Haier America

Yesterday, we had a guest speaker for our GSM class. Here is his picture (I didn't take it, but that's him). Mr. David Parks, Senior VP of Haier America, was debating with us a case that was talking actually of his company, Haier.

He is a very good speaker and was able to give us the story of how Haier America came to exist. We found out that Haier in South Carolina has a bandwidth of manufacturing that is three time greater than any other supplier in the US and how challenging is to work for a Chinese company in an international environment or how fun is to sign a contract with NBA and get free tickets to the all star game :). Haier's core competency are: the flexibility to adapt to the consumer's needs and the design of high quality products. Haier's overseas strategy was different than the one all other Chinese companies had: instead of going with cheap, low quality products and local staff and board targeting easy to penetrate world markets, Haier hired all local managers and started by promoting its products in one of the most important markets in the world, USA.
The class finished with a 30 minutes of Q&A.

What a way to debate a case, having the case subject in the class and talking to it!!! I wish all classes were like this!