Here’s a segment on CNBC “Squawk on the Street” segment on which UCLA Anderson Professor George Abe was a featured guest on Monday (8/31/09). Abe, Lecturer and Faculty Director – Applied Management Research Program, discusses baby boomers starting entrepreneurial ventures during the current recession.
Back in August 2007, when two friends and I thought up building a social lending web service for Chinese students called Qifang, we had no idea that we would quickly gain international attention. We’ve always been focused on the domestic Chinese market, but in our brief existence we’ve already been recognized by the World Economic Forum and been in international publications like The Economist and BusinessWeek. Certainly our story and more importantly the stories of individual students on our site make for good storytelling, but I think this is indicative of an emerging new definition of being “globally competitive.”
Looking at our personal backgrounds and seeing how educational opportunities have translated into life opportunities and success provided the context for Qifang. Seeing so many young Chinese people aspire for education that they can’t always afford was a key catalyst. But we were also inspired by concepts and innovators from other markets like Muhammad Yunus, Kiva.org and Prosper.com. These inspirations require us to make smart choices about what might and might not apply to our situation, to our market, to our company, but they have been an important way for us to leverage the creativity and innovation from other places to help us build a better service and company. And so I think others look to companies like ours whether they’re also in China or in other places to find things that might work for them.
This also means that our service and our ideas must compete globally for attention, resources and support. International recognition can also strengthen local relationships and opportunities. We’ve seen this directly affect our ability to execute even on China-only projects and strategies. In other words, how we compete with companies from everywhere affects us here in China day-to-day.
Another new facet of global competitiveness is social impact. People and companies are hungry for new models that go beyond social responsibility to include changing the world for the better in their core operations. Because the growth of our service directly translates to more students being able to stay in school, we consider ourselves part of a new breed of social ventures who recognize social value and impact along with our profitability and other traditional business metrics. Hopefully one day soon, this is a distinction that isn’t necessary to make (as all businesses will share these values), but for now this concept has also helped us be globally competitive. For instance, our WEF recognition was not only for technology innovation, but for social impact.
In a way, Qifang and all of us in the team have been forced to think of competitiveness more broadly (from anywhere and everywhere in the world) and more deeply (going beyond the bottom line to think of social impact). While this can be a daunting expansion of what it takes to be a successful business, it’s also an amazing inspiration in that we’re also expanding what it means to be global citizens.
-Calvin Chin
Calvin Chin [CEO]: Qifang is the culmination of Calvin’s career experience. He hopes to give everyone a way to pay for education. Calvin has taught students from middle school to graduate school, worked on Wall Street in the debt capital markets, and served in leadership roles in several technology start-ups in New York, Silicon Valley and China more than 12 years. He has also given talks on entrepreneurship, Web 2.0, venture capital, and other China management issues to Chinese and international audiences. Calvin has an MBA from TRIUM (NYU, LSE, HEC Paris) and a B.A. from Yale University.
In today’s eco-friendly world, both companies and consumers are looking at ways to be friendlier to the environment. Big-box retailers are systematically rolling out programs with suppliers that require reductions in packaging content, as well as recycled content requirements.
These requirements are environmentally beneficial, but what if the packaging would have secondary uses?
Recently, one such innovation really impressed me. Over the past year, I have been in search of innovative packaging for wine bottles. My company focuses on selling California wines and specialty foods in China, and one key differentiator is packaging. In the wine industry, I found that it was much of the same in the way of packaging. I found many variations of paper tubes and wood boxes, but nothing really struck me as unique or innovative.
A customer referred me to ICON Design Group. ICON had developed a patented wine rack that blew my mind. The wine package holds 2 bottles of wine in a very convenient carrier. Once you get the wine carrier home, you can disassemble the carrier to create a wine rack that sits on your table, bar, or counter. Unlike other packages that are discarded, these racks serve a secondary purpose.
ICON has thought of everything. The carriers can be palletized without damaging the individual bottles, and the rack is structurally very sound. ICON actually built a “master wine rack” with a glass table top for a recent trade show that withstood the test and showed the innovation behind the design. The racks are typically laser-engraved or screen printed with a winery’s logo, so that the winery gets continued brand exposure. The best part of the wine rack – IT”S MODULAR! That’s right, your wine rack can expand every time that you get another shipment of wine.
There are many variations of the packaging; one unique design includes a wine starter kit that features a bottle of wine, 2 glasses, and a corkscrew. ICON has secondary use packaging designs for other products ranging from food to fashion.
It’s no wonder that ICON has the attention of some of the leading wineries and consumer product companies. MY BOLD PREDICTION is that we will be seeing much more secondary use packaging for some of today’s most popular products in the near future.
Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times about governments encouraging innovation. I agree with the attendees of the meeting put on by John Kao, a former professor at Harvard Business School and founder of the Large Scale Innovation. They said the ideal role for the government is one of “stewardship,” not command and control.
INNOVATION — the tricky, many-step process by which ideas become products and services — has typically been seen, studied and celebrated at the micro level, as a pursuit for entrepreneurs and clever companies.
But governments are increasingly wading into the innovation game, declaring innovation agendas and appointing senior innovation officials. The impetus comes from two fronts: daunting challenges in fields like energy, the environment and health care that require collaboration between the public and private sectors; and shortcomings of traditional economic development and industrial policies.
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