20160311-20 Attending World Business Dialogue

The World Business Dialogue is the place to discuss, act and interact with companies, speakers and students from all over the world. The World Business Dialogue is about forming intelligent, self-sufficient world citizens, equipping them with long-term connections all over the world and giving them room to be creative and truly innovative. As the organizing team changes annually, every World Business Dialogue is totally unique – and still, the spirit is yearly the same. It’s the fascination of bringing together people from all over the world to share their mindsets in terms of business trends that thrives us every year. Passion, Curiosity, Commitment – that’s what makes World Business Dialogue an experience you’ll never forget. -WBD

I applied to this forum last summer, when a friend posted this information to me and I found this a really chance to visit Germany. After I knew I was able to attend, they had been sending me emails and kept me posted on this event. Since there will be quite a number of global managers mostly from the host country, I needed to google their background and professions in order not to embarrass myself. What’s more, even though I didn’t get to work on a Dialogue project, they offered another Hackathon session called Creation Lab. For me, this is what makes my trip a life-time experience. Through the project, we had the opportunity to collaborate with Bayer, crop science. We were given the case and had to present our solution within 48 hours. Each team comprises of 6 persons. My colleagues are from Pakistan, India and Taiwan. Sometimes it’s hard to convey your ideas and convince them to adopt. On Tuesday, we spent the whole day in Leverkusen, where Bayer’s headquarter is. The company created prosperity and hundreds of thousands of jobs for its hometown. The more I look into, the more I want to carve out my future and live with it. There is a chance to apply for internship at Bayer, English is the official language. Every participant in World Business Dialogue has the chance to visit one company, all based around Cologne. A half-hour bus ride to the north is Leverkusen, after working for 10 hours we had a bus tour, unsurprisingly everyone seemed too tired to focus on listening to the tour guide. On Wednesday we all presented our work, I did SWOT and PESTEL analysis, though it is not the most crucial role, I did learn more about crop industry from it. It is quite a relief after the presentation, when a marathon runner just reached the ending line, he/she conquered the barrier that would stop him/her from keeping up mentally, not physically. For whatever it’s worth, you should cheer yourself up, telling yourself that nothing can hinder you.

The spotlight of world business dialogue belongs to the dialogue session, many global think tanks were summoned and discussed what “Globalization- disrupted?” meant to them, speakers including Thomas Pogge, prof. at Yale university. Liam Condon, President Crop Science, Bayer. Christof Mascher, COO, Allianz SE. the list goes on and on. In the conversation, the moderator played an important role, he/she had to make sure when a speaker brought up something worth digging in, he/she can dig that out form the mouth of the speaker and thus satisfied the craving audience. If you ever feel bored about what they say, something irrelevant to what they are asked, simply use the app which they built exclusively for the dialogue, and turned a red sign and showed in the face of the speaker, he/she had to be cut when more than 10 students didn’t want to listen anymore. I think it’s a good move, which can motivate the speaker to speak more genuinely, something authentic. Each speaker has a strong character that cannot be replaced, I enjoyed them talking and even a little debating, that can spice the conversion up to the extent that maybe new idea sparks right there! One of the most haunting words I heard from the speaker is:

DISRUPT your life once it gets TOO boring

This is a platform connecting students and corporate, companies deployed their HR crews to hunt potential students, one night, we had an exotic dinner with the company representatives and we switched table from time to time to meet more companies. As my graduation date draws in, I concerned about future path, Bayer offers international internship program which really caught my eyes. To this end, I’ll have to send my portfolio and have a few rounds of interviews. The perks of working under such influential company is that the official language is English, you wouldn’t have to worry about learning German very much. But if you want to fully participate and communicate with locals in a private level, then they will provide you with language course. When I talked to the company representatives, I felt like having more conversation with them, they seemed very welcoming and willing to give you advice. Plus, the participating companies offered to allow me to try the products they brought to the venue with no strings attached. There are some interactive games you can try out as well, for example, Accenture, the global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, set up a machine that empowered two persons to use compete with their brain, that smart machine detected your brain activity by making you follow the game. Other like virtual reality, trivia quiz.

What a big prize!

Most of the students came from India and Pakistan. 30% are from India, which totaled nearly 100 people. So, you can always hear them speaking in their language, and their names are always hard to remember, let alone pronounce correctly. Basically Indians and Pakistan and understand each other, so I learnt some words (mostly bad ones) to get closer to them. I might be the very few people who want to learn their language. Interestingly, there were more than 10 Taiwanese in this event, far more than I ever expected. About half of them did not take off from Taiwan, but from Europe, because of the exchange student program. It’s common to meet people who study abroad, frankly, I found out a proportion of them do, like they left their countries to pursue further studying. English is definitely not an advantage here, it’s really a tool to get to know them better. Again, internationalization happens right here. If you don’t meet them, what other channels do you have to express your ideas and thus appreciate the difference?

My amazing colleagues

Culture of Nations

Flying high

Looking back, this teamwork experience in Hackathon is definitely not the best I have had. Each of my colleague has a unique personality trait and they are all very knowledgeable. But there is no leader who compiles all opinions, nor facilitator who makes sure the whole preparation goes smoothly. We don’t want to control/dominate, but often times, it’s someone who’s bossy makes the final call. Debates are inevitable, I view it as a booster to reach a consensus. Nevertheless, quarrels happened, and I was sitting in silence and pretending I didn’t see it, everyone else had their mouths shut, I do believe there must be a better way to iron out, maybe I should tell a joke? There are more to be mentioned, I will bare it in mind, that not all stories are meant to be fascinating, without the bad ones we will never appreciate the good ones that come in my way. 

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