Reinventing Giants How Chinese Global Competitor Haier Has Changed the Way Big Companies Transform

Chinese firms are reinventing their business models, their corporate cultures, and themselves, becoming global competitors who increasingly offer knowledge rather than cheap labour in their quest to join the ranks of the "world's best" companies. This book offers a compelling profile of the most ambitious of these emerging Chinese competitors, the Haier Corporation (the world's largest manufacturer of home appliances), and shares insights on how one organization has repeatedly reinvented its business model and corporate culture in an effort to sustain its success.

Reinventing Giants provides an exclusive look within the Haier Corporation and shows how managerial accountability and responsibility have been repositioned at every level of the organization, with the core value of market-centricity, while aligning strategy on each level of management. It includes actual work reports that show this process in detail from the ground up. The authors emphasize how a belief in the liberation of employee talent has consistently been the driving force underlying Haier's success.

• Includes the remarkable story of Haier's turnaround and how these lessons can be applied to other organizations
• Contains information for any company grappling with competition in the global marketplace
• Shows how to liberate employees' talent to drive business success
• Written by Bill Fischer, Professor of Innovation Management at IMD in Switzerland, Umberto Lago, Professor of Management at Bologna University, Italy, and Fang Liu, Research Associate of IMD

Reinventing Giants helps global managers rethink their own business models and accompanying corporate cultures in order to be able to apply Haier's lessons directly to their own organizations.

Foreword ix
Alexander Osterwalder

 1. Moving a Company with the Times: What Makes Haier Unique? 1

 2. The Battle field: The Home Appliance Industry in the West and China 17

 3. The Story of Haier and the Evolution of Its Corporate Culture 43

 4. Liberating Talent: Tapping the Entrepreneurial Spirit 81

 5. Building a Corporate Culture for the Twenty-First Century 109

 6. Haier as a High Performer 147

 7. A True Hybrid: How to Fashion a Strategically Agile Organization 175

 8. A True Disrupter: How Embracing Change Creates Value 211

Postscript: While We Were Writing . . . 227

Appendix: How ZZJYTs Work 233

Notes 249

Acknowledgments 261

The Authors 267

Index 269

Bill Fischer is a professor of innovation management at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. Formerly he was executive president and dean of the China-Europe International Business School in Shanghai and the Dalton L. McMichael Sr. Professor of Business at the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He writes The Ideas Business blog for Forbes.com.

Umberto Lago is associate professor of Management at Bologna University in Italy. He has been, at different stages of his life (often simultaneously): a university professor, private and public manager, entrepreneur, and consultant. He is a member of UEFA Club Financial Control Body.

Fang Liu is a research associate at IMD. Her research focuses on fields such as management innovation, marketing, and global business.