Mr. Jason Yu

emlyon Global DBA 2019 intake

Human Resources Director

Roquette China

At different stages of our lives, we have different demands for knowledge. For Yu Wentao, who has more than 20 years of experience in international companies, his "intake" of knowledge has surpassed the simple needs of survival and money, but has turned to a higher level of self-renewal and iteration, driven by the passion of inherent growth.

From 3M to Unilever, DuPont and Roquette, although Wentao has served different companies, his career journey has focused on the domain of "pan-human resources". He is not only a senior practitioner, manager and leader in the field of human resources, but also a tireless explorar with academic ideals and hands-on spirit.

The Mystery of the "Outstanding yet Mediocre Ones"

For him, an excellent HR professional needs to have solid expertise and comprehensive capabilities. More importantly, he has to be good at thinking for self-improvement, learning and perfection. The key to such learning is to establish a complete system and theoretical framework of internal guidelines, rather than the accumulation of fragmented personal experience and knowledge.

Wentao has his commitment to the systemic thinking about the integration of knowledge, theories and practices. In his view, "learning" is more than a dynamic process of knowledge building. It is also a perfect fusion of management phenomena in practice and theoretical frameworks. Learners shall pursue the integration of knowledge and action and be able to internalize them into their own methodologies absorbing practices and theories.

This "systematic concept" of Wentao was reflected in his early career. With the continuous evolution in the field of human resources and the sustained improvement of thinking, his focus has shifted from the management level at the early stage to the level of individual value in the workplace.

"There is a paradox among employees of foreign-invested companies. In general, they have the hard skills and capabilities of workplace elites, including remarkable education background, high IQ and an international vision. However, they often feel powerless about their personal value at work, who could hardly realize their life value and suffer slackness, confusion and even mediocre. This leads to many "outstanding yet mediocre ones". Is the workplace the “tomb” of life value, for which seek from resignation, entrepreneurship or shifting away from work. Is it due to the atmosphere of the workplace, or is there a way for the "outstanding yet mediocre ones" to rejuvenate and get rid of such sense of "worthlessness"? Obviously, there are some problems in today’s career system.

He hopes that through targeted research, he will find the theoretical evidences and solutions for the concern of the "outstanding yet mediocre ones" in the workplace in the current era of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the sharing economy, and conduct research and empirical verification in a corporate environment. How can he find sufficient academic evidences for his theory in this environment? Wentao set his sights on DBA programs.

From MBA to DBA

Wentao received his MBA in Human Resources degree as early as in 2003. In addition, he has a bachelor's degree in English from Shanghai Foreign Studies University, which endows him the language advantage to connect to world-class international corporations and also paves the way for his DBA study.

The reason why Wentao choses to return to campus after 16 years is on the one hand because of his insistence on his academic ideals. On the other hand, he hopes that through the study, he can upgrade theories to instruments for greater depth and width.

"If the workplace is simply divided into ascending, parallel and descending channel, there is a high probability that a challenge will be encountered in the ascending channel, that is, there will be more and more problems that cannot be solved by experience alone. If there is no way to achieve a breakthrough, the ascending channel will be blocked. "

In Wentao's opinion, either an individual professional or a company has to seek advancement reaching a certain level. It may be a better knowledge framework, a more international perspective and a "breakthrough" of the blind zones of thinking for individuals. For businesses, it is to find the right interface between business wisdom and rule wisdom in a constantly changing market environment.

In terms of business wisdom and rule wisdom, Wentao has a unique insight based on "seeing" and thinking. He believes that Chinese companies are not lacking in business wisdom, but one of the biggest differences between the business wisdom in China and that in the West is that the West world is highly sophisticated in system methodology, while China lacks systematic ideas to support business wisdom.

"Our business wisdom is more of an empirical theory, which may succeed, but has great limitations in spreading and replication. So this empirical theory needs to be scientifically verified through academic methods in order to transform into a methodology, and eventually the instruments. And I believe that a DBA program can well improve this topic, bridging the gap between us and the system concept and guiding companies for more benign and efficient growth in an increasingly competitive environment."

Wentao’s MBA study was motivated by the passion "to use knowledge as a weapon to open up new territories". Over the years, from Corporate Trainer, HRBP Leader at DuPont China and Human Resources Director at Roguette China, now he came to emlyon DBA Program with calmness and peace of mind.

"I have passed the stage of pursuing the 'added value' of knowledge and now I am more interested in exploring the truths and preparing for the second half of my career life. I look forward to being able to achieve knowledge-level multiplication and transformation through emlyon DBA instead of simple accumulation. Although I work in an international company, the humanities in my bones are 100% Chinese. I hope that one day I can sort out the knowledge I have learned, including many years of practical experience at work, and provide some help to enterprises, communities and people at work."

Study: The Starting Point of the Next Stage of Career Journey

Roquette, which Wentao is working for, is a French company and he has always agreed with the educational philosophy in France. Therefore, when exploring potential DBA programs, h considered emlyon business school, one of Top 10 business schools in Europe, as one of the finalists. Moreover, emlyon DBA advocates to "lead students to create real business impact and value", which is fully aligned with Wentao's internal intent. Therefore, he finally made up his mind to count on emlyon for his learning and growth over the next four years.

"Entering the next stage of career journey, I believe that many corporate executives share the same feelings as me. With respect to salary and position, they place greater value in their contributions to the organizations and the society, which are based on scientific and systematic learning. Although I am still a freshman, I have been deeply impressed by the curriculum of emlyon DBA Program, including some educational methodologies. I am confident that I will achieve and surpass my learning goals here. "

As the Study Secretary of his class, Wentao is highly organized and disciplined in learning. He not only leads the whole class to regularly review English literatures every week in the WeChat group, but also reminds everyone to read literatures every weekend. He also makes detaied plans of time management to ensure that learning and work can run in parallel without interference.

In Wentao’s view, emlyon Global DBA is well planned, intelligent and specialized. Its international and cutting-edge teaching methods and rigorous curriculum system easily inspire the participants for brainstorming and personal academic research. Meanwhile, the faculuty also attaches great importance to the feedback of the participants and make alignments accordingly.

"There are plenty of two-way communications between us and the faculty and we also discuss and exchange some problems in the classroom. Although the backgrounds of the students are diverse, there is still a shared ground in life experience and common topics among us. Being able to keep in-depth contact with like-minded classmates over the next four years is an extremely pleasant and worthwhile thing for me."

The post-peak era of corporate executives also represents unlimited possibilities. With a strong sense of social responsibility, Wentao resolutely chose to explore, discover and research. It is also because of the belief in contributing to the society that Wentao stepped out of his comfort zone and chased knowledge, never forgetting his original intent and blossoming in sunshine.