Meet Casper Andersen

For most participating in Bonnier's GROW exchange program, the experience means moving from one established company to another for three months. But Casper Andersen, 30, who normally works with customer retention as international project manager at Bonnier Publications in Copenhagen, moving to Beijing for three months means working in a start-up company, Bonnier China, where his title is vice president.

"In China, the company is much more entrepreneurial," says Andersen. "Being part of building a Bonnier company in a country that offers great opportunities and few limitations is an amazing experience. The process of defining a local strategy in a market with huge potential but where you can take little for granted requires a lot of micro-management and a much faster pace than in our big companies in Scandinavia."

The cultural differences are of course pretty big - one of the toughest is the problem of communicating with people - but the differences are perhaps not as big as one would expect, Anderson says, in part because China is adjusting to the western presence in the country. "With the rapid development, parts of Beijing have also become very westernized," he says. "When going out in Beijing you can more or less choose whether you want to stay in bustling China or catch your breath in the familiar western world in expat areas. Although it might sound like a cliché, the mix of cultures does actually create a nice east-meets-west atmosphere in many places. In some sense this also applies for working here, it's much easier to get into the culture of working and doing business with Chinese people than one would initially think."

What will be toughest of all, Andersen says, is leaving after only three months. "The big challenge is to get the most of the experience of actually living and working here and not consider it a three-month encounter," he says. "You become very committed to creating change and progress on the job, so leaving the company and city behind can easily prove to be the biggest challenge."