Whilst in the US for New Year I visited the Turkey Hill Experience in Columbia Pennsylvania. I had previously visited the Turkey Hill Experience numerous years ago, when it was a lot less interactive. This visit was far more engaging and we undertook a tea experience and an ice cream lab session. It felt like being on The Apprentice, as there is the opportunity to design a new type of ice cream, its packaging and an advert. When designing ice cream, we started off with a vanilla base and then added flavourings, then inclusions before variegates. There was fifteen different flavourings, twenty inclusions including nuts, sweets and biscuits and ten variegates to swirl into the ice cream to choose from. The ice cream I designed was teaberry (with a hint of cotton candy) with a marshmallow and peanut butter swirl and graham cracker and marshmallow pieces. On reflection, the ice cream was rather overloaded with taste and flavour.
The experience also provided a good over view of the emergent strategy that Turkey Hill went through, originally focusing on milk and ice cream production and then added ice tea using excess production capacity. They also moved from a local delivery system to developing mini markets and gas stations to further expand their range. This led to them having a range of vertically integrated business interests to supply and distribute their products.
My final trip to China for the year, took me back to Beijing to complete my Entrepreneurship and Innovation class at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) and allowed for another couple of trips. The Entrepreneurship and Innovation course had run smoothly so going back for the two weeks to complete the final four sessions was relatively stress free. Within the sessions I had the opportunity to run a couple of new experiential activities, which is always fun to see and gauge the reactions.
Also whilst in China I visited Lanzhou Jiaotong University to work with them on developing their entrepreneurship curriculum. They are currently designated as a National Centre for Entrepreneurship, so their entrepreneurship ecosystem is strong. They impressively link entrepreneurship with mechanical and electrical engineering and I had the chance to see the numerous projects being conducted by students in the robotic laboratory and hear of their commercialisation goals. Whilst at Lanzhou Jiaotong University I received an Entrepreneurship Education Advisory fellowship, to run for two years.
During my final week in China I visited Chengdu Polytechnic for my 4th time, and what I believe final time, to complete an ongoing entrepreneurship curriculum embedment project I have been working on for the last 18 months. The institution now has entrepreneurship embedded in 3 different disciplines, so the trip offered the opportunity to speak to colleagues and provide some suggestions for future development.
Each semester as part of the study program at the International Business School at BFSU there is an immersion week, which is essentially a field trip where students work on live case studies and develop a reflective log. This semester there was three different locations, and I had the option to choose which one I wanted to attend (a choice I received but students did not). The choice was between staying in Beijing, going to Foshan in Guangdong or Pinyao in Shanxi province. During a couple of previous immersion weeks I had stayed in Beijing and visited some fascinating local businesses. But with no major reason to stay in Beijing and the desire for some different scenery I decided on visiting Pingyao. It is a historic UNESCO heritage city that I have wanted to visit but have never had time. It is often referred to as the Chinese Wall Street from the previous century, due to being a trading location and the location of the first private financial institutions in China for deposits, loans and exchange. So it has lots of history and historic buildings to explore. The student task for the trip was to develop a new innovative tourism business concept. So included in the trip are numerous tourist activities including visiting the ancient city and temples, Rishengchang (China Museum of Exchange Shop), Zhangbi Ancient Fortress and the Qiao family residence.
The start of immersion week involved me delivering a session on innovation and value propositions to the 200 students involved in all the immersion week activities. The Beijing, Forshan and Pingyao activities were all focused on innovation and enterprise, so this laid the foundation for the tasks the students would complete during the week. After completing the 4 and a quarter hour high-speed train journey from Beijing, we had the first opportunity to see the ancient city of Pingyao from the electric buggies which drive around the city. Due to the nature of the city and its narrow old streets, cars are not allowed in the city. Which means the city is frequented by electric buggies, which zoom around, following a kind of informal set of driving laws. This does give the feeling that you are involved in a type of Mario Cart game, complete with last minute breaking and overtaking. The hotel was a quaint hotel, set around a nice courtyard, although, it did get very cold in the night. It was also cold in the day and I found myself wearing two jumpers and a coat each day, which was my entire clothes supply for the week.
The highlight of the trip for me was visiting the Rishengchang and two old banks and hearing how they created an ecosystem, which helped the city thrive in its heyday. The banks allowed not only deposits, but supported the exchange of the various different currencies used in China at that time. This meant that the city was a great place to do national business, across all the different regions of China. We also visited several of the support services which existed and developed to support the ecosystem, including security escort services to support trade and the court system. The visit highlighted that even hundreds of years ago, a strong and supportive ecosystem was required to support urban and business development. From a tourist perspective the city is a great place to visit, particularly during this time of year, if you are prepared for the cold, as the number of tourists is limited. There is not that much infrastructure for foreign tourists as the vast majority of visitors are domestic tourists. This made findings a cup of coffee in the morning quite tricky, plus one lunch time a visit to McDonald’s was necessary to take a break from the same pattern of food. But the city and some of the surrounding sites are definitely worth a visit.
This week I started the delivery of an Entrepreneurship and Innovation course at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU). It is a course I have delivered a couple of times previously, however the other times I have delivered the course I was living in Beijing. This made the experience significantly different, getting used to living on campus (in Haidian) and surviving without home comforts. All of the activities and restaurants I know are on the other side of the city, which is a reasonable distance to travel in Beijing. This made finding new locations an essential first task. New supermarkets, restaurants and good coffee locations.
The week following the start of the course, I went to visit North Minzu University (NMU) University in Yinchuan, Ningxia. Six months previously, I developed the partnership which saw NMU send 11 funded students to Worcester. It was the first time I had visited Ningxia and Yinchuan since 2011, so it was interesting to see how the city had developed. I remember the city having a new airport and a large highway connecting it to the city, which was considerably under capacity. The new part of the city is very peaceful and calm, with well-designed open space. The air was also clear and crisp, which allowed for seeing the Helan Mountains, which form the border between Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. Plus there was not a cloud in the sky and it felt like the blue sky was so big and went on until the end of the horizon. Whilst at NMU I delivered a short session on the difference between entrepreneurship and management, constructed from the first week of teaching at BFSU. The session required some organizing and coaxing to get 120 students up, into groups and moving around the lecture theatre and hallway. Although, the outcome of running an activity designed for circa 40 students with 120 students seemed to work ok in the end.
I have spent most of the start to autumn zipping across Europe and making short visits to China. The short journeys across Europe included an unscheduled stop in Munich for 8 hours after missing a connection on the way to Kyiv, after a delayed flight from Heathrow. I spent the 8 hours undertaking my first ever trip into Munich. Munich is one of the cities I regularly transfer through but have never actually visited the city. So it was nice to have a quick walk around and kill some of the delay.
I also made a couple of visits to China, including my shortest trip yet. I undertook a two evening and one day trip to Chengdu to visit Chengdu Polytechnic. Flying from Kiev to Chengdu involves two connections, which meant the flights there and back were longer than the time on the ground. The visit supported the continued development and embedding of their entrepreneurship and enterprise curriculum. When visiting Chengdu Polytechnic I stay in the same ‘boutique’ hotel, which has numerous individual room themes. Each time I have stayed in the same corner room, which is one of the biggest in the hotel and has lovely full glass windows on two sides of the room, but it has the feel of not being fully finished, as it has chipboard walls. Whilst maybe not as trendy as the other rooms in the hotel, other rooms look more polished.
Two weeks later I was back in Beijing to visit Changying Vocational School for a couple of days. Working with vocational schools is always fun, as their students work well with practical hands on activities. It was also interesting to spend some time in West Chaoyang. Having previously lived in Chaoyang next to the third ring road, I was largely blinded to the further West districts.
Finally, there was visit to Bielefeld for the final session of DBA teaching for the second cohort of students. It is always nice to complete the teaching and sent the cohort on their way to develop their research and complete their thesis.
After completing required work in the UK it was possible to settle down and enjoy Kyiv. The summer was spent mixed between exploring the city and developing and recording video lectures for a new online MBA at Worcester. Within the space of a few weeks, I managed to get a reasonable understanding of the Ukrainian Premier League and the complexities of a winter break and a split in the season where the top and bottom clubs play again. This was required to underpin a couple of Dynamo Kyiv season tickets. Through this new affiliation with Dynamo Kyiv, the summer also involved watching a couple of Champions League qualification games, a win against Slavia Praha and a goalless draw with Ajax, which led to Dynamo’s being knocked out of the Champions League and entering the Europa League.
I have also managed to find a couple of local coffee shops and a patisserie to help break up the days when working from home. The cost of such things is generally very reasonable and it is possible to enjoy a break from work and grab a coffee from countless coffee vendors. I have never seen a city with so many coffee shops and ice cream stands. I am keen to see what happens to the ice cream stands in winter, whether they keep selling cream, close or sell something else required in snowy weather. There is also a reasonable craft beer scene, with numerous bars and restaurants selling a range of locally produced beers. The beers largely have a focus on pilsners, ales and black beers rather than the fruity and light beers which could be found in Beijing. This weekend I visited a craft beer festival at the Expocenter of Ukraine, which is great venue, with proud but aging buildings to explore a range of beers. I hope I am now ready for what the fall and winter have to offer in Kyiv, as after returning to Worcester for work, it will nearly be October before I return.
After completing my education thesis and defending it early in the year, the chance to reflect and celebrate at graduation had come around. I made the decision several years before to undertake a PhD in education at the University of Huddersfield, to learn more about educational theory and support my pedagogical practice. Whilst, it is important to be in an expert in your subject area, being able to educate and transfer learning in an effective manner is also important. Learning more about education also supported and led me to develop my research focus in entrepreneurship education, allowing me to bring two of my research interests together. I was thankful to receive support and funding from a State Department Professional Development Fellowship to help make studying the program a reality.
The graduation ceremony was held on campus in St. Paul’s Hall and my wife and parents attended with me. The event was short and uplifting and offered a final chance to explore Huddersfield, a town which I had never visited before I started studying on the program. But over the course of the last couple of years I had become increasingly familiar with the town and have developed an affinity with many of its quirks and venues.
After leaving Moscow in such a hurry in early April, the last few months with DC as a base offered some stability, although it never felt like home. This was partly because we were in a one bedroom studio apartment, but also we didn’t know what the future held in store. Was it time to finally settle down, or would we go on another adventure. It took about 6 weeks until we had some clarity on this, and the answer was a few years in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. So after four months in DC, here we were again, ready to hop on a plane with angry cats in tow. The move went well, although this was probably the angriest the cats had been when travelling. Maybe it was the two transatlantic journeys in only 4 months. The fact that we never received our shipment, helped as there was not too much to re-pack.
I had never previously visited Ukraine so it was a completely new experience for me. So it would be an adventure and allow for lots of exploration. Once in Kiev I had a few days to explore the city before having to head back to the UK for work. It did not take long to realise the vibe of the city was very different to Moscow. The culture was happy, positive and free-spirited in comparison. Instantly it was easier for me to explore the city and relax, as every bar, restaurant and supermarket had not only employees who could speak English, but did so with a smile and were excited to be able to do so. In the few days I had to explore, in between unpacking suitcases, I was able to take the funicular railway and see some of the wonderful views and buildings Kiev has to offer. I look forward to the coming years and being able to explore and enjoy the city.
This weekend I travelled from Washington to Beijing to deliver a teacher training workshop on enterprise curriculum development at Beijing Information Management School, a vocational high school. This was only the second time for me working with a Chinese school, as opposed to further or higher education institutions. So this brought about its own challenges, as the curriculum’s are more standardized and fixed. During the workshop a range of enterprise activities were undertaken by participants and applied and slotted into curriculum’s as wide ranging as cooking, music and sport.
Whilst in Beijing I found time to hunt down the new Jing-A Brew Pub after the Jing-A Taproom closed in April. The Brew Pub has a very different feel to the Tap Room as it is long and thin and has numerous rooms and bars. It is not as open and fresh as the Tap Room and feels more like other local bars, which was a little disappointing. However, the beer and food was still good, although with a different food menu (I hate change). I am not looking forward to the 14 hour flight and 12 hour time difference on the way back, but I have a short break to the Finger Lakes and Niagara Falls to look forward to once back.
At the start of the week I had the opportunity to deliver an entrepreneurship education workshop at Nanjing Institute of Industry and Technology. The workshop was delivered to members of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Alliance of Higher Vocational Colleges in China. It was attended by 60 educators representing 15 colleges, from 8 provinces. I always enjoy visiting Nanjing, particularly when going to the University Town district. It has modern campuses and is green and relaxed with good metro access to the city. The metro is rarely crowded compared to other major Chinese cities, so it is often possible to get a seat.
The workshop was rescheduled by a few days from its original dates and unfortunately on the new dates there was no direct flights from Frankfurt to Nanjing. This meant flying to Shanghai and then a subway journey on line 2 to get across the city from Shanghai Pudong to Hongqiao Railway Station and then a high speed train to get to Nanjing. The subway journey took just over 2 hours, whilst the train only took just over an hour and a half.
In my haste when packing, I picked up the wrong shoe bag from my wardrobe. So when opening my suitcase in Nanjing I was greeted by a pair of waterproof walking boots, rather than my brogues. The workshop was delivered in trainers, which was marginally more appropriate than waterproof walking boots, given the 30 degree plus temperature.
Going to Nanjing provided the opportunity to meet up with colleagues I am currently collaborating on research with at 1912. Although, with a busy schedule the next day there was no opportunity to enjoy the well-known 1912 night life.
Robin Bell 