“I’m not going to try to tell you how to do business in the Middle Kingdom (China),” retired businessman Paul Ip told a crowd of budding entrepreneurs during a recent Engineering Entrepreneurship Series lecture at U of T. The series is hosted by The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering.
“I started up and ran two different businesses in China. I’ll tell you my story and let you draw your own conclusions.”
Ip’s words were music to the ears of Professor Jonathan Rose (ECE), who launched the entrepreneurship lecture series for business-minded students looking to some day establish their very own start-ups.
“I’m trying to help inspire a culture of entrepreneurship here,” he said. “My goal is to have students hear stories of entrepreneurship. If they hear enough of those stories and learn about how the entrepreneurs navigated the issues, they’ll come to believe they can do it, too.”
Ip, a native of Hong Kong, had interesting stories to share. He never attended university; instead, he learned on the job. While working for Bayer, a conglomerate based in Germany, and AVEBE, a Dutch Farmers’ Co-op, he was twice given the task of opening a factory in China. He succeeded in both projects, but it was the obstacles along the way that made the process interesting.
“Building a factory in China is not something you do overnight,” he said.
As fast as the obstacles popped up, Ip found a way to knock them down. “I’m of the belief that if you’re afraid, don’t build in a foreign country,” he said.
“His views about working with people being not so black and white were very interesting,” said Kenny Ho (ElecE 0T6, MASc 0T8), a U of T Engineering graduate who is working on starting his own business.
The Engineering Entrepreneurship Series is open to everyone across the university.
