Sir Tom Hunter Backs Beijing’s CKGSB for Young Entrepreneurs: MBA News

As China prepares to usher in the year of the horse, the entrepreneur, philanthropist, and Scotland’s first homegrown billionaire, Sir Tom Hunter, has spoken about the opportunities China can offer to young entrepreneurs.

“Something I tell all the entrepreneurs that come to see me is, 'let's go fish where the fish are',” he told The Herald, discussing a scholarship initiative he has created in partnership with the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, CKGSB, in Beijing.

Sir Tom Hunter thinks young entrepreneurs stand to gain a great deal from an exposure to Chinese business, admitting that he is still in the process of learning about the country himself.

This is the underlying reason behind Hunter’s partnership with CKGSB, a school to which he was drawn through his admiration for the Hong Kong billionaire, Li Ka Shing, who helped establish CKGSB in 2002.

The Sir Tom Hunter Scholarship 2014 offers two young entrepreneurs a fully-funded place on the 14-month CKGSB MBA program in Beijing. With a focus on bridging the gap between Chinese and European business communities, eligibility is open to all those with the potential to strengthen these ties, although Sir Tom Hunter is particularly keen to receive applications from his native Scotland before the deadline of February 17.

Hunter impressed by CKGSB faculty

Sir Tom Hunter, who has joined the European advisory board at CKGSB, has been greatly impressed by what he has seen from the young entrepreneurs and the school’s faculty thus far.

“Something that really struck me was that the Chinese entrepreneurs held the faculty in very high esteem, which is perhaps not the case in Britain. They saw them as equals if not even sitting above the entrepreneur. CKGSB was a place where people wanted to do business, not just talk about it,” he said.

Hunter, founder of the Sports Division retail chain, also has close ties to his own alma mater, the University of Strathclyde. Here, he serves as visiting professor as well as lending his name to the business school’s Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship. He also launched the Hunter Foundation, an organization dedicated to affecting positive social change through the support of education and entrepreneurship, together with his wife in 1998.

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