In nine days—on April 6—I’m going to China to study challenges and opportunities for Danish companies that are doing business in, well, China. In total, about 30 students have been selected to go on this trip, where we—in teams—will work on solving a business challenge facing a large Danish company’s Chinese operations. I haven’t met my team yet, but I am sure it will be fun, challenging, and fascinating to work with them.

I have been selected as the official photographer for the trip (our photos will be distributed to media/press)—and given my keen interest in photography, I am, of course, very happy about that.

What I really wanted to post to my blog is the preliminary programme which came out a couple of days ago, so here goes:

• April 6: Copenhagen – Frankfurt – Beijing.
• April 7: Arrival in the morning, introduction to everything in the afternoon.
• April 8: Day-long visit to Novozymes’s headquarters in China.
• April 9: Sightseeing: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace.
• April 10: Day-long visit to Novozymes’s production facilities.
• April 11: Danfoss’s production facilities in the morning and PricewaterhouseCoopers in the afternoon.
• April 12: The Danish Embassy in the morning and F.L. Smidth in the afternoon.
• April 13: Renmin University of China in the morning and the Beijing Biotechnology and New Medical Developing Center in the afternoon.
• April 14: Bestseller in the morning and IFU (Danish International Investment Funds) in the afternoon.
• April 15-16: Free time—or—time to work on the case.
• April 17: Case discussions and presentations at Novozymes’s headquarters.
• April 18: Sightseeing: The Great Wall.
• April 19: Beijing – Frankfurt – Copenhagen.

I will post in more detail on each event as we move along in the programme, but I am not sure how often I will get internet access and how much time I will get for blog-posting.

You are following the China Exposé.

I have been elected to participate on a team representing Copenhagen Business School at the inaugural Helsinki School of Economics Corporate Credit International Case Competition. The theme is extremely interesting and is a very hot one in risk management, so I am very happy to have been elected to the team.

It takes place on April 27 and 28, which will be my first visit to Helsinki. The team is Thomas Joachim Hansen, Christoffer Husted Rasmussen, and Stefan Jung, a strong combo in my eyes, and I am happy to be on a team with such outstanding professionals and fine personalities. It is going to be great.

Photo: The Helsinki Cathedral, built 1830-1852. Often used as a symbol for the city.

During my Christmas vacation (which is not really a vacation–four exams in January), I’ve had some time to browse through older photographs that I’ve taken. Below is a shot from Vevey overseeing Lake Geneva.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

Liftoff Friday 6.50am from Copenhagen Airport, headed for the HHL Challenge 2005 at the Handelshochschule Leipzig, Graduate School of Management. We (Marthe Gundersen, Stefan Jung, Thomas Joachim Hansen, and I) were selected from a pool of applicants to be one of eight participating teams in the competition, which had a focus on DHL’s move of hub to Leipzig, a possible development of a Leipzig logistics cluster, and a third Harvard logistics case.

The first part of the case was to be handed in at noon, so we were working in the plane on the way to Berlin Tempelhof and in the train from Berlin to Leipzig. (BTW: Danish train standards are way behind the German.) Although we were stressed, we managed to meet the noon deadline. The remainder of Friday was spent doing the second part of the challenge (the Harvard case), which was to be handed in at midnight.

Saturday was presentation day. Below is a photograph from just before we are going to present (from left, Marthe Gundersen, me, Stefan Jung, and Thomas Joachim Hansen). Unfortunately we did not make it to the top two, who were the only ones placed.

However, we got to do a lot of sightseeing in Leipzig in the afternoon, including a field trip visit to the DHL hub. Saturday night included sightseeing of the Leipzig night life. Sunday was spent in Berlin hunting football matches, Internet cafes, and Starbucks – and a little sightseeing.

Yesterday evening, I came back from Karlsruhe, where we participated in the Business Masters 2005 (my first post on this). Unfortunately, we did not make it to the finals, but competition was very tough. The–very interesting–case was about Lufthansa, one of the main sponsors of the event.

We made a lot of good points in our analysis, in my opinion, but there is some improvements to made when it comes to implementation. In this regard, it was inspiring and helpful to learn from the finalists–and for that matter, from the organizers, and Booz Allen Hamilton consultants, who constantly were there to ping pong with you.

The event was organized extremely professionally, and we had a great time meeting the other teams and solving the case–Work hard, play hard. Below is a couple of “work hard” pictures taken with my cell.

Today, my team and I got the very pleasant news that we qualified for the Business Masters 2005 case competition. Jubii! (Yahoo! in Danish :-)) We were one of 12 teams selected from more than 180 applicants to participate in Karlsruhe, based on our motivational essay, cvs, and our pre-case solution.

The team consists of Stefan Jung (his blog), Christoffer Husted Rasmussen, Maja Kuhnell Frederiksen, and myself. (Photographs below of Stefan, Christoffer, and Maja).

In October, I was in Lausanne (photos from my trip). One of my friends, who lives down there, has just gone crazy and uploaded an inferno of beautiful photographs from the Swiss Autumn.

He also made a photo of my private tennis court – I love the view I have there. Check it out :-).

Of the more than 250 photos I took, I have assembled a small slide show of about 30.

• Pictures from my trip to Lausanne October 13-18 2005

This morning I landed in Copenhagen Airport – back from Lausanne. I’ll give you the story later, along with some more photos, but for now you will have to do with this photograph from the town of Vevey, which used to be home for Charlie Chaplin.

Tomorrow, I am going to Lausanne (very close to Geneva) for vacation. It’s comes in at the exact right time. To have any notion of what I am going (in) to, check out this post by my friend, Morten (who I am going to visit down there). Wow!

I will try to see whether I can update you as I am there, but at the latest I will upload some photos when I get back next week.