Today the Ericsson Case Competition has been held at Tsinghua Campus. 6 teams, consisting of 4 chinese students in each team have participated the competition. The events started shortly after lunch time. The ericsson kicked off the events with a company presentation and some background information about recruiting on campus and the Ericsson Clubs in Tsinghua and Beiyou Universities.  

The Ericsson Case competition is about YOUR vision of Life in 2020. In the competition. You are working at Ericsson and starting a business in 2020. You get 5 cards from Ericsson, reflecting what’s the business is about, what demands you are meeting, where you are operating and the technology aspects of the business. For example if you get the following setup what would go on thinking about? What would you business be like?

Theme: Service business

location: Mature markets

Foundamental of demands: Food

Technology of cooperation: Corporative Radar, where user is the provider of the information.

Maybe an iphone application which chooses the right person for you to go out on a date at your favorite restaurant?

The winner idea is about a  wrist watch that stores automatically, or by manual input, information about your health, fitness or other things that makes the daily life easier for you. it can for example design a personal training program after your health status specially for you at the the gym. The system is synchronized via the global wide network. It also possess privacy-protecting functions along with other features.

This competition is really about innovations in different circumstances. It is as much about designing new things as it is about putting together existing technologies in a evolutional way so that YOUR everyday life will be easier. The business ideas vary largely from country to country due to culture differences, the technology environment in the specific country and different fundamental demands in the area.

Apart from today’s case competition. Ericsson also has its own case competition every year in close corporation with Chinese elite universities. According to Enya Wu, the Ericsson student relationship manager in China, this is the best way to find result-driven students that matches the company’s core values: respect, professionalism and perseverance.

“You try to recruit where there is energy and passion”, said Charlotte Ericsson, the Ericsson student relationship manager in Sweden.  

Ericsson receives every year about 20000 applications to its 300 internship or job positions available in China.

On tuesday our newest Gold Partner SCA held an presentation at Tsinghua University, and yes it was absolutley fantastic! Mr. Stephen Dykerhoff, Preident of SCA Asia and Pacific, presented this very interesting company for a full class room. The lecture was inspiring and I believe all of us who were there lerned a whole lot of new things!

SCA owns a large portfolio of brands that we use every day. Among others they own Tempo, the iconic tissue brand which I lerned is the hottest tissue brand in Hong Kong! For us scandinavians Softis might be closer. Other brands are Tena, Libero and Libresse.  I honestly never tought diapers could be so interesting!

At lot of students showed up!

SCA is also a funny company, I recommend you all to take a look at their commercials! As You Tube don’t work here in China you’ll have to navigate from the link:)

Keep an eye on the blog for more information of SCA or read more at www.sca.com

Elina!

Isn’t it amazing that Volvo co-worker Mandy Yang stood in the Volvo tent at Sweden Day two years ago and talked to the Volvo employees that represented the company, and today she is doing a rocket like carrer!?!

This was only one of the amazingly inspiring things we lerned at the Volvo Day today. Forty students, me, Marie and Henry travelled to Volvo main office in Beijing and lisened to a presentation of the company. It was heavy with interesting facts, but what struck me the most was The Volvo Way. 

The Volvo Way is basically the core values of the comapny. Values that include passion for what they do, innovative thinking and high compentence in the field they operate in. Volvo strive to be safe, to deliever quality and to be environmentally friendly.

Doesn’t this sound like a wonderful company to work within? I suggest you polish your resumé and bring your biggest smile to the Volvo tent at Sweden Day to meet with Volvo’s fantastic representatives!

Elina!

There might be an universal rule that says you can’t predict the weather. But I must try!

It’s been sunshine every second day here in Beijing, which means raining or just moody skys the other days. So, my propechy for Sweden Day on Sunday is sunny skies and sunlotioned thighs in those summer shorts of yours!

Elina!

The 72 Hours Race to Innovation is the flagship event during the Sweden-China Innovation Week in Beijing (May 16-22) arranged within the framework of 60 years of Sweden China Diplomatic Relations. His Majesty the King of Sweden, the Swedish Deputy Premier and a high level CEO delegation had attend the activities. Project China has interviewed one of the Chinese students attending the 72 hour innovation race.

Tell us about the 72 Hour innovation race…

The essence of innovation, according to Professor Kaj Mickos and which I totally agree with, is to first start from problems, problems that recur in our daily routine and yet escape our notice. It can be high-heels-pain, oil dripping in kitchen or slippery steps during snowy season, etc. What impresses me most during this brainstorming session is the cultural difference between Chinese and Swedish. It seems to me that Chinese tend to be more practical or even, in some sense, restricted. Swedish, on the other hand, really think outside the box – they do not care so much about feasibility during brainstorming, and would not leave out any idea even if it seems a little bit "idiotic". For instance, the idea of "flying clock" is proposed to address the issue of mess and chaos in the morning, that is, when you unwilling to drag yourself out of bed, or spending too much time in shower, etc. The combination of both Swedish and Chinese wisdom turns out to be a success – we have filed 14 patents just within this 72 hours!

How do you work?

No matter how groundbreaking your ideas are, they can hardly be realized without contribution of your colleagues/teammates. Work is kept on track with the guidance of our dear process leader, Olof; products are visualized through expertise from our professional designer, Joel; constructive advice is provided from the back office which consists of professionals coming from different fields; last but not least, ideas would not be possible without the wisdom of us participants. Long story short, such fruitful outcomes would be impossible without group efforts.

Some final comments about your teammates?

Looking back, I find it rather amazing that people of such diverse background could work efficiently and form such strong bonds afterwards. Though I am the youngest (and maybe the most inexperienced) of the team, I never feel excluded or unfairly treated. My voice was heard and thoughts considered. Johan is such an innovative Swedish guy who is also considerate – I still remember vividly how he praised my work of showing/explaining products during the final promotion conference. Moxuan is just like a big sister who encouraged me from time to time. Grace, who is so adorable and caring, and with whom I had great fun talking with. Then there is Collin, who is mature and objective, and found new use of Chinese traditional "tricks". Those are the people whom you can safely count upon, happily work with, and freely confide in.

All in all, I am truly grateful to everyone who has helped me during the event. This 72 hours will be a time that I would remember for the rest of my life.

Hello all!

Hanna, Elina, and I went to Tsinghua University early this morning to meet up with Zhujun and Candy (the project manager and member of the Sweden Day Committee last year). We put up our posters for Sweden Week, the Ericsson Case Competition, and the Volvo Lecture. Really nice posters, done by the two art directors in the Sweden Day Committee this year, Jessie and Yushan.

After putting up the posters and walking around in the Tsinghua campus, Hanna and I got two important tasks: to find material for our maypole and to find an inflatable bathing pool for our Waboba-balls (those that can bounce on water!). There weren’t any problems with the pool.

So we did some research about the maypole. I showed different carpenters a small model that I had brought from Sweden. They all looked very suspicious and sceptical. I was so close to tell them the purpose of the tradition and what the pole acutally symbolized. But I would most probably not be able to explain that so well in Chinese, so the risk would be that I gave them the wrong impression. Oh well, finally, the fifth one we talked to could do it cheap, stable, and in time – the three golden variables. So we’ll have a maypole on our Sweden Day!

One week left until the BIG event! Look forward to it!

Phrase of today: Jian Dao Ni, Wo Hen Gao Xing! (见到你，我很高兴!) –> I’m glad to meet you!

Ganbei!

/XYZ

One fourth of the project group (XYZ, Hanna, and Elina) arrived in Beijing on Friday morning, 9.55 local time.

AirChina served up dinner. The air trip took 9 hours. Direct flight from Arlanda to Beijing International Airport.

We took a taxi to the hotel we would stay at, which was a 5 minutes-walk away from Tsinghua University’s East Gate (though we are holding our Sweden Day close to the North Gate). I talked to the taxi driver with my somewhat staccato Chinese. When I told him that we were from Ruidian (瑞典, Sweden), the first things he mentioned were Yijia (宜家, IKEA)，Woerwo (沃尔沃, Volvo) and Ailixin (爱立信, Ericsson). He actually knew about Sweden! (And what is even cooler is that two of these are the Gold Partners for Project China!)

He told me quite interesting stories. One was about IKEA. IKEA had a store in the more central part of Beijing when they first opened up. The response from the Chinese was huge. Too huge. There was always a traffic blockade outside the store because of the crowd of people outside. The decision makers had to find a solution, and that was to move the store to the suburb. I heard it’s still quite popular. Swedish budget furniture is well-liked by the Chinese.

At the hotel, we met up with Yuchen, the project manager for the Sweden Day Committee at Tsinghua, which consists of a total seven members. She showed us around the neighborhood and told us very briefly about the plan for the next coming days. It will be a tight schedule, but we are so looking forward to it!

Cute Yuchen eating a bowl of Chinese porridge.

Henry will arrive tomorrow!

Now I’m going to sleep, need to fight the jet lag. The time is now 00.12 in China, officially Saturday.

We’ll keep you updated!

Ganbei! (Cheers!)

/XYZ

Project China hopes that all of you who joined us on the DIRTY DUMPLING NIGHT had a really awesome night!!!!

Keep tuned and there is more awesomeness to come!

Special thanks to our beloved China-hatted DJ

——>Benjamin Nudel!

Lovely thanks to our entrance-standing and safe-guarding bouncer

——>Joel Salamon!

Our partner Sweden-China Trade Council held an annual meeting for it’s members last week, and of course we were there! Not only did the SCTC celebrate 30 years, but they also celebrated the 60 year long realtion between Sweden and China.

Now, the event was held for a couple of hours, and there was a tasty lunch with some effective networking. But what I found most interesting was the answering of questions by our trade minister Ewa Björling and the speach held by Chinese ambassador in Sweden, Chen Mingming.

                   Bo Landin, SCTC chairman, and Ewa Björling, Trade Minister                  Chen Mingming, Chinese Ambassador

Ewa Björling was questioned of a couple of interesting issues. Last question was “Is it a problem or an opportunity to have Swedish investors in Sweden?” She answered that she considered it to be an opportunity, because if Swedish companys could grow in China it would create jobs in both Sweden and China. Well, I’m not a proffesional, but I would really liked a deeper explination of what she meant. Anyhow, in the end she said something really worth thinking about. Although, Swedish export have decreased with 17 % during the finanical crises, it has INCREASED with 21% to China. Now that is something to consider!

Chinese ambassador Chen Mingming told us many things in his speach, but most interesting was his view on how China would develop to a wealthy country for all Chinese people. He pointed out that for us, industrialisation took many years and society developed slowly along. For China a rapid industrialisation and urbanisation is the way to lift as many people as possible from poverty at a short period of time, he said. This also affects the environment, as China today uses “dirty” fuel for energy, as coal e.g. Chen Mingming noted that because of the amounts of polution that is affecting the county and the world, China is in great need of sustainable energy. Which is why Sweden is interesting, with it’s clean tec reaserch and resources.

Finally, Chen Mingming also told us that last year China’s economy grew 8,2 %, 0,2 % under the goal of 8,4%, but dreamy for most western countires.   

Thank you SCTC for inviting us to this very interesting event! 

Elina and all of Project China 2010