Helping women improve business skills

It took Lin Cai a long time to get to grips with her business offering domestic services in Kumming, Yunnan province.

"Retaining employees was a big challenge for me. I didn't know how to do it. I tried increasing salaries but staff still drifted away after a short time," she said.

"Early on the number of employees was small and it didn't take up too much time managing the company but as business expanded many problems emerged," she added.

Now, however, after about 10 year's development, the 49-year-old's company has about 300 employees. And it was thanks to a month of training at a world class business school that showed Lin the way forward.

"It totally inspired me. There were many topics on the course that I had never even thought of before," she said.

Lin signed up to the Goldman Sach's 10,000 Women Initiative.

Launched in 2008, it is a five-year $100 million program aimed at harnessing the power of women entrepreneurs to foster economic growth by educating and supporting them in becoming better at business.

Under the plan, 10,000 women who run small and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries are provided with high-quality business and management skills training.

The project was born out of research conducted by the investment bank that showed increasing the level of business education among women in the developing world could drive economic growth and improve overall health rates. According to Goldman's research, narrowing the gender gap in employment - which is one potential benefit of increased female education - could push income per capita as much as 14 percent higher than baseline projections by 2020 and as much as 20 percent higher by 2030.

So far, a network of more than 80 academic and non-governmental partners worldwide has participated in the program.

"Teachers on the courses taught us to build a corporate culture that employees could identify with. This can help develop a sense of loyalty to the company, which is an important way to retain employees," Lin said.

She took the program last year under a joint arrangement with MIT Sloan School of Management and Yunnan University in Yunnan province, the second-poorest province in the country.

In addition to lessons on how to improve employee retention, the curriculum also includes how to expand into new locations and how to create an inspirational corporate culture. It also has consulting clinics and networking events on Yunnan University's campus.

"Our goal is to go beyond the conventional model of classroom-based management education by providing a platform for training and opportunities that will help benefit women entrepreneurs in China," said Huang Yasheng, international program professor of the Chinese economy and business at MIT Sloan, who oversees the program with Goldman.

"The curriculum is problem-driven, not discipline-driven. Entrepreneurs come to our classes not to learn about theories of finance or marketing or economics but how to use knowledge to solve their problems. So we devoted a lot of time to listening to the women entrepreneurs and finding out what were the main areas in which they were interested. We do not teach them the same material as we do our MBA students," he added.

The first batch of 50 women has already finished the courses. More women entrepreneurs will participate in the courses soon.

"I was very impressed with the first batch of entrepreneurs. They were extremely driven and every one of them had specific questions to which they wanted to find out the answers. They described their business needs to us coherently and they gave a lot of thought to how this training program could help them improve their businesses. They were very thoughtful people," Huang said.

"It makes no difference if you're a high-tech entrepreneur or a low-tech entrepreneur," said Huang. "You still have to deal with human resource issues. You still have to make a marketing plan. There are commonalities."

In addition to MIT Sloan School of Management, some other overseas universities and business schools also participated in the 10,000 Women Initiative. They have established partnerships with domestic universities and developed various courses for Chinese women entrepreneurs. They include Zhejiang University Global Entrepreneurship Research Center and School of Management, University of Oxford's Said Business School, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, HEC Paris, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management and Yale University's Global Health Leadership Institute, as well as Southwestern University of Finance and Economics School of Business Administration.

The program has been operating in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Chengdu, Sichuan province, Beijing and Kunming, Yunnan province. It has reached women from 29 provinces. In total more than 2,000 women in China will be trained by the end of 2013.

"Every single one of the women entrepreneurs in our classes is running a service business. The Chinese economy is big but its service sector is very small. The service sector promotes employment far more effectively than other projects. I think with more training, more capital and a better regulatory environment these women entrepreneurs can make a huge contribution to the Chinese economy," Huang said.

wanghongyi@chinadaily.com.cn