Breaking cognitive biases, Oriental Yuhong wins the Global MIKE Award

(Source: Paint Procurement Network)

Recently, the award ceremony for the 2025 Global Most Innovative Knowledge-Based Organizations (MIKE Awards) concluded in Bangkok, Thailand. China Building Materials Systems service provider Eastern Yuhong stood out among a large number of excellent companies worldwide and successfully won the highest honor in the field of international knowledge management. As the first architecture and building materials enterprise on the Chinese mainland to receive this top-tier honor, Eastern Yuhong’s breakthrough not only broke the international knowledge management industry’s preconceived bias against China’s traditional building materials enterprises, but also proved that China’s manufacturing sector has taken its place among the global leaders in knowledge assetization and more refined management.

It is understood that the MIKE Awards—known as the “Oscar” of the knowledge management community—were originally the MAKE Awards, established in 1998 (the Most Respected Knowledge-Based Enterprise). After a comprehensive upgrade in 2017, the awards evaluate the sustainability of a company’s knowledge management and organizational innovation with eight stringent standards. Past winners include top domestic and international companies such as Google, Amazon, BYD, and Yili, and their gold content directly demonstrates companies’ global core competitiveness in knowledge management and organizational innovation.

At present, China’s domestic architecture and building materials industry is at a crucial crossroads of “K-shaped recovery.” The extensive growth model can no longer be sustained. Knowledge management, as a strategic lever for enterprises to reduce costs and increase efficiency, strengthen market competitiveness, and withstand volatility risks, has seen its value raised to an unprecedented height. For Eastern Yuhong, whose business covers the globe, with 95 production, R&D, and logistics bases, more than 100 branch offices, and more than 10 subsidiary brands, knowledge management is the core strategy that runs throughout the company’s transformation and development. Its 5S management system creates a closed-loop across the entire process—from knowledge accumulation, sharing, application, innovation, and iteration—turning tacit knowledge into explicit assets that are visible, shareable, replicable for promotion, and optimizable through iteration, thereby solving efficiency bottlenecks at the root in large-scale development.

From the time its products entered the Southeast Asian market in 2008, to the establishment of its North American company in the United States in 2015, and now to the fact that its products are sold to more than 150 countries and regions worldwide, Eastern Yuhong has broken through geographic restrictions and information barriers through knowledge assetization and platform-based construction. This enables production, R&D, and service teams distributed around the world to share technical experience, construction standards, and market feedback efficiently. This capability for knowledge coordination not only supports its steady expansion in overseas markets, but also gives the company the ability to quickly respond and iterate when facing differences in technical standards and market needs across regions—this is also the key to its success in standing out in global competition.

Looking deeper, Eastern Yuhong’s knowledge management practices have completed a three-level leap—from “people depending on knowledge,” to “knowledge empowering people,” and then to “organizations mastering knowledge.” It has built an self-evolving organizational ecosystem with business, talent, and R&D working together. In terms of talent cultivation, the company adheres to the value philosophy of “putting fighters first, governing Yuhong with elites.” Relying on its knowledge management system, it has established a full-chain talent development mechanism covering “select, nurture, use, and retain,” tightly linking knowledge sharing with employee growth, and laying a solid talent foundation for high-quality development. In terms of business enablement, knowledge management is deeply integrated into the entire process of R&D, service, and production, helping the company reduce costs and increase efficiency. Against the backdrop of industry profits being low, it has built differentiated advantages.

In the knowledge economy era, a company’s core competitiveness is shifting from material resources to knowledge resources. Eastern Yuhong’s practice fully demonstrates that systematic knowledge management can effectively transform individual wisdom into organizational capital, enabling a shift from a cost center to a value engine. In the long run, the continuously accumulated value of knowledge assets will gradually be released, becoming an important cornerstone for supporting stable company market value.

Source: Eastern Yuhong

Editor-in-charge: Wang Hongli

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