are changing some aspects of their schools to be more like American schools.
McGregor had many stories he shared with the group. Many of them are in his book, which is an amazingly quick read and good practical guide for doing business in China. Thanks for the wonderful gift of the experience Rick. I appreciate it very much.
