Huawei, a Chinese technology company, created its red team in the Strategic Planning Unit over 20 years ago. The team was led by top executives. The primary roles of the Red Team were to review strategies, identify pitfalls, challenge existing business operations, evaluate competitors, explore innovations, promote learning, and prepare for disruptions such as cyberattacks, natural disasters, or trade wars. Essentially, the main purposes of the Red Team at Huawei were both to ensure business continuity and to improve business operations.
The Red Team also became a place for leadership incubation. Huawei’s CEO, Ren Zhengfei, informed his staff that in order to advance in their careers, they should first become part of the Red Team because if they were unable to outperform Huawei, their prospects within the company would be limited.
In the late 2000s, Huawei planned to sell its cell phone unit to Bain Capital, but the Red Team
blocked the sale, recognizing the importance of cellular phone connectivity. If it weren’t for the Red Team, Huawei wouldn’t have become a major player in the global smartphone market.

Bibliography:
· Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (2024, March 19). Huawei Cloud Security White Paper. Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. https://res-static.hc-cdn.cn/cloudbu-site/intl/en-us/TrustCenter/WhitePaper/Best%20Practices/SecurityWhitepaper_intl_en.pdf
· Saarainen, V. (2021). Red Teaming: Regulatory and non-regulatory frameworks used in adversarial simulations. [Bachelor’sthesis, South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences] https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/500627/Saarainen_Ville.pdf;jsessionid=11D85AC256CBC2638B320B481189F5DB?sequence=2
· Sun, S. I, Zhang, Y., & Zhu, Z. (2021). Turning disruption into growth
opportunity: The Red Team Strategy. Department of Management Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works, 50. https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1049&context=management-facpubs