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Stephen Cummings, Professor of Strategy at Victoria Business School, has been awarded a Fellowship to Study at the New Zealand Centre at Peking University in Beijing in the second half of 2016. PKU is one of China’s oldest universities and is consistently ranked either number 1 or 2 in China. Cummings will investigate Eastern approaches to creativity in business. While it is a common Western assumption that China and other Asian countries have primarily sought to develop businesses by copying ideas from the West, Cummings says this view can be misleading. “It is often believed that there is one path to greater creativity and the West is further along this continuum, this perspective can blind us to the possibility that there may be more than one cultural approach to encouraging innovation. And some of the things that are starting to happen in this regard in places like China may surprise Westerners.” Cummings’ work on innovative approaches to strategy development is increasingly popular in Asia, with his book Creative Strategy: Reconnecting Business and Innovation (written with Chris Bilton from the University of Warwick) having been recently translated into Chinese and Korean.
Cummings is particularly interested in hybrid approaches to creativity in business that combine the best of Western and Eastern thinking. New Zealand has played an interesting role in the history of such approaches, with New Zealander Rewi Alley one of the prime movers in the ‘Gung Ho’ Cooperative Entrepreneurial movement that spread through the regions of China in the 1930s. Cummings is scheduled to give a public lecture in Beijing about what we can learn today from Alley’s experience during his time in China. Cummings’ will also act as a consultant for the development of a new Creativity in Management programme developed by Peking University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). The programme is designed to promote creativity research in academia and industry in China. Cummings will also lecture on the inaugural programme. Creativity in business is now a national concern in China with the promotion of ‘home grown’ innovation identified as a key part of the Government’s ambitious ‘Made in China 2025’ blueprint, making Cummings' visit a well-timed endeavour. Note: The New Zealand Centre welcomes future Visiting Fellows from International Business and Strategy disciplines - if you are a member of the academic staff from one of New Zealand's eight national universities, please do not hesitate to contact our liaison officers for more information on the visiting fellows programme. |
