Kmind President Noah Xie (center) gives a lecture at Harvard Club of Boston in Boston, the US. Photo: Courtesy of Kmind
Kmind Strategy Consulting has become China's first consulting firm to share its business strategies with Harvard, Brown and MIT in the US, making history in the consulting industry long dominated by foreign-owned enterprises.
In June, Noah Xie, president of Kmind Strategy Consulting, a leading strategy consulting firm in China, was invited to make a series of lectures at MIT Sloan Fellows, IE-Brown Executive MBA, and the illustrious Harvard Club of Boston to share the firm's "new generation of strategy" with nearly 500 business leaders and academics from various industries. Kmind is the latest example of a Chinese consulting firm showcasing Eastern wisdom on the world stage.
Xie shared how Kmind implemented Sun Tzu's The Art of War and other Chinese wisdom into strategic innovation and helped Chinese brands achieve explosive growth in the Chinese market, swiftly transforming previously obscure firms into industry leaders. Since its establishment in 2015, Kmind has successfully assisted dozens of enterprises, including Feihe, Bosideng, Yadea in their rapid growth. With the help of Kmind, five enterprises exceeded their goals of 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) in revenue in five years, carved out a niche for themselves in the high-end market and turned around their fortunes.
These classic cases have attracted the attention of the international academic community. Kmind has published nine of its clients' success stories as case studies via Harvard Business Publishing, the most cases by a Chinese consulting firm published by Harvard. In April, Vault, the consulting industry's trendsetter, released the latest rankings of global consulting firms, and Kmind has been placed in the top three in two of Vault's Asia-Pacific lists for 2023 ("Best Consulting Firms in Asia-Pacific for Innovation" and "Best Consulting Firms in Asia-Pacific for Firm Leadership"), together with McKinsey and Bain. What is the unique secret of this young Chinese consulting firm?
"Strategy is about winning with the hearts of consumers and building your own 'Mona Lisa Iconic Smile' in the minds of your customers. To create this heart-stopping allure, you need to blend the best of the East and the West," said Xie.
During the sharing, Xie focused on explaining how Kmind's new generation strategy blends the wisdom of the East and the West. Compared to the strategic theory system based on the logical reasoning of Western big data science, Kmind's new generation strategy blends Chinese and Western wisdom, with the core of building a brand and winning people's hearts.
"There are two key words in MIT's emblem that are very important - 'Science' and 'Arts.' I believe that science is mainly used to enhance the power of the natural world, while art enhances the power of human hearts. The strategy consulting industry that I work in combines the two forces of 'science' and 'arts' and translates them into the power of business development," said Xie.
At the MIT Sloan School of Management, Xie emphasized that Western management consulting is already strong, but strategy consulting depends on Eastern wisdom.
Kmind's story won applause and resonated with the North American audience.
"From a Western perspective, regarding strategy, we are more linear in our thinking. So the impact of Eastern wisdom is very important to us, and the integration of East and West is exactly what we need. Kmind is an extraordinary strategy consulting firm. It is incredible to learn so much from Kmind and it's invaluable to us," said one of the members of the audience at the event.
As the consulting market continues to heat up in the Asia-Pacific region, "strategy consulting" is strongly emerging with Chinese wisdom at its core and a blend of Chinese and Western wisdom in support. Kmind's presence at the top universities in the US further consolidated its leadership in China's consulting field. While promoting the development of global business theory, it has also become one of the models for sharing the Chinese story in the global business field.
