BiMBA joins hands with Linkedin: Height of an Age and Life Choices
Sep 09-2014
On the afternoon of the 5th September, 2014, on the eve of the Mid-Autumn festival, the National School of Development at Peking University gave MBA and EMBA students a very special Mid-Autumn present – a high-level summit: Height of an Age and Life Choices .“This event, the second “Linkedin Influencing” event was jointly held by NSD’s BiMBA and Linkedin, the world’s largest professional social networking website. BiMBA Co-Dean, Prof. John Yang, former Hewlett Packard China President, CEO of ATA Mr. Sun Zhenyao, Focus Media CEO and Chair of the Board Mr. Jiang Nanchun, well-known media figure and co-founder of Jiemian, Mr. He Li shared their experiences from different industries and reflections on life to give EMBA and MBA students and Linkedin premium users practical guidance and real-life examples to help in their future career development.
The National School of Development at Peking University BiMBA Assistant Dean Daisy Wang Xin welcomed the audience from BiMBA and Linkedin. She said that BiMBA and Linkedin have a common mission and principles. In the past decade, BiMBA, which is at the forefront of internationalization, has gained widespread recognition from many third party assessors such as Forbes China and Fortune, for training many talented people, just the kind of people for whom Linkedin provide a service. Ms. Wang stated both at the center of both organizations are talented people, with BiMBA focusing on their education whilst Linkedin focuses on them with career development opportunities. On this day, Linkedin, which originated in Silicon Valley, came to Peking University. Next year, Peking University’s BiMBA will take MBA students to Silicon Valley to visit innovative companies.
Linkedin Global Vice-President and President of China, Derek Shen:”Linkedin China’s mission is to provide a global platform for China’s professionals and to help them find better opportunities faster. The influencing events are held to bring this mission to reality as part of the localization initiative. I am very happy to see the first and second event attract so many users. They have passionately and enthusiastically shown that we must continue with the influencing events. I am honored to hold the second series of events with BiMBA and very honored to invite Mr. Sun Zhenyao, Mr. Jiang Nanchun and Mr. He Li, great business leaders, to share their business insights and wisdom.”
ATA CEO Mr. Sun Zhenyao shared his topic of “Profession and Entrepreneurship”. According to Mr. Sun, professionals and entrepreneurs have a significant difference. Professionals need to adapt to a position created by the company, to have incredibly strong execution skills, to have an amount of foresight in one’s profession and gain recognition of results from others. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are driven by ideals, their innovation skills are greater than execution skills, they can deal with high levels of uncertainty and results of their enterprises are judged by themselves. Mr. Sun, in his position both as entrepreneur and professional manager analyzed the questions: “Are you suited to work in an organization?” and “Are you suited to being an entrepreneur?”
Focus Media CEO and Chairman of the Board Mr. Jiang Nanchun shared the topic, “How to reinvent yourself and forever move forwards.” According to Mr. Jiang: “In any endeavor, one must have a professional background and detailed insight; creativity will not grow out of thin air. One must be quizzical and critical when looking at every issue in order to have innovative breakthroughs and reconstruct business models.” Mr. Jiang said that over the last ten years’ development, the core of Focus Media has been its disruption of the advertising industry.
Jiemian co-founder Mr. He Li shared the topic of “After the invention of photography, all artisans became artists”. As an influential media figure, Mr. He believes that production costs for traditional content are too high. In the past, superior media outlets could get to the breaking news area faster even that fire trucks and police cars – in the age of the internet and social media, these outlets have lost out to eyewitnesses. One of the key aims of creating ‘Jiemian’ was to change the traditional way of generating content.
BiMBA co-Dean, Prof. John Yang commented on each of the four speakers’ excellent speeches. Meanwhile, he shared his own advice: to know oneself and to know others; we should follow the speakers’ great vision and open-mindedness; everyone should have independent thinking and an independent outlook; each should have their own values and stay true to oneself in the face of many choices. In order to enhance China’s soft power, we must be open-minded and increase communication with the outside world.
