In Focus: Chinese takeaway
It’s been a big week for China and the East Midlands. David Cameron’s trade junket to the country has seen Newark-based architect Benoy announce huge deals, and Rolls-Royce has put a tricky week behind it by signing another mega deal with a Chinese airline. Changan, which recently moved onto Nottingham Science Park, was mentioned in dispatches in a BIS press release, and now the University of Nottingham is getting in on the act by announcing a new dean at its wildly successful Ningbo campus.
Carl Fey is clearly an excited chap. “It is now time to build and move forward, particularly into the spheres of executive education and to put some additional focus on research. I want to make sure that the world knows about all the great things that are happening here in the business school at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China. We have really exciting and aggressive plans for the future — keep an eye on us, there are going to be a lot of amazing things happening,” he gushed after the announcement was made.
You have to hand it to the University of Nottingham for spotting the opportunities available in China and going out there and getting a grasp on things, when others were still talking about it. Figures released yesterday saw China’s trade surplus (remember those?) reached £17bn in October, with the US getting jittery (or jealous). How the other half live, eh?
Fey could be a very useful ambassador for the East Midlands in China. He speaks English, Swedish, Russian and German, has also been in charge of the World Economic Forum’s global Competitiveness project for Russia for the past five years and has travelled and worked extensively in Russia and China.
His areas of expertise include foreign market entry, leadership, organisational culture, change management, knowledge transfer, and mergers and acquisitions. And whilst the University of Nottingham has a broad research portfolio it has also identified and badged 13 research priority groups, including energy, drug discovery, global food security, biomedical imaging, advanced manufacturing, integrating global society, operations in a digital world, and science, technology & society. Enough to prick the ears of firms working in those areas back in the hinterland, surely?
Businesses are still finding it tricky to tap into university expertise, and there remains a mistrust between the two sectors, but surely it’s time to lock that wariness away in a cupboard, stick your head above the parapet and start dreaming of the opportunities which undoubtedly exist in China. It sure beats reading the headlines back home, for one thing.
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