MICROSOFT EM CHINA 

Por Ernie Tadla

Fêz exame Bill Gates de doze anos e billions do rendimento faltado, do lucro e das oportunidades da parte de mercado de aprender como a faça o negócio em China… a maneira chinesa.

Microsoft veio a China em 1992. Onze anos mais tarde, com rendimentos globais de $35 bilhões E.U., em China o segundo mercado o maior do PC no mundo, rendimento de Microsoft-China era $300 milhões, e estava operando-se em uma perda.

Fonte: Newsweek, edição de Ásia. Junho 21/04

Diversas citações do artigo:
• “….. esforçando-se para girar um lucro, o gigante americano brash do software já não está tentando mudar China. Instead, China está mudando a companhia.”

• “Microsoft começou heed os críticos e embrace mais inteiramente China. É agora amplamente cooperar, voando mesmo coordenadores chineses a Redmond para o treinamento.”

• O “CEO Steve Ballmer creditou seu CEO muito bem-conectado de China do `' (pirateado de Nortel) com melhorando relações com a liderança em Beijing.”

• “Mesmo os executivos superiores de Redmond estão soando agora quase Confucian, certamente mais paciente do que sua norma, sobre o lucro em China. O `que nós reconhecemos este é uma viagem longa' disse Kevin Johnson, grupo VP de vendas Worldwide.”

Para um update atual em Microsoft e em China, leia Guanxi (a arte dos relacionamentos): Microsoft, China, and Bill Gates’ Plan to Win the Road Ahead, by Robert Buderi and Gregory T. Huang.
 

WAL-MART IN CHINA

Wal-Mart came to China in 1996. In a retail market that has a 15 per cent a year annual sales growth, after a decade of fighting the Chinese Way, Wal-Mart had only 3.1 per cent of the market, compared with 60 per cent of the Mexican market. Like Microsoft, it has finally seen the light and is adapting to Chinese consumers customs and culture.
Recent changes include:

• acquiring a Taiwanese-owned chain of more than 100 box-stores in 20 provinces in China, for $1 billon, which will still give it only 8.9 per cent of the retail market.

• selling fresh fish, crabs, clams, eels and tortoises. Consumers plunge fishing nets into the serve-yourself, in-store tanks. No dead fish for the Chinese.

• Displaying meat uncovered.

• after eight years of fighting it, Wal-Mart has accepted organized labor and unions in their stores.

• replacing their American chief China executive, a 32-year Wal-Mart veteran from Bentonville, Arkansas, with a Chinese Hong-Kong retailing executive who ran 1,400 stores in Asia and has opened 800 stores since 2001.

Companies like Wal-Mart and Microsoft have deep pockets and other global revenue streams to be able to afford ten- and twelve-year learning curves in China.

My mentor used to say: “The wise man learns from experience.
The very wise learn from other people’s experience.”

From China Business Culture: Strategies for Success.
Wang, Zhang and Goodfellow.

“Understanding changing business values and the characteristics of the Chinese business culture is a challenging project. It is a process of accepting differences, adapting to change and adopting new ways of managing across cultures. Unfortunately, for every one cross-culturally viable project that proceeds to the formal stage of business-business negotiations, it is estimated that up to nine out of ten fail because of “misunderstandings. Cultural risk factors have been not taken seriously enough by many businesspeople.”

• Next Week:  Summary and Epilogue of “How to Live and Do Business in China: Eight Lessons I Learned from the Communists. 

Ernie Tadla  www.odysseychina.net