Jeffrey Li

Country President, Novartis China

Jeffrey joined Novartis in 2004 from the Pritzker family, where he worked in a number of positions of advisory and general management responsibilities for 11 years. In the last five years at the Pritzker family, he was President of Getz Commercial, an international sales and marketing company. Jeffrey has BS from Beijing University of Aeronautics and MS from Illinois Institute of Technology.

Jeffrey spoke of the very significant shift in the Chinese economy from imitation to innovation.

He outlined three key drivers of change:

• Market demand (a key shift from the supply-based economy of the older regimes)
• Government policy (and it can change the market overnight)
• Quality is a given (you now must have more through innovation)

The current climate of overcapacity means that innovation as differentiation is increasingly important.

The podcast of Jeffrey’s presentation is here.