Thinking about China Market Size

China market is attractive to many global industry leaders. However, during my internship, it became clear that not all customers in different regions can afford quality goods and services. So why is China market attractive to those multi-national companies? For example, the customers we visited in Beijing and Shanghai have a higher disposable income level, and the demand for high quality goods is strong, even the foreign brand products are expensive considering the costly R & D expense and all taxes during the import. We saw that the products purchased every day by the customers are in the mainstream catalog in the US market, keeping pace with the global technology update. Although it is still rare to observe cutting-edge products here, it is understandable considering those new technologies did not originate in local markets and the adoption will take some time. However, China market is huge and definitely segmented. When we visited the Tire 2 cities, things changed. The popular products are often one generation or two older. The customers are quite price-sensitive. The distributors are seeking not the best products, but cheap ones that can just do the same job. From our observation, it can be concluded that there are three types of markets co-existing in China. One is high-end, one is middle-end and the last is low-end. With a big population and great difference of social development between regions, business people can find in China market similar to developed countries, market of medium profit potentials and market of poor countries. Although only high-end market in Tier 1 cities are the targets for global players and they already penetrated these market quite well, the growing medium market is quite attractive to them as well. They can develop medium quality products with better price to explore the market now, and also build brand names and roll out high quality products when this market matures in the future. This promising medium market of high volume should be the shining point that attracts global companies.

A Great Learning Experience

After nearly one month of interning, I really learned a lot from it. Healthcare industry is a totally different area for me, although I am interested in it for a time. During the internship, I met the doctors and nurses in person, watch operations carried out in the operation rooms, and observed the patients during all the time. Hospital’s mysterious feeling was disappearing day by day when I watched all kinds of routine work happened in it. Surgeons, who I used to think were super smart and whose jobs were too complicated for common people to understand, became common too. Their work is comprised from detailed knowledge of human bodies, carefulness and attention, and long-time training for more accuracy and efficiency. However, I was still moved by their spirit of professionalism when they cared every small thing related to potential danger to the patients’ health. When you see them washing their hands so thoroughly before operation, or disinfecting patients’ body so carefully, you can feel the responsibility in their hearts. Through the internship experience in this summer, I witnessed something precious that people do not care for the sake of money.

Another knowledge I obtained from the project so far is a deeper understanding of market potentials. I used to put focus on the maturity level of a market, thinking that only developed market could afford high margin goods and hold great profit potentials. However, during market research and discussion, I found market growth rate can be another standard for evaluating a market, even though the market is relatively new. Considering the growth aspect of a market would provide a more comprehensive view of the market for a long time. I have met with real examples of such views these days. When two comparable competitors entered into the same market, one cultivated its brand and sales force early on even the market was a small one; the other was just unwilling to invest more resources than the profit the market could bring then. However, after around 10 years, the first player enjoyed a much more solid market share while the other one is working very hard to catch up.

Death Valley

I have been through 8 weeks out of my 10-week internship. Although I had a very easy and smooth start, it is getting crazily busy as my internship approaches its end.

As I mentioned in earlier post, I have not been assigned to a real client project for the summer, but instead, I have worked on two Bid and Proposal projects. While the first one lasted only a week which is norm for B&P effort, the second one that I am working on has been going on for more than a month and there is almost another month schedule ahead of it.

To give you a sense of what I have been up to, I just sent out version 55 of the project deck to my boss. So, basically I have been intimate friends with PPT and Excel. Unlike normal projects, I have to deliver some new slides or spreadsheet models on a daily basis. I spent 10 to 16 hours every day in office, worked more hours after coming back home, and sometimes need to get up 4am to catch the 6am flight to New York, and flew back to Chicago the next evening. So, are you still thinking about consulting??
However, on the bright side, due to the importance of this proposal, I have been given great exposure to high level leadership team during the project. I spent 6 hours this Wednesday with IBM Global XX industry Leader, North America YY practice leader, and other VPs and executives in a tiny meeting room in IBM New York office. Can you believe it?

Although tired, I have been learning and improving a lot during the past weeks! Not only excel and PPT skills, but also the way I think and work. I leant to pay attention to details such as font size of a text box, meanwhile I think strategically from higher level and different perspectives. I become more comfortable with uncertainties and vagueness and am able to make educated assumptions wherever necessary. I realized that we are actually employed and paid to solve those uncertainties which clients found difficult to solve themselves. I am happy with my progress!!

Exploring Chicago!!

Most of you must think that consultants travel all the time, however, this is just not the case for me. Unlike my other IBM GBS fellow interns who have been traveling to clients, I have been assigned to work on two bid and proposal projects, both of which unfortunately don’t require traveling. So, basically, I have spent most of my internship working in IBM Chicago downtown office in the Loop and right across Deloitte building. Actually, out of 18 interns of GBS this year, I am the only one working in IBM office and don’t travel. Although not ideal and different from what I have expected, it allowed me to explore Chicago a little bit more and deeper. It is truly an amazing city in terms of whatever you name it, although a little windy sometimes, but just sometimes, not always. As I have been to almost all the major big cities in US, I can say that Chicago is second to none.

Since I live in the Chicago suburbs, I commute between work and home by Amtrak train, and one way trip takes around 45 minutes if I catch an express train, otherwise it will be 1.5 hours. If you have seen the new movie ‘Source Code’, you should know how the Amtrak train in Chicago looks like. It is comfortable and safe, although not too new. Actually, it is pretty convenient for those who live in suburbs and work in downtown Chicago. You know, the traffic in Chicago during rush hours can be really bad and parking fees is just crazy.

During the past one and half months, I have been to lots of wonderful parks, museums, restaurants, and bars in Chicago. However, nothing is comparable to the experience on the national day weekend. I went boating on Michigan Lake with a few friends! It was really a unique and hilarious experience for me. Prior to that, I had never been on a private boat before. It was just great to look at the skyscrapers of Chicago from another angel and enjoy the sun shine a little bit after spending most of my time in office since my internship starts. Unfortunately I had been made fun of having the so called farm’s tan after whole day exposure to sun; I should have taken my t-shirt off!! Need to work out a little bit though!!

Transformation from Engineer to Consultant

After more than 5 weeks in IBM GBS, I have experienced and learned a lot in consulting and am getting used to my job role as a business consultant, which is no longer that mysterious to me as it was before since my previous background was a software engineer and I had zero experience in consulting or even client-facing job roles. To my satisfaction, I like my new role, since I had more mental challenges than before, and accordingly more impact with what I do.

As an engineer, all I was supposed to do is to implement the ‘Requirement’ written by Product Managers within ‘scheduled project deadline’ decided by Project Managers. I don’t need to be really creative or innovative to get my job done; it was actually straightforward and ‘easy’ if you master the technical side. However, as a consultant, I need to manage myself and be relatively independent on what I do. And my work becomes more diversified than before. Firstly, I need to collect business requirements from both team members and clients. Then, I need to come up with some proposal documents describing what the hypotheses and deliverables will be. Lastly, I have to come up with a work plan document regarding those deliverables which could be either strategy or implementation in nature. Although I mentioned the need to be independent as a consultant, don’t get me wrong, we can actually never achieve anything without effective team work no matter how senior or knowledgeable one becomes.

The other important learning from the past 5 weeks is that a good consultant needs to be comfortable and efficient in working with uncertainties and make educated assumptions or guesses whenever necessary. Nevertheless, because of my engineer background, I was really bad at working with uncertainties at first. I was afraid of making wrong or inappropriate assumptions if I don’t find ‘sound’ evidence to back them up, therefore, I turned out be slow and ineffective and felt lost of directions. Luckily, I got a wonderful project buddy who has always been patient in giving me instructions and transferring his experience to me since he was an engineer as well and had gone through what I am experiencing. Although I think I am getting better, Rome was not built in a day anyway.

First week in IBM GBS

The first one and half week of my internship has passed by quickly, and I have received my first paycheck this morning, which is my first one after I quitted my job in China one year ago!

I started my three-day orientation and training with other 40 interns, including both MBAs and undergraduates, in Herndon, Virginia, which is a nice city near Washington DC Dulles international airport. It is really nice to know all of the interns, and I talked with almost everyone and made quite a few new friends from different MBA programs and universities all over the U.S. Actually, what impressed me most is the diversity of the intern class; people are originally from all over the world with different academic and professional background. But one thing in common, all of us are passionate about consulting, especially information technology oriented strategy consulting. So our conversation topics are mostly around the unknown consultant life ahead of us in near future.

All of the interns were recruited by IBM Global Business Service and will be based in either New York or Chicago office during the summer. In IBM GBS commercial sector, consultants are aligned with different industrial sectors, including financial services, distribution, communications, industrial, general business and internal practice. Each of these sectors is an independent P/L, consisting of Strategy transformation, business analytics optimization and SAP and oracle application practice. As I mentioned in my previous post, I am aligned with strategy and transformation practice within Industrial Sector for the summer.

I spent most of time in the first week studying industrial sectors’ learning material, and more importantly, familiarizing myself with all kinds of administration tools within IBM. Although I had sort of expected the complexity of the administration system of IBM since it is such a huge company, I was still surprised after a glimpse of how this ‘elephant’ company is actually run. At the end of last week, I finally got to know my project assignment and I will probably travel to client site starting from the mid of next week. I will come back with new stories about my internship in 2 weeks. Good luck to everyone!

Happy Centennial Birthday, IBM!

My name is Jiawen Mou, an MBA student in Ross School of Business at Univ. of Michigan. After finishing my first year in Ross, in less than one week, I will start my internship at IBM GBS (Global Business Service) Strategy and Transformation Division, working as an MBA intern consultant. Although I don’t know my specific project assignment for the summer yet, I was informed that I would be staffed in Industrial group in Chicago. I am really excited about the opportunity to work for IBM, especially after knowing that IBM is going to be 100 years old this June 16th.
Prior to business school, I had been working as an engineer and project leader in eBay China Development Center, however, I had always been looking for new learning opportunities outside engineering, and that’s why I came to US to pursue my MBA degree. As for the internship in IBM consulting division, I am expecting to experience the life as a consultant and challenge myself to learn new things and think differently.
While being excited about my new job function, I feel more pressure and nervous as the start date approaches. Actually, my biggest worry is still my English abilities. What if I can’t fluently express myself in a conference call!? What if I stumble in a presentation to clients!? Challenging but intriguing!

Marie Claire Fashion Internship Summer 2011

Hello everyone! My name is Lisa Wang, and I just finished up my sophomore year as a BBA student. I'm moving exactly one week from now to New York City. This summer, I will be interning at Marie Claire Magazine. I'm a general closet intern in the fashion department, and I'll be working very closely with the Fashion Assistant and with several other fashion interns.

July 2008 Issue

Fashion interns are based in the fashion closet, working primarily with high-end designer samples. I will be responsible for sample trafficking, checking in and returning samples from PR firms and fashion houses, organizing the closet, and creating story boards, setting up for run-throughs, and packing/unpacking for photo shoots.

I chose to intern for Marie Claire Magazine because I am interested in learning more about the editorial side of fashion. I'm very passionate about the fashion industry, and I have already had two years of experience with SHEI Magazine, a fully student-run fashion magazine here at the U of M campus. I want to further my experiences and gain exposure into the fashion industry this summer, and what's better than to start with Marie Claire? Plus, who wouldn't love to wake up to an entire wall of Louboutins and Pierre Hardys??

Shoes Shoes Shoes!! - Marie Claire Fashion Closet

I'm very excited to begin my experiences with the Marie Claire fashion closet in couple of weeks. I'll be back in a few weeks to update you on my adventures in the fashion closet. Until next time...

Season 5: Final Presentation

(MBA, Jiangtao) Finally, after weeks of work, my final presentation day comes!
At the very beginning of the project, I talked with my supervisor to nail down the audience name list and then sent out the invitations to relevant department heads from Global Treasury and Business teams. During my projects, it was very important to schedule one on one meeting with these people to let them understand my background and the projects. Often, the more you involved them in the process, the more they were willing to provide their insight and advice which I found very useful to refine my project and final presentation. In addition, the networking enables me to understand their daily jobs and them to know about my background and projects. In Lilly, one of the most valued elements is the relation you build with different people. Lilly people often agree that it deepens the mutual understanding and enhances work efficiency.

My final presentation starts at 8:30am. So, I came to the office at 7:30am and spent 30 minutes checking the projector and setting up logistics. The first to come in is Assistant Treasurer. We greeted and had a small talk on the baseball game last night. He is a very nice and smart boss. Very soon, all other audience came in one by one. In total, I have 10 people in the room. My supervisor kicked off the presentation and introduced me to the audience. After that, I started to present my projects to the audience, showing slides and talking about the details. During the presentation, my audience threw me lots of questions and I managed to answer all of them. We had a good discussion on lots of alternative solutions and possible barricades as my project touches a brand-new territory with global implication.
The final presentation itself lasts for around one hour and we had 15 minutes Q&A. At the very end, HR Director also invited me to share my impression on Lilly and the overall culture. The whole presentation was very good.

The biggest takeaway for me over the summer is to find ways to quickly know your team’s working style and achieve alignment with them. It enables you to understand the team’s priority and concerns as well as personalities. Meanwhile, your team can appreciate your role and contribution. Once both parties achieve the good alignment and mutual understanding, the efficiency will naturally ensue.

All in all, the summer internship at Lilly allows me to understand better the pharmaceutical industry, treasury jobs at corporate, and the fit to Lilly. It is a really memorable experience!

Season 4: About Pharmaceutical Industry and Eli Lilly

(MBA, Eli Lilly) First of all, pharmaceutical industry is important to us because it creates new drugs to cure many kinds of diseases that damages people’s life quality. It is a great industry to work with if you are passionate on improving people’s life quality and prolong lives. Nowadays, this industry, especially for leading patent pharmaceutical companies are facing increasing competition from generic companies like Teva in Israel. In 2011, many blockbusters will go off patents and thus these big companies will face huge losses in their ever cash cows. This trend puts lots of pressures and urgency on patent pharmaceutical companies. Most of these companies’ response will be to emphases innovation and accelerate the pipeline to overcome the gap. Also you may read news on pharmaceutical companies’ restructuring to cope with this strategic move. Last, another thing you may be interested in is that pharmaceutical industry has very long cycle. From a molecule to a fully approved drug on the market, it normally takes around 12 years. If you really care about the fast outcome and fast innovation, pharmaceutical industry may be not the right one for you.

With respect to Lilly, it is a good company. People in the company are generally nice and willing to share their experiences and offer advice. The overall culture is all about excellence, respect for people and integrity. Today, Lilly is still in the progress of global restructuring and you may clearly feel how fast they want to develop new drugs to replace those old blockbusters that are going off patent in the next few years. Lilly, like many other big pharmaceutical companies, has two key focuses in the corporate, one is R&D, over $3 billion investment every year, and the other is sales and marketing. Other functions and administrations are revolving around these two centers. In addition, Lilly, like many other pharmaceutical companies, is starting to expand business in emerging markets such as China, Russia, Brazil, Turkey and etc. because of the fast increasing need on effective drugs.

All in all, pharmaceutical industry will be a good fit if you feel yourself are fascinated with healthcare. Lilly will be a good fit if you are in the spirit of teamwork and humbleness as well as agility of learning.

Season 3: Beyond work

(MBA, Eli Lilly) Beyond daily work, we have world cup. :D

The world cup is definitely a popular topic in Lilly. When you have a talk with Lilly employees, it is easy to open the conversation by starting to discuss on how USA team can beat the rivalry teams.

Besides daily work, Lilly HR encourages us to reach out people from different departments. I usually schedule two meetings with different people in the same day and learn their daily job and department. I think it is a great opportunity for me to go outside my silo and understand what is going on in every corner of the corporate. Talking to 30 people during the internship is my goal. During these meetings, I find most people from Lilly are easy to approach and willing to share their experiences and offer advice. The most benefit from networking with them is to open your eyes to their worlds, for example, you can appreciate what is their urgency now, what is the challenge they are facing, what keeps them staying with Lilly for over 30 years, so on and so on.

I often invite people to go lunch together or grab a coffee in the afternoon. Especially, on Friday, that tactics works much better. People are more than happy to meet you and talk more on Friday. In addition, Lilly also organizes many intern events to broaden our networking with senior leaders. During these events, you will have opportunity to talk to the executive vice presents and listen to their unique experiences with Lilly. This gives us more flavors about the life in Lilly.

The daily workload is a bit heavy for my project because this project is tied to a bigger urgent project conducting by the team. The typical day is like this: 6:30am get up. 6:40am breakfast and read WSJ news on iphone. 7:30am drive to Lilly Corporate Center. 8am check and answer yesterday’s emails and set up today’s to do list. 9am-12am focus on project taks. 12am-1pm, go lunch with some interns or with Lilly colleages. Stir fried pasta and Taco salad are my favorite. 1-2pm back to back meet and talk with people from different departments. 3-6pm continue to work on the projects and attend related business meetings.

The project is close to the end, and hopefully I can add some value to the team by coming up with new solutions to their current issues.

Season 2: Deep diving in the work: gear up, man

(MBA, Eli Lilly) The first week was almost about learning the background information about the project, getting familiar with the team members and the facilities. Lilly has many campuses in Indianapolis and I am sitting in the most magnificent building called Lilly Corporate Center. Inside there are lots of facilities such as cafeteria, food court, lecture halls, employee clinic, gyms, laundry, and credit union (yes, they indeed have credit union…). At Each noon, I always try different cuisines and enjoy the wide range of choices from Asian food to Mexico food.

Now I have clear understanding about the project: I am going to create a model to assess the global credit risk and generate credit limit recommendation, involving enormous stats testing and data matrix calibration. It is challenging as it aims to standardize the credit risk assessment practice all over the world where there are currently over 100 different practices among countries. My supervisor apparently has set a very high expectation on my project: tight schedule, many milestones, and plenty of small projects. She is a straightforward supervisor who is aggressive and tough, quite different from my ex bosses. It actually posted a challenge to me as I have to manage well the relationship with her and make sure she will buy in my project results at the end of the day. To make the situation more complicated, she is expecting me to work closely with another analyst who has worked in credit team for around two years. And the feedback of the analyst is having a big influence on my supervisor’s comment for my final performance. Albeit these challenges, I am pursuing a strategy to align the analyst and indirectly my supervisor, i.e. keeping close communication with the analyst and working hard to win her respect and coordination. Once I get her on board, it is certain my supervisor will recognize.

As it is closer to the project deadline, my calendar is becoming more and more occupied. Usually I get up at 6:30AM and arrive in office at 7:30AM. Attend averagely three meetings and have a 30min talk with two new people respectively per day. It is quite helpful to talk with people from different departments, as they can give me introduction to the business they are doing, suggestions on my project and why they like to work in Lilly. Then I will spend the rest of time on the project… At around 6:30PM, I will leave office.

In all, the working style is a little different from what I perceived in Lilly’s on campus presentation but it is good to deeply dive into my colleagues daily work life in Lilly. Yes, it is a tough project, far more challenging than MAP. But it is also a good opportunity to test my competence out of my comfort zone. Let’s cross figures and best luck. Gear up, man!
P.S. Today I went to a “How we make the drug” lunch and learn presentation hosted by the EVP of Research in Lilly. Very interesting topic…

1.2 Week at Eli Lilly

(MBA, Eli Lilly) Time flies so fast before I realized it. After helping the nice sponsor identify and validate the most reasonable acquisition strategy in MAP, I flew to Yellowstone National Park with friends and drove over 6 hours in the park every day for a week. The scenic view is really amazing and phenomenal. Bisons, Elks, Bears, and the geysers...
It seems like a nonstop journey for me after that. I flew back to Ann Arbor in the afternoon on May 16 and drove another 5 hours down to Indianapolis on May 17. The next day, I got up at 6 am and it took me a while to find the right way to the building where we were going to have the orientation. The first interesting I found about Lilly is that the streets in their campus cannot be located by GPS.
But the decoration in the building is pretty impressive. And, the orientation took half of the day, going through company culture, code of conduct, logistics and etc. During the orientation, the interns had chance to chat with each other. I came to know some interns with very interesting background. In the afternoon, my internship supervisor came into the lecture hall and picked up me.
At first glance, she had no smile on her face. A little bit seriousness to me though. But I tried to crack the iceberg and found some topics to schmooze with her. It did not work well but at least made me less embarrassed. So the US office culture is going to be the first lesson to learn here!
My supervisor walked me around the office and introduced me to Treasury team. People are nice to me. Then we set down to discuss my internship project. The project is to help Lilly Treasury build a new tool which is used to assess the trade credit risk of its customers and calculate the credit limit accordingly. This is related to all affiliates in the world. Obviously, she has set a pretty high expectation on me.
So far, I am clear about what I am going to deliver at the end of the day and leveraging sources, i.e. talk to process owners to understand current situation and seek their advice on the project. Meanwhile, I have to read through many documents to understand the credit policy and the change the team would like to vision in the near future. It is a bit challenging for me because it is my first time to work in a US office environment – the etiquette, the small talks, unwritten rules and jargons and so on are pretty new to me. Thus, I have to deepen my learning curve quickly to catch up with the fast-passing timeline. Lots of things to do, lots of fun to have but definitely hard work is the pre-requisite.
Indianapolis is a nice city, bigger than Ann Arbor. I had no time to wander around in downtown but plan to explore the area later. Also, Indy 500 is coming at the corner. There are going to be a lot of roaring at this weekend. I would be very excited to see the match then!

Life is an incredible journey, and now it's another start at Ross.

(MBA, Eli Lilly) I am a rising MBA 2 student. Yes, a rising MBA 2 student now. Time really flies before we realize it. My wonderful journey starts at Ross School of Business.

After the hectic recruiting season from Dec 2009 to Jan 2010, I got the offer from Eli Lilly Corporate Finance and will start my summer in Indianapolis! This summer internship is definitely giving me brand new experience in a dynamic industry – pharmaceuticals. I worked in an energy company before coming to Ross and this internship will provide a valuable opportunity to me to work in another important sector related to people’s life and happiness. I am very glad that I grasped this opportunity and look forward to tasting the real flavor there.

At Lilly, I will work in Treasury, leading the credit management improvement project. It involves creating new training materials, process improvement, building up new templates and streamlining SAP relevant modules. This is somewhat linked to my past experience in corporate finance and I think I could get on hand very quickly. For this internship, my goal is to test my fit to this company and find whether I like people there and the future job I am going to undertake on full-time base. This is going to be very exciting as I can meet new and different people every day, know more in depth about the pharmaceutical industry and Lilly, and also have fun with other MBA interns who live in the same building!

As for the things I am ‘nervous’ about, it may be whether I can quickly mingle with the team I am going to work with. As an international student, there are still too many things such as culture, language, working style, unwritten rules and etc, to learn. How to make you likable in the team may be an important task for me. : ) Therefore, I decide to do homework to research the company and team before I arrive in Indianapolis as well as refer to the internship 101 slides shared by OCD.

Alright, I will keep updating my internship experience in Indy and see you in May!