When corporate experience encounters with Guanghua's thoughts,

When the wisdom of professors collides with the inspirations of fresh blood,

When enterprises, professors, and students assemble in the IPP,

What kind of story will be created?

What outcomes will they produce together?

Today we are going to share with you

Testimonials for 2020 Guanghua School of Management MBA IPP @Polygon

Part 1: Testimonial from Enterprise

As far as we are concerned, we have been dedicated to product R&D in this industry for ten years, and now we have gained new voices and new ideas from the IPP, which really opens up new vistas for us.

During the IPP, our managers and technical leaders introduced our products on offer and development needs to the students in detail and discussed with them. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor Li led the team to the frontline. This is truly inspiring for our employees. We are deeply impressed not only by their professional knowledge but also their work ethics. It is also admirable that the students, scattered around the world, have never been lax in learning during the pandemic. We are looking forward to the final results of the IPP.

Part 2: Testimonial from Student

Team Name: The Brain

Members: Junhe Kong, Hyojin Kim, Li Cai, and Pengwei Zhao

Polygon is a high-tech company specializing in LPG IoT application services. The company’s vision is to “help gas companies go from good to great”. In addition to growing their existing businesses, they seek for transformation by marching into new fields and expanding the new industrial chain. They have stayed committed to innovation and proactively pursued change, which we should learn. Polygon has already secured a leading position in the industry, but they are not satisfied with this; their awareness of unexpected development and readiness to meet challenges is commendable.

Hyojin on our team said that with no experience in energy and related industries, it was unlikely to predict the specific content of the project. After research, it was learned that a main product of Polygon is intelligent valves. Valves are common in everyday life, but intelligent valves are rare. The current challenge is to build a platform to integrate LPG users, practitioners, and equipment, and improve user experiences and operational efficiency. As she said, lack of demand is never a problem for the energy market, so it seems that innovation is not necessary; however, for the convenience of consumers, Polygon constantly strives to employ new technologies, even in traditional industries and products, and the IoT can be extensively applied to all industries.

Li Cais aid that she had never had the opportunity to get to know the LPG industry before. Through this IPP, she has gained a good understanding of the industry like a blank piece of paper by communicating with the enterprise and other team members from time to time online. “Fortunately, I get to know this industry from the angle of an executive of an industry leader, learn about LPG business innovation, and explore future trends and business opportunities,”hecommented.

It is a rare experience for many foreign students to get hands-on with Chinese business culture and models through the IPP. Our team members, from China and abroad, have diverse backgrounds. We always learn from each other, hoping to eventually create a unique business plan that overturns the public’s stereotype of traditional industries.

As Pengwei Zhao said, in the process of corporate development, how to stay focused on original core businesses while accommodating future market changes is a major challenge, especially for Polygon. Polygon boasts core advantages in intelligent angle valves, but it seeks to expand its platform business. When the original business still has significant advantages and there is still room for the market share to grow, it is necessary to bring into full play the core advantages. Since intelligent angle valves have not yet been widely used in cylinders and pipelines, it promises to be a tremendous market. The questions are: whether it is possible for government and other regulators to set industry standards for intelligent angle valves? Is it possible to promote the establishment of industry standards through technology transfer? If so, Polygon can build an intelligent regulation platform for government to exercise regulation and gas companies to optimize allocation.

If demonstration and scale effects are achieved progressively, LPG cylinders must conform to the industry standards for intelligent angle valves, which will be conducive to the development of Polygon’s core business and to the cultivation of the data platform business. The IPP enables us to integrate and verify the knowledge we have learned on campus with the practices of the enterprise to achieve win-win cooperation.

Part 3: Testimonial from Professor

Professor Xing Li, Department of Marketing, Guanghua School of Management

This is the first time to serve as an instructor of the IPP. On the whole, this is a truly meaningful practicum program. For students, they can get to know a market and enterprise they are not familiar with, and cooperate with students from different fields to complete a quasi-consulting project. For enterprises, they can listen to the voices and opinions of young people on campus. It is a good opportunity for enterprises diving into their respective fields to broaden their horizons. Suffice it to say that the IPP is rewarding for all sides.

Due to the pandemic, we are unbale to conduct more in-depth exchanges and cooperation with the enterprise this year. The students have to discuss online, which may undermine the progress of the project. However, they have leveraged online tools to communicate with each other and the enterprise effectively and come up with many unique opinions based on their own experiences and knowledge. I believe that as the project further proceeds, all participants will definitely get a lot more out of it.

About IPP

The Integrated Practicum Project (IPP) is a required course for full-time and international MBA classes at Guanghua School of Management, Peking University. It is an education-industry partnership aimed at building a practice platform to help solve the practical problems at enterprises and improve the comprehensive management skills of MBA students. The basic framework of the IPP, an experiential course, is as follows: After completing the core courses, students go to the selected enterprises in teams to carry out business projects under the guidance of professors. They need to come up with proposals and hand over consulting reports to the enterprises and professors. Each project revolves around a real-world topic designed and provided by a particular enterprise based on its own needs in order to solve actual problems. In the IPP, the teams can provide strategic, marketing, human resources, financial, and other solutions to help address the management problems of enterprises in transition and devise business plans for the development of startups or growing enterprises.