I’ve been trying to think of words that would adequately describe our study trip to China and most fall short – fascinating, amazing, mind-bending – these words together start to paint a picture of our week long trip to businesses in Shanghai and Beijing. But above all else it was great fun.

The exposure and access we got both to multinational and Chinese companies while there was incredible. All the companies we visited were open and honest about the challenges they face operating in the Chinese market and what they have done right and wrong along the way.

We visited Bristol Myer Squibb (where Renaud Sermondade gave us a captivating presentation and described the challenges of working in a market where there are no intellectual property rights and generic drugs are often available before the patented drug has received full approval), Coca Cola, Tesco, Deloitte, JWT Advertising to name but a few and a host of cleantech companies (to my delight). Every day was jam packed and the seven days of learning were super-charged, so much so that it felt that we were there for a lot longer than a week.