In September 2015 Haier and Zhang Ruimin won the prestigious Thinkers50 Ideas into Practice award for their mixture of relentless change, teamworking and destruction of middle management layers, combined with long-term dynamic leadership. Established in 1984, Haier is the world's #1 major appliance brand. It has transformed itself from an enterprise that manufactures household appliances to a platform that incubates entrepreneurs. In June 2016 it confirmed its purchase of General Electric's appliance division for $5.4 billion, putting one of America's best-known brands in the hands of one of China's largest companies. Haier began as an importer in Qingdao in the 1930s. In 1984, the charismatic Zhang Ruimin took over the then-state-owned enterprise, turning the money-losing company into one of China's best-known and most profitable businesses. In a story that's been retold in countless promotional materials and business school case studies, Ruimin impressed the need for quality control on his employees by smashing sub-par refrigerators with a hammer as soon as they'd rolled off the assembly line. (That hammer is now enshrined in Haier's Qingdao headquarters.) Now for the first time the story is told from the inside. Haier purpose is a comprehensive guide to the strategies and innovation that made Haier the global phenomenon that it is today.
