Speakers Bios & Abstracts

Platzhalter Speakers
Ruimin Zhang
CN

CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors
for the Haier Group

Biography

Zhang Ruimin is the founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Haier Group, in Qingdao, China. Haier is the world’s largest home appliance manufacturer of White Goods. In 1984, Zhang Ruimin took the post as the General Manager of Qingdao Refrigerator Factory – predecessor of Haier, thus starting the prologue of Haier’s entrepreneurship.
Through 30 years of development based upon an innovative entrepreneurial spirit and ambitious strategic decision-making, he turned a small collectively-owned factory with a 1.47m Yuan loss into a global enterprise with revenues amounting to US$ 32.6 billion (2014).

Zhang Ruimin believes that successful enterprises move with the times. During the 30 years since Haier was established, Zhang Ruimin has consistently focused upon the customer experience us to advance Haier’s success. He has consistently proposed that Haier should never see itself as just a manufacturer of products, but instead as a provider of solutions to its customers’ problems. In it’s earliest years, this meant bringing new levels of quality and reliability to Chinese products. Later, it involved increasingly sophisticated forms of customization and new types of services. Through its simplicity and continuity, this principle has given all employees a reliable compass with which to make decisions, even in the face of disruptive market challenges such as new technologies or new competitors. To accomplish its goal, Haier has consistently cultivated and rewarded high-quality talent. Over more than three decades, Zhang has led Haier through five major transformations, most recently slashing middle management in favor of 2,000 self-managed teams, many of which have become start-up micro-enterprises seeking to create independent affiliated companies. Indeed, at each different stage of development, Haier has always grasped the opportunity of the times for strategic innovation.

By establishing a corporate culture which has innovation as its core value, Zhang Ruimin has played an important role in Haier’s continuous growth through continual innovation.
He has worked to integrate the essence of China’s traditional culture with western modern management concepts, insisting on “taking in everything, growing innovatively and having one’s own style”. While leading Haier in its continual successful development, Zhang has always attached great importance to the fulfillment of the social responsibilities of the enterprise, taking an active part in public welfare causes including education and charity for contributions to society, and engaging in environment-friendly activities to seek sustainable development.
Zhang has won worldwide recognition through his creation of the global Haier brand and the outstanding achievements made in respect to developing as innovative management model.