Russia's opportunity to diversify economy

Chinese language and culture have become even more important today. The two characters for the Chinese word for crisis (wei or "danger", and ji or "opportunity") are a guideline for the Russian government to overcome the current economic crisis - deal with the danger, but also look for opportunities which the crisis has created.

Crises are not new to Russia. The world knows the situations it went through in the early 1990s, 2008, and especially 1998. When Russia faced a major economic crisis in 1998 by defaulting on its bonds which caused the rouble to plunge sharply, I was helping Stockholm School of Economics to start a subsidiary in Russia.

Early during the crisis our organization as well as Vimplecom, one of Russia's largest mobile phone operators, were rapidly losing customers and were depressed. But Vimplecom's COO said that while the crisis had created many problems, it also had presented opportunities to modernize the company's management practices, which would be difficult to do if all was going well. Indeed the crisis ended up helping improve Vimplecom's organizational effectiveness.