Customer Reviews

Guanxi (The Art of Relationships): Microsoft, China, and Bill Gates's Plan to Win the Road Ahead

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Microsoft's PR Department couldn't have written thicker, more syrupy, praise for Microsoft. Guanxi is the chinese word for mutually beneficial relationships, it's a complex concept that involves respect, reciprocality, and a certain deference to the person with more authority. It is not covered in this book. Rather, this is a book that paints a super happy face on a long process and smooths out or ignores the rough edges. I recommend doing an Amazon search on Guanxi and reading some of the other books on business in China, like the China Dream, if you want a clearer picture of Guanxi. If you want the Disneyfied version of Microsoft's research lab, this is the book for you.

I met Buderi and Huang on their book tour, and couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. What a tale they tell, as they show how Microsoft early on, embraced the world of talent coming up through Chinese universities and turned it to the company's advantage. I especially like the stories of how young Chinese researchers just out of university found themselves in Redmond, presenting for Bill Gates.
China is hungry and rich in talent, not just markets, and this book shows why.

As someone keenly interested in China and the future of innovation, I gobbled up this book almost as soon as it was out. I was not disappointed. In a usually fast-moving narrative, peppered with funny stories and telling anecdotes, Buderi and Huang dive down into rich detail about the creation and evolution of Microsoft's incredibly successful Beijing research lab, and how despite several stumbles it has improved relations with Chinese government and academe. A revealing lawsuit with Google accentuates the end of the story, as Google hires away the original star behind the lab. Readers will come away with a much deeper understanding of what it takes to compete in emerging nations like China.

I liked the book. For several reasons: first it is a good read, well written, fast paced and interesting on several levels.

The first is chronological (how the books is structured), a history of Microsoft's research involvement in China. The second is a window into some things about the culture in China and how it is different than Western. this is the title of the book-guanxi. The third is a higher level, how do you encourage innovation, how do you harness the best in a culture to corporate culture and making money, how do you do good research in a field like computers, constantly changing, with lots of very bright, motivated people working in it.

It is a good book, worthwhile to read for a number of reasons, the least of which is that these topics will impact everyone on earth to a greater or lesser extent over their lifetimes, just a matter of survival.

The final feeling i have is that my kids simply can not compete with chinese kids, not for educational motivation, not for desire to get ahead and do good while making lots of money. it is a wakeup call to American education and political structures that the primacy of American scientific research and the engine that it has been driving the economy is no longer restricted to smaller percentages of the world population but is now literally global.

if you are 1 in a million, there are 1300 of you speaking Chinese maybe 5 speaking english as a first language.