REALITIES OF FUTURE WORK

Good morning! Firstly, I’d like to thank the EFMD for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts with you all here today.

My name is Peter Handstein, born and raised in Germany, and – since the age of 23 – self -employed. Also, living and working in China since 1996, I believe that I can also be referred to as a Global Citizen. For the last 36 years, our company and I have developed, produced, and traded educational toys.
Back in 1986, Hape serviced Kindergartens, Day Care Centres and Primary Schools with educational toys, school equipment and learning tools. Right from the beginning, I believed that the best style of early education was the ‘learning-by doing’ approach, learning through practice and continued improvement. Some call it a “hands-on approach”.
Today, we have gone on to become one of the world’s leading toy companies, producing educational toys made from sustainable materials such as wood, paper, bamboo, cork, rubber, organic cotton and so on. Our brand Hape is available in over 100 countries and regions around the world, and we have 40 subsidiaries in over 20 countries. On top of that we have over 2500 employees spread across the globe.

Over the last 25 years, we have benefited greatly from what all of us refer to as ‘globalisation’. For success in business, it truly helps being in the right place at the right time and having our main production unit based in one of China’s coastal cities has definitely helped. In short, global manufacturing has shifted a lot during these years.

Why am I here today? For the last five years, I have served on the Advisory Board for the Business School of the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China. For the last four of those years, I served as Chair, and for the past three years as the Chair of the Advisory Board for Nottingham Global, whose campuses are in the UK, Malaysia and China.

In 2005, the Nottingham University in Ningbo was one of the first foreign business schools to open its doors in China. We are global accredited by EFMD, with the quality improvement system Equis, and enjoy and accreditation from the AMBA association of MBA schools. We are proud to provide our students in China a truly international environment, but over the last three years, due to the pandemic, some challenges have arisen. Accordingly, the number of international students enrolled at our university has declined sharply due to travel restrictions. Currently, Nottingham Business School has 3000 students, with 550 enrolled in postgraduate and PHD programs.

My arrival in China goes back to the early 90s, when – in 1995 – we established the first wholly foreign owned enterprise in Beilun, Ningbo. Looking back on that move today, you could say that it was a “brave move”. Personally, however, I would describe it as more of a “naïve movement”.
What’s been happening lately? Well, our company has transitioned from the “traditional style of globalisation” towards the new one. In this new global reality, speed matters. I like to call it a “speed economy: the quick, digital exchange of ideas and knowledge.

For example, our Design Team comes from Italy, Switzerland, and Sweden, while our Marketing Team hails from the USA and the UK. Our Purchasing and Supply Chain Management meanwhile, is handled from Hong Kong and in Mainland China. Our production process is spread all over the place: in Eastern Europe, China and soon also in Latin America. Our Execution Teams, that are in twenty different countries around the world, link and follow up on everything. Internally, we call this the “globalisation of ideas and know-how”, which is different from the traditional style of globalisation that is mostly concerned with the trade of goods.

In the near future, all kinds of services and digital innovations will become global, which indeed is already happening.

I believe that the big question in the future will not be globalisation versus deglobalisation, but rather, it will concern the transformation within, as arbitrage drives globalisation. But what were the drivers that have brought on these changes?
Government, companies, and consumers around the world, enjoy the old ways of globalisation – the globalisation of products. Manufacturing somewhere overseas, where the cost of production is cheaper, and selling the products with a high markup, taking into account profit margins and tax. Everyone enjoyed the ride.
The biggest change did not come from digitalisation and the impact of e-commerce, but rather, from governments around the world becoming more alert due to increased media globalisation, with media influence shifting from local to global.

The first big event happened in 2010, with the “Arab Spring”. A wave of anti-government protests and rallies that took place in the Middle East and North Africa were explicitly mobilised with the help of social media, so that the movement quickly spread across much of the Arab world from its genesis in Tunisia. As a result, many of the world’s governments became cautious and worried.

Today, governments are more and more concerned about the influence that big tech companies and ‘Big Data’ can have, as their potential influence can be even more effective than traditional propaganda. Professor Yuval Noah Harari has spoken a lot about Data Dictatorship and Data Colonialisation.

Pivoting now a bit more towards today’s topic – we are entering a time of geopolitical disruption, also known as “Geopolitical Turmoil”. Inflation, global supply chain challenges, high energy prices and shipping container shortages will lead us to a global crisis. Over the last 35 years, I’ve never had to deal with so many unknowns in one equation at the same time. Businesses worldwide are driving into a very dense fog. But I am not here today to paint a black picture of the current situation.
Coming to you from China, I’d like to share with the you how the word crises is spelled in Chinese. The Chinese word for “crises” is “wēi jī”, signifying “danger or risk” (wēi,危) and “opportunity or chance” (jī,机). So, in the Chinese understanding, risk and chance together means “crises”. After living for more than twenty years in China, I’d like to share some Chinese business practices with you:

Firstly, there’s “guan xi “(guanxi, 关系) which is usually translated as “relationship” or“connections”. Personally, I see this relationship similar to a bank account. The more you ask for, the more they own you. The second is, “he” (hé, 和) which means harmony. Wait for the right moment. Don’t push. Don’t force at the wrong moment. Thirdly there’s “mian zi” (miànzi, ⾯⼦) which literally means ‘face’. Giving the connections you have respect and never ever let them loose face.

Now, what does this all mean for Business Schools? Well, in the future, data and analytics combined with adjustability will become especially important to businesses. It is hard to predict how many jobs AI will replace in the future, how our future lives will change, or how AI will change the way we learn.

Which brings me to customised learning. I believe that learning will surpass teaching. Lifelong learning is now available through online lessons, courses, and other resources – and most of it is free. Me, myself, was a challenging student to most of my teachers, as I had a strong interest to learn – which I and still have – but I was difficult to teach.

Today, with increased digitalisation and all the related digital tools available – all of which was accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic – online learning and teaching has become very popular. And, in the future, algorithms and AI will know what I need and offer it to me before I even realise that I need it in the first place. One step further from this will be a customised kind of learning – like a recipe for successful learning. I strongly believe that the traditional way of learning will not go away, but that this new kind of customised online learning will boom. These opportunities will be readily available to the Millennial generations and beyond.

The future will depend on the decisions we make and the actions we take. Having so many Boards, Deans and Heads of Business Schools all over the world, it’s all about how and what we teach students in order to better prepare them for the future.
Let me end my speech with an inspirational quote of my personal idol, Mahatma Gandhi, who once said: “If we are to reach real peace in the world, we shall have to begin with the teaching of our children.”

Peter Handstein