While introducing his new MBA program at a refined French-style restaurant located on busy Huaihai Zhonglu on a bright April afternoon, Denis Fred Simon, a 51-year-old American, recalled his first visit to the city on a dark night.

Back in 1981, Simon - now dean of the Lally School of Management and Technology of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute based in Troy, New Yorker, - found himself lost in a strange city after his 12-hour flight landed at Hongqiao Airport. Back in that time, when China had just opened its doors to the outside word, all foreigners needed to be received by some work unit. But late that night, the man waiting for Simon had given up and gone home, due to the flight being delayed.

Relying on vague memory, he struggled to reach the Peace Hotel, where he was supposed to be met by the receiving unit.

"I was told, 'We can't give you a room' by the hotel because I had no letter of introduction from a 'reliable' Chinese work unit, no Chinese cash and my credit cards were useless everywhere for obtaining money," Simon recalled.

"We can't accept US dollars. The accounting department has finished work," said one staff member, refusing Simon's request for a currency exchange. "Ironically, the next morning when I went to change money I found the man himself was the person who was supposed to undertake such transactions," he said.

With his watch and passport as guarantee, Simon managed to get a room to spend his first tired and frustrating night in China.

But this unhappy experience didn't destroy his impression of the city. "Shanghai is a unique place in China, a transportation and technology base built up since the 1920s. The city has a global outlook and the people like to encounter foreigners and other cultures," he said.

In the mid-1980s, the professor focusing on business strategy and global technology at MIT, had predicted that Shanghai - the "Engine of China" - would become the technological development centre of Asia. "And I thought Shanghai was already quite close to that goal."

In the US, Simon would probably be the most senior businessman and professor in the field of China research due to his rich experience in the country, but he said that: "I doubt whether I can change the minds of other Americans' about China, but at least I can be a bridge to transfer accurate information and help them understand the country by sharing my experiences of the place." Simon regards himself as a firm friend of China.

China plot

Prior to joining Rensselaer, Simon had been working in international business, primarily in China, since 1995. He served as president of the Monitor Group (China) Ltd in Beijing, as managing director of the business strategy and architecture innovation centre in Asia for the Scient Corporation, associate partner at Andersen (now Accenture) Consulting China, and general manager for Andersen Consulting's China practice in Beijing.

His interest in the ancient country can be traced to his university life. In 1970, 17-year-old Simon met with a Chinese doctor surnamed Fan after just arriving at the State University of New York. Influenced by Fan, he became one of the rare people in the US who learnt Chinese by himself.

Later, he studied the history of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) under the guidance of renowned Chinese professor Ray Huang. The teaching materials Huang used were based on one of his most famous Chinese history books - "A Year of No Significance" (wanli shiwu nian).

Guided by the university's youngest professor, Ronald Knapp, who taught Chinese geography, Simon built up a solid understanding of China and its people and focused his research on China from that point onwards.

In 1973, Simon accessed more information about China through the media, especially concerning the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), and he decided to make a trip to China. He wrote a letter to the State Science and Technology Commission, but got a reply from the Revolution Leadership Team saying "under consideration".

One year later, Simon wrote another letter requesting permission to make a China trip while he was pursuing his doctor degree in political Economy at the University of California at Berkeley. He was again refused, this time clearly: "the present situation in China is not suitable for a China trip, but you are welcome to be a friend of the Chinese."

With a strong commitment to learning about China, Simon visited Taiwan in 1976, on a research trip to the Hsinchu Science Park, the Silicon Valley of Taiwan. Then he worked out a series of influential books about China including "Science and Technology in Post-Mao China'' and "Technological Innovation in China''.

To be an educator

"The most important thing in my life is to bring about changes, and educators do make a big difference," Simon said, explaining why he quit a successful career in business and returned to university in 2001 after the "9.11" tragedy.

During his professional dealings with American businessmen, Simon found that most of them lacked mental flexibility or easy acceptance of other cultures, so he decided to influence the younger American generation - the future bosses.

"By the age of 30 or 40 years old, people's minds have set into a fixed pattern and they are usually too rigid to change. But an educator can bring about changes in students when they are still young," he said.

The average ages of MBA students in Lally School is only 29 years old and Simon believe these students "can be trained to understand things with a global, cross-cultural perspective which enables them to find different ways of doing things rather than taking the American way or some other fixed approach."

This year, Simon finished a two-year renovation of the MBA curriculum, aiming to make the course into a knowledge-intensive MBA with a cutting-edge competitive advantage.

At the Lally School, there is a Sino-US MBA program started in 1996, specially for students from the Chinese mainland. About 200 Chinese have graduated from the program and the program is recruiting about 20 Chinese students a year, who pay a quite favorable tuition totaling about US$1,800 compared to normal tuition fees of US$2,800.

"We hope the program can train more Chinese who can then come back to bring about change to China and upgrade the overall level of management skills," said Simon.

Five years ago, only 50 per cent of students returned to China after finishing their studies at Lally, but now about two thirds do so. "More students are returning to China, with the idea of becoming 'the head of a chicken rather than the tail of a cow.'"

When talking about how to evaluate his success in the educational field, Simon said: "I have a simple goal in my life - that one day my students globally can say: 'Denis Simon was here."'

(Shanghai Star April 30, 2004)