Every entrepreneur faces challenges; it is a journey that few who try complete successfully. For Liu Chuanzhi, there was yet another obstacle far more daunting than all the rest: the limitations of China’s centrally planned economy at a time when private enterprise was discouraged. Despite monumental challenges and countless setbacks, Liu realized his dream, turning a tiny computer company that he started with only 11 employees in 1984 into a global powerhouse that, twenty years later, stunned the world by acquiring the personal computing business of none other than IBM, the granddaddy of the PC.

At the time of our conversation in August 2010, Liu had returned about a year earlier to the chairmanship of Lenovo. He had retired as chairman in 2005, following the completion of the IBM deal. But when Lenovo, his brainchild, suffered a decline in sales and profitability due to the financial crisis and a reduction in orders from its largest customers, Liu took on the mission to get the company back on track. He was successful, and Lenovo returned to profitability in 2010.

“When Lenovo suffered a difficulty, I returned in spite of getting older,” Liu said through an interpreter, “because this is the business I created with my colleagues.”
Returning to the company he started reveals more than just the pride of ownership that is typical of company founders. For Liu, it is also a sign of his perseverance and willingness to go the distance to realize his vision. 

These are the same distinguishing characteristics that he exhibited from the very beginning of his company when, despite restrictive government policies on everything from manufacturing licenses to access to foreign currency, he managed to establish a global technology company. “We started the company from scratch,” Liu recalled proudly. “We started the business from nothing. Perhaps, at the beginning, nobody believed that our company could stand for long.”

While there may have been those who doubted, Liu was never one of them. He had always dreamed of the day when the company he started under the name Lianxiang (it was changed to Lenovo in 2003 to create a more recognizable global brand) would be the IBM of China. At the time, such a plan seemed preposterous. Not only was the company tiny, but this was China in the early 1980s, with a tightly controlled and centrally planned economy, regulations that restricted trade, and ideology that despised private wealth accumulation. 

Yet, Liu was persistent, demonstrating the kind of perseverance that is necessary to turn an idea into reality. Part of it was commitment, backed by the belief in the technology that Liu had seen in Chinese research laboratories and wanted to develop into commercial products. The other part of it speaks directly to the courage of leaders who weigh the risks and decide that what they could gain far outweighs what they might lose. In Liu’s case, he saw little or no downside.

 “In China we have a saying, ‘The barefoot are not afraid of the dressed ones,’” he said. “So I was ‘barefoot’ at the time, and I did not worry about failing.” With a vision of what was possible and perseverance to go around or through the obstacles, Liu established a company that became China’s largest PC maker and the world’s fastest growing one. In 2010, Lenovo ranked as the world’s fourth largest PC manufacturer with nearly $17 billion in revenues.

Considering where the company started, the outcome seems nearly impossible. A picture of the company’s first headquarters reflected its humble beginnings: a tiny building that was formerly used as a guard post at the government’s Computer Institute. Yet that tiny, nondescript building proved to be a powerful incubator of ideas.

Despite all the praise and international recognition, Liu, who is known as the “godfather of China’s information industries,” has remained very humble. He dismissed any notion of being a born leader, considering himself to have been rather ordinary before his company was created.

“I had no such great aspirations and vision 26 years ago when I started my business. It
was quite simple: I was 40 years old at the time... I did not know my capabilities as a leader before I was 40 years old. Before then, I thought of myself as very common and nothing special. But then I developed gradually,” he observed.

Liu’s remarks called to mind the fundamental question addressed throughout this book: Are leaders born or are they made? In Liu’s case, as with many of the leaders interviewed, although they may possess certain innate qualities, their leadership is developed through experience. In some organizations, the process is deliberate: A promising candidate is put on the leadership track and given strategic assignments to develop potentially into a senior executive.

What was striking about Liu’s leadership development was how it has been honed through unique life experiences: not only struggling with bureaucracy as an entrepreneur, but also enduring tremendous personal hardships at a time of government oppression. Through these experiences he developed intense determination and perseverance to realize his vision—never giving up and never giving in.

As a young man, Liu had dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot, and distinguished himself as the only candidate from his class at school to be considered for training. Although his father was a member of the Communist Party, Liu was denounced by a relative for being a “rightest,” which made him unfit for duty. Devastated by the loss of his dream, Liu was consoled by his father who said, “No matter what you do in the future, whether it’s great or just something ordinary, so long as you are an upright human being you will be my good son.” 1 For Liu, this was more than just encouragement; it was a reflection of his father’s character as an upstanding man and a model for the kind of leader that Liu would strive to become.

Enrolled in the Xi’an Military Electronics Engineering Institute in 1961, Liu studied
radar, which gave him an introduction to computers. After graduation, he was sent to work at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Although he did not know it at the time, Liu was being given an entrée to technology, a field in which he would later distinguish himself as an entrepreneur. Before any of those hopes or dreams could take root, however, Liu would face two brutal years of government oppression during the Cultural Revolution.

Under Chairman Mao’s edict to rid the country of a growing middle class, Liu was
among the many professionals and intellectuals who were forced to do manual later. In 1968, Liu was sent to a rice farm, performing back-breaking toil to plant rice seedlings on a commune. In 1970, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was finally allowed to reopen, and Liu returned to work as an engineer-administrator. While conditions were certainly better there than the rice farm, but Liu faced other hardships. His work at the academy focused on magnetic data storage, but the Chinese government had no desire to turn such technology into products. “Some scientific and technological achievements I made were put on the shelf,” Liu remembered.

In early 1990s, China began to be more open to entrepreneurs who wanted to establish their own companies. Realizing that here, at last, was his chance to explore his ideas, Liu decided to try his hand at the computer business. “I had a strong impulse to make something,” he explained. “I wanted to know what I could do.”

Liu convinced ten colleagues to join him in establishing a tiny computer company with the equivalent of only $25,000 in initial capital from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “The capital was very limited and far from being enough to establish an enterprise, which normally would require several million dollars or tens of millions of yuan,” Liu explained. “Nevertheless, we were intent upon making our computers. So we were forced to open up a new road.”

In the beginning, government bureaucracy was a formidable obstacle. Lianxiang wanted to manufacture PCs, but without a license from the Chinese government it could not open a factory. Instead, the company started out as a distributor for foreign companies whose products were just beginning to penetrate the Chinese market.  Lianxiang began manufacturing computer motherboards in Hong Kong, and when the products became successful, Chinese authorities granted the company a license to manufacture them in China.

Whenever a problem, arose, Liu found a solution. The dual talents of entrepreneur and
problem-solver are both admirable and necessary. For leaders in any field, it is not enough to have a vision or an idea. They must also be able to execute and implement a strategy, making adjustments—even dramatic ones—whenever circumstances change or problems arise.

China’s state-controlled economy presented significant hurdles for Lianxiang, such as
controls on the price of all goods. Lianxiang wanted to price its motherboards at RMB2,000 each. However, the government’s commodity pricing agency determined they should only charge RMB200. “They fixed the price based on the cost of raw materials and components, and then added 20%. They didn’t consider the mental labor [to develop the product]. Therefore, we had to discuss and plead with them. It was very difficult,” Liu said. 

In order to import computer components, Lianxiang needed access to foreign exchange. Unable to tap government sources, the company had to resort to the black market. “We had no other means except using such an operation,” Liu said. “It seemed that there was a line, and you may have to violate the law if you cross the line. But if you stayed behind the line, you did not move forward.”

Liu Chuanzhi achieved several notable accomplishments, made all the more satisfying because of the difficulties that the company had endured just to survive. For Liu, who had to persevere through so many personal and professional hardships to realize his goal, determining one’s own purpose and providing opportunities for others is a greater reward than any other.

1. Ling Zhijun, The Lenovo Affair: The growth of China’s computer giant and its takeover
of IBM-PC, (translated by Martha Avery), 2006, John Wiley & Sons
2. Barboza, David, “An Unknown Giant Flexes Its Muscles,” The New York Times,
December 4, 2004,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/04/business/worldbusiness/04asia.html

(From：《No Fear of Failure》, Gary Burnison)
best price cialis cialis free coupon coupons for cialis