From the 2nd to 22nd July 2011, students at NIT conducted a research titled “Growing with Ningbo: the Development of Overseas-funded Enterprises”, aiming at exploring how overseas-funded small and medium-sized enterprises develop in Ningbo, and what major difficulties and problems they encountered during their development.

The project served both as a social practice and a component of a service-learning course. Members of the project interviewed CEOs, managers and high-level officers from about 30 overseas-funded enterprises, documenting their business stories and successful developments in Ningbo.
Some problems found during the research were that many foreign-funded enterprises were unaware of existing preferential policies. The other problem was that they introduced technicians and skilled workers from other places instead of recruiting personnel from local universities. Lonnie, the development manager of ERAN Industries, said, “The shortage of skilled technicians is a big problem. Actually we import the talents from Qingdao and Dalian”. Alexis Corval, a car audio manufacturer also faces a similar situation where they have to import tradesmen from their own country: Australia.