Above and beyond success: CEIBS welcomes first-ever DBA cohort

Following several months of applicant interviews and screening, the CEIBS (Switzerland) Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) programme finally ushered in its first batch of students during its official opening ceremony this week. The programme will serve not only as a bridge connecting academics and practice, but also as a way to meet the learning needs of CEIBS alumni and other high-level management talent.

The first DBA cohort contains 42 students, with an average age of 47 years old and nearly 25 years of work experience. 38% of the students hold a double master’s degree and 33% are women. Nearly 60% of the students are CEIBS alumni.

During the event, CEIBS leadership and student representatives from the DBA Class of 2021 cohort shared their thoughts on the journey ahead.

I hope you can cultivate new perspectives, develop research methods, achieve breakthroughs, and obtain results during the DBA academic journey.

Autumn has arrived in Shanghai, and the leaves on campus are turning red, bringing with them a feeling of calmness. The first DBA class includes leaders from private enterprises and foreign companies, internet veterans and high-tech pathfinders. Your belief in knowledge, internal drive and sense of mission have already left a deep impression on me. As you embark on your DBA journey, I have three things to share with you:

First, the fool is greedy for shortcuts, and the wise enter through a narrow gate. Choosing a “narrow gate” means taking a path where few people walk. During the DBA learning process, follow your heart and seek out the “narrow gate” you wish to enter. As you growth, achieve breakthroughs, and reinvent in your professional field, stick to one thing in the extreme, and create value for your industry and society.

Second, you must have perseverance. The road is long and arduous. The next four years will be a difficult journey for every student. During these four years, you will listen and share, and further consolidate a theoretical foundation under the leadership of our faculty. This process may feel tedious, but as long as you stick to it, you will be enlightened. At the same time, you will also find inspiration and inspire an inclusive and diverse community. The collision of knowledge and experience will spark a process of collective growth and achievement. But the prerequisite for all this is that you must have the perseverance and courage to go a long way.

Third, we must have a global perspective and care about our families and country. CEIBS was the first business school in China to make business ethics a compulsory course and its mission is to cultivate responsible leaders who have ‘China Depth’ and ‘Global Breadth.’ During this journey, I hope you can combine your academic ideals with the promotion of industry development and assume your mission as entrepreneurs. As business leaders, you must produce world-class companies; as CEIBS students, you must continue to create new knowledge and contribute to both business and society.

The reason why people are great rests in their ability to think. The DBA programme will help you polish your thinking, reasoning, and implementation skills, so that you can evaluate yourself more accurately and achieve better development in the future.

Congratulations on starting a new life-long journey of learning. Many people have asked how the DBA compares to other programmes. DBA programmes are more focused on depth, so that everyone can better understand the meaning of their field. If other programme involve the dissemination of knowledge, a DBA involves the creation of knowledge. Today, you choose to join the CEIBS DBA, which means that you want to come up with new concepts and new theories, become thought leaders, and have a profound impact on the world.

The process may not always be smooth sailing, and may sometimes be filled with self-doubt, but please believe that CEIBS will always provide you with the driving force to overcome any resistance on the road ahead.

Many people have asked me what qualities a qualified DBA student should have. I think they can be summed up in one sentence: there are no lack of short-term interest chasers in the world; instead, we want to choose people who travel long distances together.

As the first DBA cohort, you are very diversified, consider the big picture, and maintain a sense of urgency. You hope to improve not only the success of your business, but also your industry through research. I am proud of your for this.

I hope that you can plant a tree of wisdom on the fertile soil of ideas to help more “latecomers” on the road to business. This is what we call “a pursuit higher than success.”

While adhering to CEIBS’ motto of “Conscientiousness, Innovation and Excellence,” DBA faculty and students will experience an important journey of systematic knowledge exploration, co-creation and feedback. Through systematic and scientific analysis and exploration and accumulation of knowledge, they will help and promote the future of industry, new policies, innovation and the transformation of society.

Life is the aggregation of everyone’s experiences at different times. Decisions we make at any moment are either out of love or fear. I hope you can seize the opportunity and devote yourself wholeheartedly to doing what you really love. Remember, the measure of our lives is not only wealth, but also the people we have influenced or helped. Only in this way can we truly obtain the happiness and satisfaction of self-realisation.

I encourage you to study hard, explore, use your talents and abilities, and use systematic knowledge and thinking to make a positive impact on your respective companies, industries and families. Through the DBA programme, I look forward to co-creating and sharing ideas and knowledge with all of our students.

The 42 people in the DBA programme have come from 600 candidates and we are delighted to welcome this very talented cohort. This proves that you are not only highly literate, but also rich in knowledge and experience and full of learning motivation, as you broaden your business, absorb global knowledge, and promote your future career development.

Today’s world is changing rapidly and geopolitics and global economic undercurrents are surging. The market is shifting like a continental drift, which has created many good opportunities. China’s development is undoubtedly the most eye-catching. We can see Chinese companies strategizing, optimizing the development of the economy, going global, and expanding their international influence.

As a distinguished professor at CEIBS, I will work with other faculty to help you develop new skills, knowledge and ways of thinking to rise to the challenges of an ever more challenging world.

Xu Hongyan

Disheng Elevator (China) Chief Executive Officer

I have always wanted to pursue a DBA that is not purely academic, but also serious about learning, and can help me accumulate, summarise, reflect on and apply experience in practice. Now, I have finally found it at CEIBS! Today, both Chinese and multinational companies in China have attracted attention due to the rapid development of the country’s market. Looking to the future, Chinese companies going abroad and becoming world-renowned multinationals is also just around the corner. In addition to learning by experience, we need to think about developing a practical framework to guide us. Going through this learning process at CEIBS promises to bean illuminating experience. Our class will bring together enthusiastic learnerswho will stimulate and provoke each other with new ways of thinking.

Cheng Taiyi

Zhaoyi Innovation CEO

For me, my curiosity about the evolution of business and management issues and the underlying logic of decision-making drove me here. From the perspective of self-transcendence, the DBA programme will not only enhance my self-awareness and allow me to improve my business; it will also help me draw on my past experience and thinking, and refine my original business ideas more systematically and scientifically.