June 2026, Munich Business School.

A silver-haired old man stood in front of dozens of Chinese entrepreneurs. He had worked at Siemens for 38 years, serving as president for 13 of them. This company was founded in 1847, and he had participated in almost a quarter of its history.

The first set of numbers he uttered silenced the entire audience.

In 2025, the bilateral trade volume between China and Germany was approximately 260 billion euros, with Germany experiencing a trade deficit of 90 billion euros with China. However, what is truly astonishing is another contrast: German companies invested approximately 160 billion euros in China, while Chinese investment in Germany was only around 16 billion euros. A tenfold difference.

"This is not a disparity in numbers," Feng Bile said, "but a disparity in perception."

01. Keep enough options for yourself amidst uncertainty

Feng Bile has a habit. Whenever Siemens enters a new market, he asks himself three questions: What are the game rules in this market? Do we have enough cards to play? If the rules change, do we have other cards to play?

The US market was the toughest battle he had ever fought. In the 1980s and 1990s, General Electric almost monopolized the US medical equipment market. Siemens' only way to enter was to offer better products and more localized services than GE. "We provided high-quality technical solutions, established a localized production and service system, and hired a large number of American employees," said Feng Bile.

But the most crucial thing is actually patience. It's not about shooting and moving on to the next place, but staying in a market long enough until customers start to treat you as one of their own.

China is a different story. Mr von Pierer reveals a detail: Siemens is the only company in the world to have signed a letter of intent with the Chinese government at the central level. It has set up 50 joint ventures in China, with partners often recommended by the government. He highlights Premier Zhu Rongji's advice to focus on promoting local Chinese executives. In the early days, expatriate managers were given language and cultural training before they took up their posts, with the core principle being six words: “speak less, listen more”.

This ability to find a fit in different markets with different strategies and under different governments is what he calls "strategic resilience". Mr Feng gives the example of Siemens promoting gas-fired power generation technology to governments that value traditional energy, while emphasising wind power and hydrogen energy to governments that focus on new energy. "It's not about betting on one direction," he says, "but about having cards to play in any direction."

This flexibility is also reflected in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and exits. In 2007, Siemens acquired UGS to gain product lifecycle management software capabilities; in recent years, it has also acquired companies specializing in AI-assisted design, life science data analysis, and other fields. However, once a certain business no longer aligns with the core strategic logic, it will be divested decisively even if it incurs short-term losses - OSRAM Lighting is a typical case.

Hearing this, a trainee raised his hand and asked a question that all Chinese entrepreneurs wanted to know: What are the biggest pitfalls for Chinese enterprises investing in Germany?

Feng Bile didn't answer directly, but instead talked about three things.

Firstly, after the acquisition, it is necessary to quickly gain control of the financial system and station a chief financial officer at the headquarters to ensure transparent governance. However, in practical operations, one must face significant cultural and institutional differences. Secondly, it is recommended to retain the original management team for at least a period of time, and one can draw on American practices by setting up a "retention compensation package" to ensure stability during the transition period. Thirdly, it is essential to understand the unique dual-committee system in Germany, where the supervisory board oversees the board of directors, and in large enterprises, the supervisory board is equally composed of shareholders and employees. "This is an institutional arrangement that Chinese investors must respect and understand."

He paused for a moment and added, "If the target company has significant operations in the United States, Chinese investment may trigger US scrutiny, potentially leading to its loss of the US market. Before investing, one must ask themselves: Are you willing to give up the US market for this?"

The whole room fell silent.

02. Make "change" itself a normal state

If Feng Bile's answer was about "how to survive externally", then the next day at the Siemens Innovation Center, Dr. Su and Mr. Lang Hanman's answer was about "how to sustain internally".

Siemens positions itself as an “integrated technology company”. Behind this positioning are solid investments – €6.6bn in R&D in one financial year, some 53,000 R&D staff and more than 2,600 patents filed each year. But more noteworthy than these numbers is the way the company manages itself.

In 2020, Siemens embarked on a bold organizational reform. It broke away from traditional matrix management, appointing eight business CEOs globally, each overseeing 5 to 10 countries. What was the purpose? To enhance decision-making efficiency and market responsiveness.

But what truly surprised the trainees was another figure - Siemens proactively reorganizes its organizational structure every four to five years. It doesn't make changes only when problems arise; instead, it makes "change" itself a norm. This mechanism is used to rotate senior management positions and avoid rigid thinking.

Lang Hanman added a detail: Siemens does not have a traditional HR intermediary role, but advocates for HRBP (Human Resources Business Partner) to be deeply embedded in business units, abolishing the internal headhunting function, and recruitment is directly driven by the business department. "We emphasize a horizontal leadership culture," said Lang Hanman, "encouraging cross-level and cross-functional collaboration."

There is a simple logic behind this organizational design: the more uncertain the external environment is, the more agility is needed internally. And the premise of agility is trust - trust in employees to make their own judgments, and trust in cross-departmental collaboration to produce better results than top-down directives。

The technical aspect also embodies this "self-iteration" gene. Dr. Su introduced the Xcelerator digital business platform, an open platform for industrial users, which has been participated by more than 880 partners, with over 40% of the applications provided by third-party developers. He described it as a B2B version of Apple App Store.

The application of digital twin technology in the Spanish high-speed rail project is particularly compelling. By installing sensors to collect operational data and predict equipment failures in advance, the operator's punctuality rate has increased from 70% to 80% to 99%. This project was initially provided free of charge, but became an independent business unit after three years, generating annual revenue of 1 billion euros.

03. Two answers, same question

Two sharing sessions, two perspectives. Feng Bile talked about the elasticity of strategy - maintaining flexibility in different markets, under different governments, and in different cycles. Dr. Su and Lang Hanman talked about organizational agility - through institutionalized self-disruption, keeping the company in a state of "readiness for change" at all times.

But these two things are actually one thing.

The "strategic flexibility" mentioned by Feng Bile is just empty talk if there is no sufficiently agile organization to implement it. The "organizational agility" mentioned by Dr. Su and Lang Hanman is just a mess if there is no clear strategic direction to guide it. The secret of Siemens's 179-year cycle-crossing is simply this: the more uncertain the external environment is, the more agile the internal organization needs to be. It's not about one-time transformation, but about turning "transformation" itself into a normal mechanism.

In fiscal year 2025, Siemens achieved a revenue of 78.9 billion euros and a net profit of 10.4 billion euros, hitting a record high. But if you think this is a "stable" company, you are mistaken. In the same year, Siemens announced the layoff of over 6,000 employees worldwide, mainly in the field of industrial automation. Making record profits while laying off a large number of employees - this is not a contradiction, but a choice: to make the hardest adjustments at the best of times.

A student wrote a sentence in his notes, which perhaps best summarizes these past two days: "We often overestimate the difficulty of a single transformation, yet underestimate the value of continuous self-iteration."

The "cognitive gap" mentioned by Feng Bile may be the first threshold for Chinese enterprises to go global. Siemens' answer may not be replicated, but it raises a question: Are you willing to actively "dismantle" your own organization every few years?

This question deserves a serious answer from every entrepreneur.