A Chinese billionaire’s instruction manual for innovation. (2015)

A CEO all too aware of hubris and the damage she could inflict by becoming ’too powerful’: a company whose policies and practices seem designed to avoid a culture of hubris.

Quy Huy, INSEAD Professor of Strategy and Director of the Strategy Execution Programme: Yidi Guo, INSEAD PhD Student in Strategy
INSEAD Knowledge: Entrepreneurship
2 September, 2015

“..it is said that one of the reasons Madam Wu chose to resign from her position as CEO in 2011 was that she felt she was becoming too powerful… .”

“Longfor Properties is one of the business miracles of modern-day China. From its humble beginnings as a Chongqing-based startup with only one project in the mid-1990s, it took less than 15 years to metamorphose into a leading real estate developer nationwide, garnering more than 33 billion yuan (US $5.3 billion) in annual sales. Longfor’s blockbuster success made its co-founder, Yajun Wu, the world’s richest woman for a brief time…

“In 2005, Longfor found itself at a crucial juncture. Madam Wu’s ambition was to go national, but she feared that scaling up would threaten the unique culture she’d built

“To ensure the company’s differentiated identity could survive national expansion and an aggressive external recruiting drive, the senior leaders resolved to formalise its culture in a pamphlet titled “Longfor: Personnel, Organisation and Culture”, which exhaustively detailed policies and practices that, in the Chinese context, were deeply countercultural…..

“To maintain the flat structure, considered vital to Longfor’s development, the pamphlet minimised the role of HQ and decentralised decision-making to the regions.

“Longfor’s senior leaders set the egalitarian example, Madam Wu herself very much included. She kept such a low profile that she was once prohibited from entering one of her own construction sites when the security guard failed to recognise her.

“Most notably, it is said that one of the reasons Madam Wu chose to resign from her position as CEO in 2011 was that she felt she was becoming too powerful. Though she stayed on as chairperson, she wanted to ensure that hers would never be Longfor’s sole deciding voice.”

Read the full article here: A Chinese billionaire’s instruction manual for innovation