Hansen Thiono joined the International Business Management program at Petra Christian University in 2002 and now leads finance for Asia Pacific and Latin America at a global sportswear company. At the program's Ice Breaking, he gave students three principles for navigating change.

Hansen Thiono, an alumnus of the International Business Management program at Petra Christian University in Surabaya, gave students three principles for navigating change on 11 September 2026. He told them to keep learning, to change course when a plan stops working, and to do the right thing even when nobody is watching.

Hansen spoke for an hour to three intakes, batches 2024, 2025 and 2026, at Ice Breaking, the joint event where the newest intake meets the two above it. Ice Breaking took place in the T Building at Petra Christian University. Hansen joined the IBM program in 2002 and graduated four years later. He is now finance director for Asia Pacific and Latin America at a global sportswear company, based in Portland in the United States. He was in Surabaya that week, so the IBM program invited him to give the Alumni Sharing talk.

What can an alumnus from 2002 teach students starting today?

Hansen started his studies 24 years before the newest intake, and he used that gap to frame the whole talk. Study is a journey and so is a career, he said, and at every step the useful question is what that step has taught you. His own career is the kind the IBM program tracks in its career outcomes for graduates.

He was also honest about something students rarely hear. You can work hard, give everything, and still get a result that looks nothing like what you expected. What helps then, in his view, is the willingness to change the plan. A perfect first plan matters less.

What does a growth mindset mean in practice?

Hansen described a growth mindset in three steps: learn, unlearn and relearn.

Learning, he said, is more than attending class. Learning means:

• asking at the end of each day what you learned and how you will use it tomorrow
• connecting subjects that are taught separately
• using the fact that this generation can reach more information than any before it

Unlearning is harder, and he said so. To unlearn is to let go of something you have already mastered. Unlearning also means being willing to say that you do not have the answer today, but you will find it.

Relearning means taking what is still useful and applying it in a new situation. The IBM program’s selective tracks are designed to practise exactly that.

Where you are today does not determine where you can be tomorrow.

When should you change course?

Hansen’s second principle was the pivot: changing your approach to get a better result. He gave a three-part test for it: what to stop, what to start, and what to continue.

Stopping is the hardest, he said. Habits are comfortable and run on their own, and replacing one takes real effort. Continuing is the anchor, because your values should stay the same. He linked those values to reputation: people may know your name, but your actions decide what that name means.

People see this as a sign of failure. It’s not. When you have to reprioritise, you’re dealing with the situation smarter.

What stays fixed when navigating change?

Hansen traced his third principle, integrity, directly back to the International Business Management program. Integrity keeps a person moving in a consistent direction when circumstances are difficult. Integrity also helps a person focus on what they can control. Much of what people try to change is outside their control, he said, but their own response, thinking and actions are always within it.

Hansen uses the same test when he hires. He looks for these values in candidates because, he said, an organisation succeeds as a team or not at all.

The future does not belong only to those who begin with the perfect plan. It belongs to those who are willing to keep growing when the world changes, pivot when the current approach is no longer working, and do the right thing, even when nobody is watching.

Hansen Thiono’s message to first-year students of the International Business Management program at Petra Christian University was simple. Nobody needs to decide their whole future today, and nobody needs a perfect plan, he said. Everybody needs a plan, and the curiosity to keep adjusting it.

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Three alumni of the International Business Management program at Petra Christian University explain how they came to do business with China, and what the country asks of an Indonesian company.

Three alumni of the International Business Management program at Petra Christian University spoke in Surabaya on 19 September 2026 about doing business with China. None of the three planned to. One was pushed by his family’s clients, one followed the low cost of manufacturing, and one went looking for the right factory.

The one-hour talk, “Doing Business With China”, was part of the Petranesian Business & Education Fair. The stage stood in the open atrium of Galaxy Mall 3, so anyone in the mall crowd could stop and listen. Dr. Lianto Darmawan, who teaches multinational finance and business strategy in the IBM program, moderated.

How does an Indonesian business come to work with China?

Anthony Kusumoputro, batch 2008, took over a move his family made in 2003. After two years of daily labour demonstrations in Indonesia, he said, the family’s clients gave them a clear message: move production to Vietnam or China. Vietnam’s infrastructure was not ready, so the family opened a factory in China. Anthony’s factory makes winter clothing and skiwear and is still running. He now owns it, alongside a property business, a kerupuk factory and a share in an airline business in Indonesia.

Stephanus Lukmanto, batch 2003, chose China on purpose, in 2015. By then China had become the world’s factory. Costs were low, shipping reached every market, and suppliers and prices were easy to find online. He said a business could start there with very little money, and that is how he started. Today Stephanus is a serial entrepreneur based in Malang who has both bought from and sold to China.

You could start with very little capital.

Billy Handoyo, batch 2012, went to China to find a factory. His brand, Miniletics, began by distributing for a local badminton brand. Then he saw a gap in the market: activewear for women. He tried factories in Indonesia and abroad until he found one that could make clothing that looks good and lasts through real training. Before Miniletics, he said, he had started seven or eight businesses. All of them closed.

Either you succeed, or it’s a learning.

How each alumnus came to work with China:

• Anthony Kusumoputro (batch 2008): his family’s clients asked the company to leave Indonesia, and the factory in China opened in 2003.
• Stephanus Lukmanto (batch 2003): he followed low production costs and started trading in 2015 with little capital.
• Billy Handoyo (batch 2012): he searched for a factory for his activewear brand, Miniletics.

What makes China different to do business in?

Anthony, who has run a factory in China since 2003, described three differences.

The first is the attitude to work. The New Year greeting Gong Xi Fa Cai means roughly “may you become richer”. In Anthony’s experience, Chinese workers take that seriously and see work as the way out of poverty. He said this attitude took centuries to build, and no bonus scheme can copy it.

Work is a vacation from poverty.

The second is geography. Chinese industry is grouped by city, so the real question is which city makes the product you need. For marble, that city is Shuitou in Fujian province, where the quarries, cutters, exporters and shipping companies all work side by side. Knowing which city makes what, he said, is most of the job.

The third is a rule. Chinese public officials are not allowed to run companies, he said, which keeps the people who make policy apart from the people who profit from it.

What did the International Business Management program give them?

The panel was asked what their years in the IBM program had given them. All three put values first: integrity, then professionalism. International business brings new problems, culture shock and regular temptations to bend the rules, they said. A person who sets firm standards early soon stops seeing the dishonest option as a choice at all.

One speaker traced his idea of business back to a class with Dr. Ricky, the IBM program’s founding head. The Mandarin phrase for doing business, 做生意 (zuò shēngyì), carries the sense of giving birth to meaning. On that view, the aim of business is to create meaning for a company and a family, not only to make money.

The breadth of the curriculum mattered more than any single subject. The three alumni studied export and import, business law, accounting, quantitative analysis and family business sustainability, but never at specialist level. That breadth, they said, gives them a wide view whenever they face an unfamiliar problem. The same breadth shapes the IBM program’s career outcomes for graduates and its selective tracks.

The three also valued the parts nobody plans: group work that ran until midnight, lecturers they could argue with, and English. Each built a global outlook at a time when the internet was slow and smartphones did not exist.

What advice did the alumni give current students?

The alumni started from one fact: the world now changes faster than any curriculum. Artificial intelligence changes every week, false information is everywhere, and what a student has just learned can quickly feel out of date.

Adapt, they said, but build a strong foundation first, so that not every new wave moves you. Hold on to your values. Stay humble, because humility keeps you learning and helps you understand yourself. Make friends in every circle, because everyone has something to teach. Then do your best, and leave the rest to God.

Dr. Tessa Vanina Soetanto, head of the International Business Management program, closed the session by presenting each speaker with a token of appreciation.

None of the three alumni of the International Business Management program at Petra Christian University set out to trade with China. A client’s warning, low costs and the search for a factory took them there. All three credited the degree with a broad grounding and firm values, which they still rely on when a new problem arrives.

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Welcome Party 2021 with the theme “Unimpeachable Navigation” aimed to become a reliable navigation that provided freshmen with the necessary guidance on the International Business Management program, and to depict the togetherness of the freshmen with the symbol of one spaceship to achieve a common goal. During the activity, freshmen listened to some sharing sessions from the upper batch as well as played some ice-breaking games through mini games and mega games in the breakout rooms. Moreover, the committees also gave some time for them to get to know each other before playing together.

This year’s Welcome Party 2021 was being held through the Zoom meeting. There were 2 sharing sessions as well as four different games in the event which allowed the freshmen to know more about IBM and the community.

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As interpreted from the theme of the event, “The Conjoint Ostium”, Ice Breaking 2021 aims to open the gate for togetherness, emphasizing the students’ new step together entering the IBM journey. Due to the Covid-19 epidemic, all activities are now conducted online, resulting in little interaction between the older and younger batches. This is a particularly unfortunate situation because the seniors play a crucial role for guiding their juniors in adjusting to this new environment. Therefore, we want to unite the older and newer batches through this ice breaking event so that they can form a strong relationship in International Business Management Program.

It is the second time that the Ice Breaking event is held online through Zoom, but each batch managed to get to know each other deeper through the sharing session while having fun playing the mini games together

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The theme of the virtual excursion is “Legerity”, which means “alert facile quickness of mind or body”. This theme is aligned with the current condition of COVID-19 where many businesses have to adapt quickly with the latest situation. We invited two company representatives and conducted the excursion via Zoom. The first speaker was Mrs. Sienny Sentosa as the Branch Manager of PT. Toeng Makmur (distributor of Zojirushi in Indonesia) and the second one was Mrs. Imelda Lim as the President Director of Auntie Anne’s Pretzel Indonesia. The representatives talked about how the COVID-19 has affected their business and explained what sort of action they have taken to minimize it. Moreover, they talked about the changes of marketing strategy they applied to their company before and after COVID-19 pandemic.

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