In January, students from Insper’s International Executive MBA traveled to China and Singapore to get to know these countries’ academic and business realities. The trip, part of the program, is mandatory — each student must travel to at least two of the four destinations offered during the MBA.

 

Luana Godinho, a student and project manager at the Brazilian Association of Highway Concessionaires (ABCR), highlights that the lectures offered during the trip helped her understand what China is and how its history influences various aspects of the country, such as its government model and negotiation style in the corporate environment. “In just over a week of travel, we had classes and interviews with local executives to understand their reality in practice, which allowed us, in addition to market knowledge, to make contacts, enriching our networking,” says Luana.

 

She noted that what caught her attention was the experience of traveling on smart highways near Shanghai that use the so-called free flow system, applicable to highways that eliminates the need for toll stations. This system allows payments to be processed digitally while the vehicle is in motion. By doing this, there is a reduction in travel time, an increase in system efficiency, and fairer billing, as it considers the actual distance traveled.

 

“This technology, which already exists in several countries worldwide, has recently begun to be implemented in Brazil on short stretches. Observing its full operation in China was enriching for my daily work,” says Luana. Regarding rail transport, the student highlights the high-speed train between Shanghai and Beijing, which takes only four hours. “It is faster than the plane when considering the time spent with airport bureaucracy. This reduction in travel time increases companies’ productivity.”

 

Marcelo Nunes, a student and one of the participants in the Learning Journey – Asia, evaluates the experience as surprising and eye-opening. “In Brazil, we have many biases about Asia. This experience served to deconstruct each of them, bringing us a completely different image”, he reports. “The level of technology is very high in society, ranging from modes of transportation, such as electric cars and motorcycles, to the quality of transportation, such as the subway and high-speed train, to popularized digital payment methods.”

 

Equality in pursuit of the best decisions

 

Students comment that negotiations in China are culturally based on a round table — unlike the American model, which places the leader or main decision-maker at the head of a rectangular table. The reasoning behind this Chinese arrangement, observed in the meeting tables of the visited companies, is that everyone is equal and needs to have the same voice or power of participation or influence, thus enabling the best decisions. The trip was attended by a coordinating professor and two professionals responsible for the organization, which included scheduling visits to companies and universities.

 

“All the executives participating in these trips have established careers and are open to experiencing new realities. In the case of Asia, there were challenges, such as very different food and time zones. Still, these were fully overcome by a group willing to understand the world from a different business perspective,” says Matheus Furtado, International Relations Officer at Insper, who was on the trip. What caught his attention is how the Chinese have embraced online payment via QR Code. “It is this cultural immersion that we promote through academic activities and visits to companies, such as the visit to the development and research center of Suzano Asia Innovability Hub to observe their ESG practices.”

 

Business involves relationships

 

In China, according to Furtado, conducting business involves building relationships. ‘It’s not the 100% business logic as we see in the United States. For the Chinese, the parties involved in the business need to really get to know each other,’ he explains. As an example, he mentions that after a class at a local university, one of the MBA students talked about the business environment with the professor, who quickly created a group on WeChat, a widely used instant messaging application in China, to put this student in touch with local suppliers to facilitate business partnerships.

 

In Singapore, the main learning was to observe the effective integration of infrastructure with technology through its intelligent structure. The country, which was developed in a relatively short period, is known for the sustainability and resilience of its population. “The program provided a holistic view that would hardly be achieved on a purely tourism or business trip,” says Guilherme Palocci, an Insper graduate in Business Administration who also participated in the Learning Journey to Asia. “We had a cultural, academic, private sector, and indirectly, public sector view, allowing for a true immersion and unique understanding of China and Singapore. So, there was much learning about sustainable urban planning, smart cities, technological innovations and business dynamics, he summarizes.