Interview: Swiss business school president says new initiative to provide insights into thriving China

ST. GALLEN, SWITZERLAND, May 9 (Xinhua) -- World-renowned business school the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) said its newly launched China Initiative is aimed at supporting multinational corporations in growing their footprint and impact in China.

"We are very much looking forward to intensifying our activities in China" and also aim to bring Chinese companies to the world in a bid to build bridges between China and the rest of the world, IMD president Jean-Francois Manzoni told Xinhua on the sidelines of the 52nd St. Gallen Symposium, the world's leading platform for cross-generational dialogue and collaboration.

"If you want to be a global school, you have to understand who is innovating and then you have to try to codify these practices and explain them to everybody else," said the head of the institute, a prestigious independent business school with campuses in Lausanne and Singapore.

"Our activities in China are not just a distribution channel to other participants. They're also a way to connect with the incredibly vibrant innovation that is taking place there," Manzoni said.

The new China Initiative based in Shenzhen is led by Mark Greeven, CEO of IMD China, and aims to work with multinational corporations and top Chinese companies to provide insight into a thriving China.

Manzoni said the aim is to assist multinationals in demystifying China and improve their growth and impact in the country while enabling Chinese companies to thrive globally.

"We initially had activities in China that were mainly focused on state-owned enterprises and particularly banks, and those organizations were very happy to come to Switzerland occasionally," he said.

"There's also a vibrant tech and innovation sector in China which we had not touched at all. What we're going to do now is we will continue to have a few of us focused on state-owned enterprises, but then we have this new organization that will work more closely with tech companies," he added.

"We're also there to learn and document their practices and to explain to the rest of the world what's happening in China," he said.

The IMD has been ranked among the top three of the Financial Times's executive education rankings since 2012.