Fortune makers : the leaders creating China's great global companies / Michael Useem, Harbir Singh, Neng Liang, and Peter Cappelli.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-258) and index.

Introduction: Not the American way. "It seems surely just a matter of time before a "China way" emerges." -- Their own way forward. :It's very difficult to apply the US business model to China directly ... We have to develop our own." -- The learning company. "Learning is embedded in everything I do." -- Strategic agility for the long game. "I am a crocodile in the Yangtze River." -- Talent management. "We will make it because we are young and we never, never give up." -- The big boss. "The Chinese leader is always top down." -- Growth as gospel. "The most important thing is to grow the cake and let everyone take a piece from it." -- Governance as partnership. "I disagree with maximizing shareholder value ... The most important stakeholder is our customers." -- What's distinctive, what's sustainable. "It's our responsibility to shift from "made in China" to "designed in China."" -- Appendix 1: Growth of the China way -- Appendix 2: Chinese business leaders interviewed.

"Reveals the distinctive business practices of Chinese business leaders, whose emerging juggernauts?including Alibaba, Lenovo and Haiers--are establishing themselves as growing commercial presences worldwide and explains what Western companies need to know and can do to stay competitive, "--NoveList.

Fortune Makers analyzes and brings to light the distinctive practices of business leaders who are the future of the Chinese economy. These leaders oversee not the old state-owned enterprises, but private companies that have had to invent their way forward out of the wreckage of an economy in tatters following the Cultural Revolution. Outside of brand names such as Alibaba and Lenovo, little is known, even by the Chinese themselves, about the people present at the creation of these innovative businesses. Fortune Makers provides sharp insights into their unique styles--a distinctive blend of the entrepreneur, the street fighter, and practices developed by the Communist party--and their distinctive ways of leading and managing their organizations that are unlike anything the West is familiar with. When Peter Drucker published Concept of the Corporation in 1946, he revealed what made large American corporations tick. Similarly, when Japanese companies emerged as a global force in the 1980s, insightful analysts explained the practices that brought Japan's economy out of the ashes--and what managers elsewhere could learn to compete with them. Now, based on unprecedented access, Fortune Makers allows business leaders in the United States and the rest of the West to understand the essential character and style of Chinese corporate life and its dominant players, whose businesses are the foundations of the domestic Chinese market and are now making their mark globally. -- Inside jacket flap.