Inside Huaweis innovation journey: seeing it, living it, leading it

Mr.Xu holds a doctorate degree from Nanjing University of Science & Technology.

He joined Huawei in 1993 and has served as President of the Wireless Network Product Line, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, Chief Products & Solutions Officer, Chairman of the Investment Review Board, Rotating CEO of Huawei, and Chairman of the Strategy & Development Committee (SDC).Currently, Mr.

Xu serves as Deputy Chairman of the Board and Rotating Chairman of Huawei.Back in May 1993, as I was wrapping up my PhD, I took a trip to Shenzhen to look for work.While at a friend’s house, I was flipping through the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily and was immediately drawn to a full-page recruitment ad from Huawei.

It specifically highlighted that they were looking for people with a master’s degree or doctorate.It was odd.

As the frontier of China’s reform and opening up, Shenzhen was a hub for processing and trade, and very few companies were hiring people with higher education.Out of curiosity, the next day I went for an interview and ended up getting offered a job.As the day of my graduation neared, I had already received several offers but the one from Huawei stood out.

Their HR manager would call me every week, saying everything was ready and they were expecting me.The respect they showed me, the urgency of their calls, and the promise of a salary five times more than my PhD supervisor’s made the decision easy.

I chose Huawei.When I came onboard in August, I realized that, of the company’s 600 employees, more than 200 were R&D engineers, as well as a ton of postgraduates.Five PhDs joined that same year.

It was unimaginable anywhere in China, especially in Shenzhen, because the entire country was producing only about 2,000 PhD graduates a year.Huawei’s huge bets on talent in its early years were a clear sign of its commitment to innovation and forward-looking investment.Back then, the R&D team was working on digital stored program control switche...