Female entrepreneurs discuss innovation

Chinese female entrepreneurs should search for areas in which they can make breakthroughs and innovate to restructure their products and management, said Chen Zhili Thursday at the 2012 International Forum of Outstanding Women Entrepreneurs held by China Association of Women Entrepreneurs (CAWE) in Beijing. Chen is the vice-chairwoman of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress and president of the All-China Women's Federation.

Tan Lixia, senior vice-president and Chief Finance Officer of Chinese appliance manufacturer, Haier Group, said that innovation in the company's daily management has enabled it to survive crises such as the 2008 financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis.

Tan explained that their employee-order-together system has solved the problem of the slow inventory turnover rate that many companies are facing today and has sped up their cash flow. The employee-order-together system, which has been in place in Haier since 2007, breaks down the workload of each order, allocates it to each employee and thus engages each individual in the company and helps foster an individual's ability to innovate.

Haier acquired at least 90 percent of the shares in New Zealand's Fisher & Paykel Appliances Ltd in November this year.

Haier is not the only company that knows the importance of engaging every employee in corporate management. Ericsson is another.

Marita Hellberg, senior vice-president of Ericsson and head of Human Resources for the company's China and North East Asia region, said a company needs to innovate every day as what made it succeed yesterday may not make it succeed today. She said at the forum that whether a company's employees are engaged, motivated and happy to come to work in the morning are very important to the company's innovation.

When innovative management is key to the survival of big companies and their ability to find new growth areas, finding an innovative business model at the very beginning is equally important.

Susan Nethero, founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Intimacy Bra Fit Specialists, received much attention from female entrepreneurs present at the forum on Friday, the second day of the forum. Nethero said innovation can come from everywhere and one source is the end-product consumers. She founded the company as she herself could not find bras that fit her well and found many women who encountered similar problems. Susan said The company does not produce bras but stands out as it provides a free bra-fitting service and then sells products the company has sourced from the European Union.

Dongying Chengfeng Agricultural Science and Technology Limited Company, based in East China's Shandong province, is also the result of innovative thinking and planning.

The company specializes in circular agriculture. It collects straws from crops and uses them to raise chicken. With the dung of the chicken, biogas electricity is generated, with which organic fertilizer is produced. The company will fertilize their 600-mu (40 hecters) of strawberries with the fertilizer. It also keeps bees for pollinating the strawberries and the company can also get 2,000 tons of honey.

Cheng Junxiu, a farmer, and her brother Cheng Junguo set up this company in 2009, with a registered capital of 9.6 million yuan that they earned from a flour trading business. Chen Junxiu said on Thursday at the Women Entrepreneurs' Product Fair, which is held at the same time as the forum, that there is little growth in the flour trading business and she needed to find something else to do.

She said that her strawberries are sold at 160 yuan per kilo, which is high above the market price but are popular in Shandong.