Carlson Scholar·13 — CHEMBA13班 李生林Atwood

1 Tied with CHEMBA

        On October 2, 2007, the morning after our wedding, I sent my wife to Lingnan College of Sun Yat-sen University to attend her CHEMBA opening ceremony when I felt the sense of ceremony of EMBA for the first time. Watching a group of business elites embark on their new journey of journey, I felt that CHEMBA was very professional and outstanding.
I followed Ivy Long's class activities, got to know many people in CHEMBA 7 and became good friends with them. In 2009, I attended the graduation ceremony of CHEMBA 7 and witnessed the big moment when Ivy Long received her graduation certificate as an excellent graduate with a yellow cord. Besides being proud of her, there were more exclamation about how CHEMBA can make a person grow so quickly to be such a professional and confident person. My friends in CHEMBA 7 asked me: Why don't you come to CHEMBA? I answered with a joke: somebody said that EMBA is for networking, I’ve already known you, I don’t need it.

2 Signing up for CHEMBA

        I used to think that I didn't need to go to EMBA until 2013, when I encountered my biggest entrepreneurial puzzlement. I started my business in 2006. From a foreign trading company to a manufacturer that produces and sells professional dental equipment, we developed from zero to more than 100 people in 7 years with our sales ability and fighting spirit. Though meeting diverse difficulties, I was quite placid all the way. However, our company is in an industry with fierce competition and low product price, where we can only take the international low-end market as our main market. The company's performance growth had slowed down. Which direction should we heading towards, how to win in the competition, these questions had puzzled me. It was at that time, with Ivy's suggestion, that I signed up for CHEMBA, looking for answers for my puzzlements.

3 Studying assiduously

        At the beginning of my CHEMBA study, I was very uncomfortable with the huge amount of English case preparations, and often could not finish the preparations until late at night. But I still persisted, because I could not attend the class without preparation. Fortunately, I have to admit that my experience in CHEMBA had forced me to pick up the English reading habit that I had lost for many years. Up to now, I still consider that learning in CHEMBA has improved my English ability a lot. Of course, this is just an accessary gain. 15 business courses, professors who flew back to teach us all the way from the United States, teaching in combination with practice, a large number of cases including many Harvard case studies, relaxing atmosphere and intense class discussion and even debate with professors, nervous group assignments requiring solidarity, in-class quiz right after finishing studying, papers with more than 20 pages that made me stayed up throughout the night, all these things accompanied my CHEMBA study. 
I tried my best to find the key to my management puzzlements in the study, and was immersed in the sea of management knowledge. The assignment of Professor Pervin's financial management course was to choose the financial statements of two listed companies for comparative analysis to find out their advantages and disadvantages. I chose the two largest dealers in American dental industry for research, laying a foundation for our company to enter the American market in the future. The business strategy course given by Professor Aks and William Ho taught me that building up a company's core competitiveness is to make a choice of differentiation strategy or low-cost strategy. The simulated marketing competition for drug companies in the strategic marketing course given by Professor Tony Cui taught me the importance of product mix, pricing and marketing resource distribution. Managerial Accounting gave me an in-depth understanding of financial analysis and decision-making in manufacturing industry, statistical regression analysis given by Professor William Li, and supply chain management by Professor Mahmood. I still look for guidance in textbooks and handouts when I run into problems these days.

4 CHEMBA 13

        CHEMBA 13 is an excellent group, with executives and senior managers from all walks of life, always having hot discussions in the classroom. There were four foreign students in our class, adding a lot of different cultures to make our class fun. It is very difficult to find such a place filled with the air of study and pure schoolmate relationship after work. Every time I think of working side by side with classmates to finish group assignments and taking care of each other during study tour, the great memories make me want to have a drink and chat with them. It was such a nostalgic group.

5 Study tour in Europe, study in America and VTP Project

        In the platform of Carlson Global EMBA, our class organized a study tour to WU Business School in Vienna in the summer vacation of the first academic year. During our study tour in the United States, we visited several companies such as Medtronic, the largest medical device companies in the world, 3M and General Mills, etc. In my opinion, VTP Project is the most challenging and valuable part of CHEMBA. Students from China, Europe and the United States with different cultural backgrounds would team with each other to cooperate on business plans for five months and eventually give speeches on it and defense in the United States. I volunteered to be the leader of the group as a Chinese student and organized everyone to complete the business plan. After the successful defense, my Austrian and Romanian group members said to me, "Thank you for letting me have a deeper understanding of Chinese culture. I feel relieved to cooperate with you!"

6 Apply knowledge to practice

        Studying in CHEMBA greatly improved our business. It gave me a brand new and comprehensive understanding of business management, and broaden my international vision. I am able to make decisions more easily and decisively on the basis of management theories for things I was unsure of the direction in the past. With the enterprise mission of improving the status of Chinese dental equipment in the world, the core competitiveness of building high quality products and responsiveness to customer demand, using the localization of the global market strategy, our company successively developed Milan, Melbourne, and Los Angeles branches. After several years of efforts, we have changed the previous situation of only running our business in the international low-end market, transforming to having sales in developed countries growing rapidly. Especially, we are the only Chinese independent brand of dental chair to break into the American mainstream market. These are what CHEMBA has brought to me and my enterprise.

I'm glad that I made the decision to go to CHEMBA. Thank you, CHEMBA!