Book Review: The New Silk Road
The New Silk Road, by John B. Stuttard ,draws upon his five years of experience living in china as the executive chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers. His book combines his own perspectives with other professionals that have experienced both great success and failure. This book provided a great insight into the background and culture of China, while simultaneously identifying common mistakes made by American professionals new to the area. The book takes a more biographical approach to conveying the information. The book uses real people from a corporation and their experiences to exemplify every lesson the book has to teach. Some of the well known companies the book draws experience from are AIG, Novartis, ASIMCO, Johnson & Johnson, and many more. The book uses the firsthand accounts of the managers in charge in China and their accounts of the pitfalls and success stories to enlighten the reader. They discuss what they did right and what they learned from their failures. One reoccurring theme is “guanxi” which means connections or relationships. Over and over again guanxi is stressed as the most important aspect of doing business in China. While China is referred to as the wild west of the business community, open to those brave enough to attempt to achieve success; there are important lesions to be learned from previous ventures. This book does a great job at capturing and presenting that knowledge.