Starting in 1999, Huawei hired IBM’s consulting arm to teach it to operate like a world-class company. One former IBM consultant said Huawei spent $50 million in 1999 on consulting fees, at a time when its entire revenue was less than a billion dollars. At one point it employed one hundred IBM staff to redo business processes. “They weren’t too daunted by the engineering tasks,” this former consultant reported, but “they felt they were a hundred years behind when it came to economic knowledge and business knowledge.” Thanks to IBM and other Western consultants, Huawei learned to manage its
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