HEC Lausanne, EPFL and Zhejiang University Establish the China Economics and Finance Center

By Victor Dietrich, Junior Project Manager and HEC Lausanne Ambassador

On the 24th of January, swissnex China participated in an Innovation and Development Dialogue between Sino-Swiss Enterprises and the "Opening Ceremony of the China Economics and Finance Center" in Hangzhou (Zhejiang University). The center was been co-created by Zhejiang University in collaboration with HEC Lausanne and EPFL (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne).

After an introduction to the China Economics and Finance Center (CEFC) and Opening Ceremony performed by Dr. Matthew Wang, Chairman & President of Cybernaut (China) Investment and Executive Dean of ZII. Pr. Dong from HEC Lausanne offered a traditional Swiss bell with the colors of the University of Lausanne as a symbolic gift.

During the forum, Prof. Jean-Philippe Bonardi, Dean of HEC Lausanne - The Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne showed us the key Swiss trends in innovation, entrepreneurship and global trends. He stressed the importance of promoting an entrepreneurial spirit in our universities. Prof. Rongxiao, Dean of the Industrial Technology Transformation Research Institute at the University of Zhejiang, then demonstrates all their efforts to create a great innovation ecosystem, and develop a win-win model for industry-university-research.

Mr. Bo Ji, Chief Representative for Europe and Assistant Dean at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. He aims to provide European businesses with executive training to understand China and how to successfully do business in this dynamic market. This experienced TEDx Speaker gave us a speech as well.

We concluded the morning with a round table discussion on "The Digital Age, the New Model for Innovative Cooperation between Sino-Swiss Entrepreneurs" with directors, representatives of institutions and entrepreneurs. Prof. Minyue Dong and Mr. Victor Dietrich from swissnex China represented the Swiss side. swissnex China had the opportunity to present their activities and how they help build bridges between China and Switzerland in the field of innovation, sciences, and education. During this discussion, interesting ideas were raised such as making the data public to generate more rapid innovations. This new center also generates a lot of prospects in establishing new partnership between China and Switzerland.

Goals Gone Wild: Setting Realistic Corporate Goals

By Sébastien Quadri, Junior Project Leader

HEC Lausanne, the University of Lausanne and swissnex China invited Prof. Xavier Castañer, expert in strategic management at HEC Lausanne, to give a talk about new developmental managerial perspectives on June 4.

Prof. Castañer shared with special insights with the audience.

Corporations (as well as cities, regions and countries) seem to be obsessed with quantitative growth; in particular, with revenue growth as an overriding goal. However, it is often said that corporations should be concerned with profitability and increasingly their corporate social responsibility should extend beyond this goal. Moreover, publicly-traded corporations seem to be exposed to high expectations of revenue growth which are difficult to achieve through organic growth and require alliances and acquisitions, modes which bring substantial challenges.

Xavier was an excellent orator and easily shared his passion for strategies to the audience. From this talk, the forty fascinated guests will remember that:

·      Corporations’ obsession with revenue growth (size) might be rooted in our primitive territorial built-up

·      Corporations have multiple owners who often have different preferences and not just revenue growth or profitability

·      Greater corporate or organizational size doesn’t necessarily entail greater profitability, actually it is difficult to achieve scale or scope economies

·      We should better talk about organizational or corporate development rather than growth

·      Corporate development might often require divestment, abandoning some activities, even the core or original businesses, rather than expanding to better develop

·      Shareholders and board members should be careful and critical with expansionist projects of CEOs, particularly if they use free cashflow and there is poor corporate governance (no chairman and CEO separation) 

The subsequent networking reception was the perfect moment to share ideas, trade opinions with the professor, and to meet people from various fields (business, management, finance, lawyers, and curious intellectuals).

Thank you Xavier for sharing your precious thoughts and ideas.

We wish you a great success in your following research!

Social Interactions in Virtual Reality

By Valentin Beuchat, Junior Project Manager

On Thursday, February 8, a diverse audience of 35 came to swissnex China to hear Prof. Marianne Schmid Mast present her research on virtual reality. This event was organized by HEC Lausanne, the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne, and swissnex China, which hosted the event in its premises.

After a few words of welcome, Felix Moesner, CEO of swissnex China, gave the stage to Marianne Schmid Mast, who is full professor of Organizational Behavior at HEC Lausanne and also active as editorial board member of Leadership Quarterly and associate editor of the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. But even more impressive, she has been awarded in January 2018 as one of the top 50 most influential living psychologists in the world (according to TheBestSchools.org).

The main topic of the conference was about how we can use virtual reality to study human social behaviors and to train social skills such as public speaking and job interview to mention few examples. Virtual reality enables us to have an interpersonal behavior simulator, creating any sort of social behavior, studying what people do or training them to behave in a specific way, and interacting with virtual humans. And as Marianne Schmid Mast said, “a virtual human can interact: make eye contact, talk, and move around”.

Then, she explained the three main advantages of using immersive virtual reality for interpersonal interaction research. The first advantage being standardization, meaning that virtual human interviewers (in the case of a job interview) behave in the same way with all applicants. The second one is the logistics and costs, with a specific focus on how to empower women in leadership tasks such as public speaking. Results of Marianne Schmid Mast’s study showed that if you are a woman faced with a leadership task, you should get inspired by a successful female role model. Furthermore, if you are a successful female role model, you should get visibility. The third advantage is called manipulation, meaning the environment within the virtual world shapes our interpersonal behavior. For instance, results demonstrated that if you want a male leader to be charismatic, you should give him a posh office!

“Changes in the environment that are hard to do in reality can be done in virtual reality”, summarized Marianne Schmid Mast.

The second part of the conference was dedicated to the use of immersive virtual reality for social skills training. Highlights of this part were that VR allows an easy access to a training partner who is available anytime and never tired. Also, participants suffer from double reality, or as Marianne said: “Experiencing double reality: I know this is not real but I am still afraid of falling”. Another great feature of VR is that you can have an adaptability and variability of the training scenarios (e.g. your training partner can be kind, unpleasant, male, female, etc.). In addition, the audience is now able to provide feedback to the speaker by showing its boredom or chatting with each other for examples. VR is also the place where new experiences are made possible. Imagine yourself in front of an audience, but the venue is a closed-down factory and you speak from the last floor under the roof while being afraid of heights. Last but not least, “you can encounter yourself in VR” said Marianne Schmid Mast.

To conclude this very interesting conference, will machines teach us interpersonal skills as the new scientific empire described in the Brave New World novel by Aldous Huxley? Marianne Schmid Mast claimed that VR is a tool that does not replace the trainer or the expert but can replace the social environment (e.g. the training partner) and it can outsource some aspects of the training for the coach.

After the presentation, a moderated Q&A followed by a networking reception allowed the audience and Marianne Schmid Mast to exchange and further discuss the topic. We would like to extend a warm thank you to Prof. Marianne Schmid Mast for her remarkable presentation, and to the audience – all of whom took part in making this event a success. 

Testimonials

“The warm welcome I got from the swissnex China team was simply outstanding! I also appreciated the exchanges, interest, and open-mindedness toward the topic. It was very inspiring for me.” Prof. Marianne Schmid Mast.

The Challenges on Social Business in China，a Club HEC Lausanne event on 8th July

Each year, HEC Lausanne organizes a summer school in Shanghai managed by Professor Marc Laperrouza, expert in emerging markets at the University of Lausanne. This year, 22 students took part of the program and will spend 10 days studying some parts of the Chinese economy (distribution, luxury), discover some aspects of Chinese culture (calligraphy, kitchen, etc..) and deepen the concepts of "global mindset." 

Within this summer school, one day (8 of July 2014) is dedicated to the relation between Swiss and China in term of business. For this reason, the group has spent the half of the afternoon and the entire evening at swissnex China. 

The activity of the afternoon was dedicated on the import of Swiss products like cenovis or Alp horn in China. In 20 minutes, the student had to draw up a strategy to sell these products in China and had also invented an advertising slogan. After that, each group showed its results in 5 minutes. The presentations were very interesting and creative.

The evening was animated by an event organized by the Club HEC Lausanne with the help of swissnex China. The event started with a conference on the challenges on social business in China and finished by a nice networking apero between the students and the few Alumni from Swiss University. To cover the conference, we had the honor to have Floriane Lemoine, the project manager of Shanghai Young Bakers, as a speaker. She is a graduate from Sciences Po Paris and Peking University. She is passionate by china and sustainable development. That is why she decided to work at Shanghai Young Bakers. Founded in 2008, this association is a charity program providing a fully-sponsored French bakery training to disadvantaged Chinese youth. During the conference, we learnt more about the aim of the program and how does it work in term of logistic and funding.

Finnaly, we had a successful networking apero thanks to the delicious buffet provided by the association itself. The students started a rich exchange with the Alumni from Swiss University who live in Shanghai and discussed about their experiences at the University of Lausanne and more globally in Switzerland or/and in China.