A few days ago, I wrote about the event by Microsoft China Research and Development Group. Having attended this even today, I found that it wasn’t what I have expected it to be. I was hoping for a presentation about the role of Microsoft Research, and what MSR China does. But in fact, MSR China is a subsidiary of a much larger group called Microsoft China Research and Development, and this presentation today was more like a careers talk without any specifics. But nonetheless, it’s good to see at least 4 students from Sydney Uni turn up today. Most other people were from Macquarie Graduate School of Management though.
Anyhow, there are good points that are worth taking from today’s presentation.
Enwei started off by talking a little about Chinese history, and how we can learn from the past and formulate successful strategies. Although the Qin dynasty (221-207 BC) was strong and powerful, it was quite short lived. And then there was the Mongol empire, which was both powerful and sustained. The reason why they had been so powerful might be:
- They had a sense of balance between having centralised planning and having regional initiatives
- The best people were sent out into the field in order to drive success in the distributed initiatives
- Subsidiaries were empowered to respond to attacks and make the best decisions quickly, so they don’t just execute orders from above.
Looking at Chinese innovation, there were some challenges. Microsoft is based upon intellectual property. However, the Chinese culture means that individual innovation generally don’t get rewarded, and so there is not much incentive for the people to innovate.
Enwei is looking to influence the change though, and drive customer focused innovation in China. He would like China to become a powerhouse in research and development, ranging from consumer products to high-end high performance computing.
The second part of today’s presentations was by Andrew Le Leivre about Careers at Microsoft Australia. But I won’t cover much of this since I wanted to focus more on Microsoft’s R&D side.