From a very young age, John Wong was a man of the world. Born in England to Malaysian parents while his father studied and worked there, Wong moved to Kuala Lumpur at the age of 5 and spent most of his childhood there.
After undergraduate college, he was accepted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston to study chemical engineering. After earning his master's degree, he spent a short time working for the chemical firm Milliken & Co. in South Carolina, and then went on to receive an MBA from Harvard Business School. That's where he crossed paths with recruiters at The Boston Consulting Group in 1982. Its talented staff intrigued Wong, and he found the work "interesting enough to want to stay."
Twenty-two years later, John Wong continues his worldly view as regional chair for the Asia region at The Boston Consulting Group, based in Hong Kong. He oversees 600 consultants working in the advanced economies of Japan, Australia, and New Zealand; the emerging economies of India and China; and the growing markets of the Southeast Asian countries of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore.
Wong first built his reputation in the healthcare sector, where in the 1990s as a BCG partner he worked with the American Red Cross in changing its organizational strategy. Its blood collection system had been called into question after some of its supply was found to carry the HIV virus.
"That was my favorite project," Wong recalls. "We transformed operations that were 50 percent semiprofessional volunteers into a totally professional effort in which the chances of getting infected were eliminated."
In 1995, Wong moved to Hong Kong as BCG's senior vice president for the Greater China region. There, he addressed issues such as China's prescription drug market and the opportunities for foreign pharmaceutical companies in the developing region.
His understanding of the nuances in this burgeoning market led to his appointment in January 2004 as regional chair for the entire Asia region, which requires a wider knowledge of many different markets. But some things remain the same.
"Though the content is very different in each country, the way you think of your team, the organization, the set metrics, and making sure that the people achieve what they're supposed to achieve is the same," Wong explains.
Looking ahead, Wong sees different paths for each of the countries he oversees.
"That's the challenge of my job," he says. "My expectation is that BCG should see strong growth in Japan, China, and India because the market right now is very strong. I think that it's going to be more difficult in Australia–New Zealand because it is a more mature market. I don't think that the economy is going to drive it; we're going to have to be a lot better than anybody else. Right now, we're well positioned. In Southeast Asia, it's a tough call — it's pretty volatile. If we have another Bali (bombing) situation … all of a sudden, you're in a different game." — S.C.
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