Paris Space Week, Paris-Orly, France: First time exhibition for Aerospace MBA – 28 & 29 of March, 2018

The Paris Space Week was hold in the Orly airport during 28th, 29th, March, 2018. This conference was sponsored by AIRBUS and divided into two parts: report discussion and exhibition. Aerospace giants AIRBUS, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, OHB and other companies presented each procurement and industry chain management strategy to the suppliers through the conference report. The exhibition provided a communication platform for some components, sub-systems, and some ground equipment suppliers in the industry, facilitating the establishment of industrial chain relationships between companies. In order to encourage start-up companies, the conference committee held a special product promotion challenge. Start-up companies can fully show their ideas and products.

 

As the representatives of the Aerospace MBA program, Dr. Christophe Bénaroya, Delegates Ms. Mingxia Zhou and Mr. Songlin Hu participated in the conference communication and exhibition and introduced the Aerospace MBA program to the participants.

This summary (written by Mingxia Zhou and Songlin Hu) mainly summarizes our participation in the exhibition and conference.

 

Booth activities

More than a dozen of business representatives from various space and space-related companies have booked our meetings in TBS booth and consulted the detail of Aerospace MBA   : 1. Some downstream companies hope that the Aerospace MBA can provide outstanding aerospace industry management talents. 2. Other companies hope that the Aerospace MBA program will provide short-term educational activities for the companies. 3. The discussion with start-ups.

As a main space role in Germany, OHB has been engaged in the development of various types of spacecraft. The OHB company mainly addressed to supplier about supply chain management strategies and the tasks currently under development. Ms.  Duvernoy, representative of OHB’s market, mentions that OHB is currently in an ascending stage and hopes that the Aerospace MBA program will provide OHB with excellent engineering talents!

Hubworkair is an aviation industry recruitment website that dedicated to provides a faster, more accurate job-matching platform for students who wish to work in the aviation industry and global aviation companies. The Aerospace MBA program is a well-known educational project in the industry. Through the hubworkair, it can deliver excellent management talents for the aviation industry, meanwhile help MBA students find their jobs more quickly and accurately. Hubworkair’s Co-Founder Mr. Huang came to the TBS booth to communicate with Christophe on the follow-up cooperation.

Aerospace Valley not only can provide creative internship opportunities for Aerospace MBA students, but also provides management positions for MBA students. Many start-up companies are very interested in the Chinese market, but because it is difficult to collect information on some Chinese markets and how to carry out market strategy. Aerospace Valley hopes that the Chinese students of the Aerospace MBA can help them collect and analyze China’s space market.

HEAD Aerospace is a company in the Hongkong aerospace industry. Its main business is to provide customized solutions in the field of space technology. It invests in the construction of the “Skywalker” small satellite constellation with multiple payloads and multiple services, providing analysis based on big data. Machine learning value-added services and satellite applications. Currently they have offices in Paris and Netherlands.  Head Aerospace hopes that the Aerospace MBA program will provide her with outstanding management talents and help them expand into the European market.

A Lithuanian embassy staffer came to the booth. She has always been committed to promoting cooperation between companies in the two countries. She discovered that Lithuanian companies and French companies have encountered various obstacles during their cooperation. This obstacle may be caused by cultural conflicts between the two sides. It also prompted her to seek training to solve the conflict between cultures. She hopes that the Aerospace MBA program will not only provide professional theoretical knowledge for these companies, but also provide more specific guidance in connection with the industry. Mr. Christophe Benaroya stated that a specialized track on “Space Business & Applications”  will take place next year in March 2019 in Toulouse in the frame of the program. This could be an appropriate answer to these needs.

The conference gathered a lot of aerospace start-up companies. Many of these enterpreneurs came to TBS booth to communicate. Through communication, we know that their ideas are unique, innovative, and they are on the way of finding an effective solution for Human being’s future. In commercial space sector of Europe full of innovation atmosphere, these companies have met the great chances to develop themselves. The strategy of such companies often matches the educational concept of the Aerospace MBA program to some extent: innovation, big picture, logic, expression. However, the current startup companies are also faced with various difficulties, funding shortages, technical bottlenecks, and inability to continue cash flow activities.

The main committee (including Mr. François Auque, Airbus Defence & Space) also organized the Startup Challenge to reward those companies that are innovative and can best show their products.

2. Main conference

In addition to the exhibition, some large-scale enterprises also showed some of their supply chain management strategies and current project plans to various suppliers. The figure below is the main meeting arrangement during the Paris Space week.

 

Zhou Mingxia and Hu Songlin, as the representatives of the Aerospace MBA program, are Chinese students appointed by the China Academy Space Technology. They are familiar with the space industry. In the conference, they also conducted preliminary discussions with these companies and asked whether they are interested in cooperating with Chinese space companies. However, at present, in the entire European space industry, except for some small-scale commercial companies who are flexible to choose the partners, these large-scale enterprises have the definitely regional and political features and cannot fully cooperate with other regions outside the Europe due to the characteristics of the mission.

3. Conclusion

During the two-day conference, TBS MBA booth had more than 20 face-to-face  talk of more than 14 hours with representatives from traditional space companies, embassies, recruit hunters and start-ups. This exhibition has effectively promoted TBS Aerospace MBA in the space industry. At the same time, we noticed that most of the companies are hunting excellent talents with aerospace background from the Aerospace MBA program. Some companies are hoping to use the Aerospace MBA training program to enhance their capabilities. In addition, we cannot ignore the connection between the startup company and the Aerospace MBA program. The students of the Aerospace MBA who have unique ideas, wide vision, strong analytical skills, and good presentation skills can brighten their future career both in traditional and start-ups enterprises. It was a good opportunity to meet up Alumni of the program, Cornelius Zünd (Founder of Satellite Square) confirming the in-house MBA statement : “Whatever the aerospace event worldwide, there is always a TBS Aerospace MBA family member attending!”

 

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