MAD 2010: 22-24 January 2010

I feel old. I just applied to attend MAD 2010 (MAD stands for Make-A-Difference), and at the end of the application form, it stated that applicants under 30 years old would be given priority for the 800 spaces for "selected young people". So I guess I am not a young person anymore. Having said that, I'd still encourage anyone interested in attending to apply. The line-up of speakers is amazing (Sir Ken Robinson, John Maeda and Alex Counts, just to name a few), and the three-day conference to be held at Kwai Tsing Theatre only costs HK$600.

Cool Fall Trips that will Change Someone's Life: Social Entrepreneurship in Cambodia and more...

I'm always grateful for the many opportunities I have to meet fascinating people doing incredibly interesting things. It's especially wonderful when I get to share in the passion of someone just starting something up. Even better when their passions align with mine. So when Darius, the founder of SOW Asia, a venture philanthropy foundation, introduced me to Paul who was starting Sowers Exchange to create philanthropic travel opportunities, I was keen to help promote their trips.

Paul is an Australian who has been living in Hong Kong since he was 16. He speaks fluent Cantonese and has spent much of his time here working with marginalized and under-resourced people through faith-based organizations. But he realized that there were many well-meaning people outside of religious institutions with an unfulfilled desire to contribute. Most lacked the opportunities for lack of organizational capabilities. That was the seed for Sowers Exchange.

For Sowers Exchange's inaugural trip, Paul has put-together a short 4-day/3-night trip (23-26 October 2009) to connect with the people working at two of Cambodia's ground-breaking social enterprises: Friends International and Tiny Toones. This trip is a perfect primer for anyone who's ever been interested in understanding how social enterprises are different from charities, seeing first-hand how their innovative approaches to solving social problems often have an empowering effect on local communities.

The trip is open to 15 people. To join the trip: Sowers_Exchange_cambodia_Oct09.pdf

In November, there are two other trips worthy of mention. The first actually precipitated a reconnection with Anika, one of my Primary 1 classmates, whom I had not kept in touch with since I left DGJS after Primary 3! I had received an email from Habitat for Humanity calling for volunteers to join the Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project from 14-20 November 2009 to build homes in earthquake-affected Qionglai, Sichuan. If you ever wanted to meet former President Jimmy Carter, here's your chance! It promises to be a historic build in scale as well as celebrity presence.

They are recruiting volunteers as well as donations to support student volunteers:
JRCWP_Habitat_for_Humanity_eFlyer.pdf


Last, but not least, is a very rare opportunity to drive (safely and comfortably, I might add!) through some of the most scenic areas of Yunnan through Laos and on to Thailand in brand-new Toyota Prados supplied by Avis. The drive with On the Road in China (a company started by Peter, a fellow b-school alum and former racecar driver) starts in Shangri-La and ends in Chiang Mai, with overnight stays in some of the most luxurious hotels around:

Chat with Claire Williams, social entrepreneur and marathoner

I've never met Claire Williams, but a few weeks ago, as I was clearing one of my email inboxes, I discovered an unread email from Claire dating back to early February. She was responding to a mass email I had sent out to mediakitty (a site for travel PR and journalists) contacts to introduce Little Cream Book last August. Her email was a simple one-liner to say that she would be interested in writing about Little Cream Book and included her mailing address where a sample to be sent. Normally, I would simply write down the address and post the book. But then, something in her signature caught my eye: "Partnering with Children to Outpace Poverty", which led me to read the rest of her signture:
- 34, 488 Miles Run
- 3, 969 Donated Pairs of Running Shoes
- 31 Marathoners
- First Blog on the Internet Written by Orphans and Vulnerable Children
I was intrigued -- running and poverty alleviation...interesting. I looked back up the signature to click on the link for the organization -- Hope Runs. The first thing I read was: "7 marathons, 7 continents, 7 weeks". Wow, was the sole awe-inspired word that went through my head. Of course, I clicked through to learn more about this crazy endeavour and got side-tracked from the larger picture -- that the team was running in support of AIDS orphans. Hope Runs works with orphanages to provide extra-curricular programs, including running programs as well as computer, art, health, fitness and business-training courses. All with the aim of helping "orphaned and vulnerable children...escape cycles of poverty and conflict to become productive and empowered adults". In addition to Hope Runs, Claire also founded I Become last year that builds on the work that Hope Runs has done.

I was curious to find out more about Hope Runs, so I replied to Claire to apologize for my delayed response, telling her that a sample of Little Cream Book would be in the post and that I would love to chat with her online about Hope Runs. The address she provided was a States-side address. When she replied, I found out that she was in Oxford doing the Said MBA. "Are you doing the social entrepreneurship program," I asked. It turns out, Claire is a Skoll Scholar. But then, as we were negotiating time zones to schedule our chat, she revealed that she was actually in Buenos Aires for the Easter break.

Finally, on Monday night, Claire and I chatted:

10:18 PM
me: hi there!
you still in argentina?
Claire: yeah im still down here
me: in BA?
Claire: yeah in BA - my boyfriend is argentine so we've been living down here
(except for my MBA this year)
me: i'm really interested in the 777!
i'm not much of a runner tho
but i did the nike+ human race last year in cordoba!
Claire: in cordoba!
me: went round and round polo fields
in strong headwinds
Claire: ugh... (but beautiful)
so are you interested in 777 from the perspective of a runner?
me: no, not really as runner
b/c i would never do it…hahaha
Claire: ha
me: but i'm curious about everything about it…how it got started, etc.
i think it's great!
Claire: well basically it's a team of regular and celeb runners. the race begins jan 31 and goes for 7 weeks (6 weeks, 7 weekends)
i started these two non-profit organizations and also work as an author.
me: what do you write?
Claire: 1 book out next year and the second is in talks with publishers this week (i pray it sells!)
one book is about the excess choices of generation y
one book is a travel memoir that includes the first year of starting hope runs in kenya
me: that's awesome!
when is the memoir out?
what's it called?
Claire: its a trip around the world that ends with starting a non-profit...
currently titled 'here there is hope'
me: great title
so what were you doing before hoperuns?
before the year around the world?
Claire: travel writing...i started the blogging thing then... (trippingonwords.com)
before the year around the world was living in mexico and then argentina...brief work in india...basically just more travel...
and writing
ha;)
we're really trying to put the HK marathon in our schedule for 777 - but the directors say they haven't finalized the date yet...
I'm hoping they do soon as we need to get our flights and hotels all planned very very soon
there were some hiccups with the schedule...hopefully the HK marathon will be feb 22
me: what's the schedule look like right now?
Claire: starting jan 31 it's marakech, netherlands, new zealand, hopefully Hong Kong, usa, antarctica, falklands islands
me: wow, so cool!
do you think the hope runs model could work in other places?
Claire: yes i think so
it's a very exportable model
we're in two orphanages in kenya right now
we were in two others in tanzania but aren't anymore
me: how come?
how do you choose the orphanages?
would you do it in s. america?
Claire: it's important to find the right partners. since we don't build our own orphanages but instead enter into existing orphanages there are lots of issues with due diligence, etc.
the biggest problem is that most of the orphanages in much of the world don't have extraordinarily open financial practices - they just aren't run as much of a business as we need them to be for international donors
and since we are entering already existent orphanages there is a careful power and cultural dynamic in the finance stuff
to run our programs efficiently we essentially need to enter orphanages that are already functional - ie ones that are not entirely day to day in terms of needs for basic necessities
we don't have the resources to fully support ALL the needs, and so if we're in a position of supporting basic structural things it doesn't work well
(ie - the orphanage needs to be able to be functionally providing food and shelter for the children if we realistically want to run computer classes)
it's an interesting problem
me: how did you yourself get into running
b/c obviously you must have a passion for runnning
in order to have come up with hoperuns
it's a brilliant idea, btw
Claire: i didn't have the greatest health and was trying to add more exercise into my life
it started very slowly
and then i found such confidence from realizing that i could run
i run very slowly - and always have - but it's empowering to be able to run farther than others...you know?
me: does india have a marathon?
Claire: they do
in february they have the delhi marathon.
and another one as well.
the hardest part is that we need marathons with really involved directors
one of the runners comes with all these security concerns
and everything ive read about delhi marathon is that its really disorganized and they haven't been able to provide a final date (and since we need to have everything very planned, it's hard)
me: well, i do hope you come to hk
would be great to meet u
and perhaps u'll motivate me to train for a half
Claire: definitely!
i think long runs are really more boring than painful ;)
me: yeah...but good music helps
Claire: yes!

Chat with Jim Spear, co-founder of China Countryside Hotels

The Grameen Foundation field trip has been a boon in more ways than one. On the trip, I met JS and JH. JS, from Beijing, told me about her country home by the Great Wall that also gets let to visitors. I was immediately interested to find out more about the project in Mutianyu Village. As promised, when she got back to Beijing, I got an email from last week with links to China Countryside Hotels, founded by husband-and-wife team Jim Spear and Tang Liang. As for JH, we instantly hit it off when we found out our common interests in developing a social enterprise combining good design, sustainable development and luxury travel. That's how JH and I ended up on an hour-long skype conference chat at 7am this morning with Jim to learn more about his sustainable tourism projects in and around Mutianyu village in addition to setting up luxury guesthouses such The Pavilion:
The Schoolhouse, a restaurant and glass-blowing workshop in a renovated schoolhouse
The Roadhouse, a restaurant
Xiaolumian, a farmhouse restaurant serving noodles


LCL: i'm always looking out for cool places in china like mutianyu, wishing there were more
JS (Jim Spear): Actually, we're just starting out on these village enterprises though I have had a weekend home in Mutianyu (mty) for 15 years

LCL: before we start, let's do brief intros...JH?
JH: i've always been deeply interested in the field of development, and i guess part of that interest stems from having grown up all over the world, thus having this incessant traveller's itch

and the more places i experience (either as a resident or as a traveller) the more i become interested in issues of sustainable development -- preservation of the uniqueness of 'local' whilst benefitting from the advantages of the global, i guess

it was quite by chance that i got to join the grameen foundation sichuan trip, which was a very inspiring trip in many respects
LCL: JH is echoing all my sentiments
JH: and dialogues, experiences, personal reflections etc. that came out of that trip in a way articulated a lot of the ideas that were already floating around in my head, and then i read what you established with the mutianyu project, which seems to be the materialization of everything in a very real way!

two of my passions, travelling and design, that desire to do my bit for the collective, and that dilemma of trying to compromise between the luxury world and the awareness of the real world etc.

so i've always been interested in ways of bridging and bringing together sort of non-profit and for-profit businesses together

LCL: JH is speaking for me as well...and she's doing a great job at it. So Jim, your turn...
JS: we're just taking little steps -- far from perfect. but i think we're on the right track re: sustainability in the village context: local people, local companies, local food, homemade, existing footprints, sensitivity to environment. I am delighted to have the chance to chat with both of you.

i have been living here 23 years -- from the usa -- where i was a phd student at berkeley
LCL: phd in?
JS: political economy re: china/japan but i didn't finish thesis, i took a consulting job in Beijing because i wanted to be where the action was

[consulting on] early jvs in a variety of industries and high tech sales, i started my own trding company that eventually morphed into a wine importer (ASC) and later I worked for many years in the medical field for a NASDAQ company

when i was getting close to 50 and my kids were in college i had a mid-life crisis and chucked everything to move out to our weekend house in mutianyu

JH: haha
LCL: hahaha...jungha and i joke that we are in third-life crisis...hahaha
JH: i was about to say that, haha
LCL: and no regrets?
JS: yeah, haha...life is too short to spend on regrets. of course i have no regrets. i feel i am one of the luckiest people in the world. i have now designed and built 19 houses, made new friends, helped our village, time of my life

when i moved out to the village and re-did my own house a friend asked me to build him a house and the housing part started there. about the same time the mayor sat me down and said: look spear, in case you hadn't noticed, we're having a hard time, you're a rich american and you should give something back, after all we let you live in our village and you should make an investment here to help us

LCL: first Q...how did you pull off buying your first house to begin with? i assume it's not that straight-forward with deeds and stuff
JS: absolutely right. actually we lease peasant residence plots with existing houses on them. not purchase as in freehold.
JH & LCL (at the same time): how long is the lease?
JS: this is also complicated. ranging from 10 to 50 years
LCL: only 10 years??!! and then lease WITH property converts back?
JS: sure, if you don't put a lot into the house it can make sense. we use short term leases for staff housing, for example. the real houses i have done range from 100-900 sqm

market prices have increased dramatically as we have created the demand. so shorter lease costs less money. clients amortize lease improvement over life of lease. not necessarily a good financial investment. BUT that depends. and one client told me recently their mty house was their best invesment (in light of the crisis)

JH: and the range (10-50 yrs) depends on what qualification? and as a foreigner, is it still possible without a local connection somehow to still qualify for a long lease?
JS: period of lease not dependent on citizenship. actual law may limit real estate leases to 20 years. but we have a lot of lawyers who have helped us write what seem to be enforceable leases for longer periods.

LCL: being near the great wall, which is protected...are the laws stricter for such developments as well as building/renovation permits?
JS: it's very complicated and highly political. regulation -- many, many and sometimes competing authorties. this stifles creativity and leads to other issues. i am not against development, just want to help channel it in sustaianble ways that preserve real communities. LCL: were u aware of all the red tape before you started?
JS: red tape? haha. i have been doing business here for decades. my little stuff in the village every bit as complictaed as anything i ever did

LCL: what do you think of Commune?
JS: Commune is very interesting but not for me. I find the houses plopped there - starchitect syndrome. they failed as an enterprise and very poor service/business model. and then brought in kempinski. last time i stayed there was last month. great spa. poor room. they more or less copied the houses to get to 380 rooms. a walled valley. no connection to community. it makes me cry. but there is room in the market for them as well as us.

lots of our customers have been to virtually every five-star hotel and resort. they literally ache for something real

LCL: yes, absolutely...i prefer your model. so you started off helping other people find and build their dream country home by the Great Wall, and then added the F&B and craft components to the village, and now i see you are starting inns?
JS: we have 6 rental houses www.chinacountrysidehotels.com and 3 or 4 more about to come on line. inns -- we have 2 under construction

LCL: what is the cost of buying, say 50-year lease
JS: location key. in mty and nearby yingbeigou a peasant house as is for 30 years now runs about rmb 450-900k

if you go a few km away can get an existing ouse for rmb 150-200k and even less as you go more distant in the hills

LCL: wow! you've added lots of value!
JS: yes -- the peasants now sit on a previously worthless asset. they take the money to start businesses, educate their kids, provide better old age living, etc

JH: are you looking to expand the model onto other parts of china? or continue expanding this region?
JS: i am very intrerested in first expanding in other nearby villages. but i do think that in areas 1-3 hours from major cities in china and perhaps eleswhere this is replicable

remote is harder -- have you seen naked retreats 3 hours from shangai?
LCL: no! wow, i'm soo glad i'm having this conversation...keep finding out more!
JS: naked retreats took missionary houses from pre-liberation and made them into nice weekend places. issue is (to me) maybe not focused on helping community today.

LCL: just one last question...your businesses are set up as businesses, correct?
JS: yes -- for profit businesses. to me that is part of being sustainable. we have been approached by 1 person who is starting a social investment fund to loan funds or take equity in for-profit businesses that have a commitment to sustainable social development

LCL: thank you so much for your time...i'm going to chew on our conversation a little bit
JH: thanks so much for letting me in on your conversation! and you have a very inspiring life! we drool at what you have achieved!
JS: i enjoyed meeting you via this chat, have a great day!
LCL: have a great weekend in the country! ahhh...that clean, crisp air
JS: i will!

Serendipity Strikes Again!

The mood this week, unless you're a hermit, has been pretty dour. The week started with the bankruptcy of Lehman, the sale of Merrill Lynch to BoA, the rescue of AIG and stock markets around the world plummeting to unseen depths. Conversations with friends ranging from fellow entrepreneurs to bankers to those in various industries has been filled with uncertainty and anxiety.

Today, as I woke up, the gloomy weather reflected the mood of days past. During my morning yoga class with Wendy, as we heard thunder and the rainstorm pattering on the windows, Wendy observed, "When it rains, change comes". Stretching in downward dog, I agreed with her observation, but I was thinking along the lines of change that might come a few months down the road (i.e. Barack Obama in the White House, stiffer regulation governing short-selling, etc.). Little did I expect, that change would come when the rain stopped.

After yoga, I headed to Segafredo for coffee, free wifi and a dry, quiet, comfortable place to finish writing my blog entries on my recent trip before my meeting with Marie So (no relation to me). Earlier in the month, an e-flyer for a talk by Marie had landed in my inbox: "Yaks for Development: Social Entrepreneurship in China on the Rise" was the title of the talk. The talk was scheduled for 20 October at KEE Club and I thought it was a perfect background talk in the context of my Grameen Foundation field trip to Sichuan scheduled for that following weekend, which also coincided with a recce trip for a client outside Chengdu. In preparation for the Grameen Foundation trip, I've been reading Muhamud Yunus' Creating a World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism (I had actually said half-jokingly and half-hopefully to some banker friends that perhaps all the out-of-work bankers might find a calling to create more socially-sypathetic businesses, go into microfinance or come up with innovative ways to finance and incubate fledgling social enterprises). So when the e-flyer came, I thought it would be great to meet a practicing social entrepreneur with a business that I found interesting (luxury consumer lifestyle products, see Shokay for their beautifully-designed accessories for home, babies and fashion made from sustainable yak down). Shokay is one of two start-ups created by Ventures in Development, a social enterprise that uses "innovative approaches to solve social issues while applying traditional business skills to achieve sustainable financial and social returns". Marie and Carol Chyau are co-founders of Ventures in Development, a business idea they cooked up while they were classmates at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government three years ago.

I dropped an gmail chat to DA at Time Out Hong Kong and suggested I write a profile on Marie So for their Hongkonger column. "Why don't you just let me send one of our writers. We can't afford to pay you, you know. Unless, of course, you have the writing bug," replied DA. "It's OK," I typed back, "Just come to the talk with me. I do have the writing bug and I want to meet her," I typed back.

So I dashed off an email to Marie and set up the meeting for today. I expected to hear all about yak down and yak cheese. But I was in for so much more. My personal holy grail has been to come up with a project that uses luxury travel as a platform for creating social change and sustainable economic development -- one that combines my interest in luxury travel & lifestyle, consumer technology and microfinance, more specifically, their ability to unleash a new class of entrepreneurs, ways of thinking and doing things. But thus far, the light bulb idea has eluded me.

Within minutes of Marie sitting down, I found out that she was piloting three sustainable tourism projects in northern Yunnan, in the region bordering Tibet, working with the Lisu tribe to help preserve their culture and way of life. Suffice it to say, we had a very productive hour and a half conversation. Now, my October trip to China has further evolved to accommodate the new ideas from our chat over two skinny lattes.

There's a saying in Chinese: "守得雲開見月明," which in English basically means that if you patiently wait for the clouds to break, you will see the brightness of the moon. As I left Segafredo, the sun was shining.

For details and to register for Marie's 20 October talk, download and fill in this form:
OC_Newsletter_-_ViD.doc

The Perfect Cuppa

A&D invited me to venture over to Kowloon side for dinner last night at Aspasia (remember Chez Roland? it's the same Chef Roland Schuller here on the first floor of Luxe Manor Hotel). Had a delightful meal that was definitely worth the cross-harbour trek. It was great meeting two other Ds (an amazing coincidence that all three guys at one table had the same first name), where the chatter jumped from Obama & McCain to the merits of Tasmanian black truffle to funny examples of CSIS's ultra-secretiveness and other interesting defense tidbits to which a Jane's subscriber might be privy. While I found the spook talk fascinating, what really inspired me was the story of a business co-founded by Canadian D's brother -- Transcend Coffee in Edmonton.

Oddly enough, the conversation started off about the evils of caffeine since A has given up coffee for more than a year and I had gone without a drop of coffee for nearly a month from when I started my detox. While I've wisened up to the fact that caffeine and sugar are the main culprit for morning sluggishness, afternoon bouts of sleepiness and general energy dips throughout the day, I love the taste and the experience of drinking a well made espresso or latté or cappucino to truly give it up for good. Off the detox, I now limit my coffee intake to less than one a day and I never start the morning with coffee (now, a cup of hot water and lemon juice is the first thing I ingest).

Listening to Canadian D describe his brother's passion for coffee -- finding the best beans, profiling and creating the perfect customised blend for individual clients -- made me lament the fact that Starbucks has lost all that. Starbucks was always a choice of convenience and familiarity rather than the choice made out of love. As D tells it, Transcend has created their own unique brand of perfectionist coffee culture, to the point of telling customers whenever they feel they are incapable of delivering the best, that they have developed a bit of a Canada-wide cult following despite having only one physical store in Edmonton. D's brother, A, is actually the company's "Chief of Culture". They're constantly concocting new coffee blends and drink creations. Reading their blog, I wondered how their business can grow and still keep its passion for and culture of perfection (i.e. when you grow from roasting 50,000 lbs of beans per year to 500,000 lbs per year, or 1 neighborhood store to national or even multi-national chain, culture often gives way to efficency).

About to hop on a plane to sunny Vancouver, and I'm already pining for a latté from cito espresso.

How Do We Give Our Heart Wings?

This post is dedicated to BDL since he was the one who posed the question that is the title of today's post. I was skyping him good morning and asking if he'd recovered from his recent relapse of stomach flu. He replied with a :-| followed by, "bored, tired, uninspired" and the question: How do we give our heart wings? It was a weighty question for a Tuesday morning before I'd even finished my morning Starbucks. I wasn't quite sure what the answer was, but thought it might make an interesting post and made a mental note to come up with a list.

A couple hours later, the answer was right before me:



I don't know what it is about cupcakes, but seeing them always puts a smile on my face; they're just so much fun! These cupcakes were all done up in cheery, Easter Spring pastels. And they were delicious too. I've had many a cupcakes where the cake was just a bit too crumbly and dry or the frosting tooth-decayingly sweet, but Babycakes' cupcakes were just right. The light, vanilla buttercream frosting was the right amount of sweetness and the chocolate cake was moist. Since I had the mini version, I didn't even feel guilty about indulging.

Babycakes only opened for business 10 or so weeks ago. Their current shop and bakery is in Ap Lei Chau, but hopefully they will soon open near my office in Delay No Mall. Founder Lachlan Campbell quit his investment banking job last April, learned the art of cupcake baking from a 66-year-old woman in Oregon and officially became Chief Cupcake Officer late last year. He said he had always wanted to start a business that was related to kids since he has two kids of his own. And kids love cupcakes. Women too, he added, to which I can attest.

So to answer BDL's question, there are lots of things that give my heart wings. On this particular day, it happened to be a cute, little cupcake served up with another story of a man living his dream.

To all the budding entrepreneurs out there...

Was listening to Wyclef Jean's new album, Carnival, Vol. II: Memoirs of an Immigrant, on the treadmill this morning and got a great start with this seize-the-day song:
Heaven's in New York


Great business ideas are actually a dime a dozen out there. There never really is a monopoly on a great idea. Reading through 33 business plans, I actually came across a recurring idea (renting out luxury brand goods) with slightly different iterations. It's always easy to spot the opportunity, but too often people talk themselves out of the venture before even trying.

So to all the budding entrepreneurs out there, take a line from Wyclef: "Live life to the fullest, be what I wanna be. ... If doves can fly, so can I."

Young Entrepreneurs

Lounging on a lush, red sofa in the spacious quarters of a Wynn Macau suite two weekends ago, I read through a pile of business plan submissions for HSBC's Young Entrepreneurs Award (This year's competition, open to university students throughout the region, attracted 300+ submissions from Hong Kong's university students alone). It was an inspiring location to be reading ideas for new businesses, because I'm an admirer of casino developer Steve Wynn's entrepreneurial vision. Regardless of what one might think about the morality of the gaming industry, Wynn has played a large role in transforming the image of Las Vegas, from vice city to playground to the mass affluent. Wynn's properties, from Mirage to Bellagio and now Wynn, has pretty much been about evolving American gaming (casinos across the Atlantic have a much more glam history) into a luxury leisure pursuit. It was a reminder that being a successful entrepreneur is not always about coming up with something totally new; it's more about having a vision and the tenacity to see it through.

It's always lots of fun to hear about other people's business ideas, especially when it's being told with boundless enthusiasm. Of the 33 submissions I read through, they ran the spectrum of silly to eyebrow-raising. The judging process is all rather subjective. And I would be the first to tell anyone whose submission did not get through the 10-member advisory committee's screening, which would be more than 250 teams, that a rejection is no true indication of whether the business idea will eventually succeed or fail. There are many great business ideas that will never see the light of day. As there are many not-so-great-on-paper business ideas that eventually succeed over time because of the entrepreneur's persistance.

When the committee met to decide which 50 ideas would make it to the next round of judging, we had interesting discussions about whether an idea would work or not and whether an idea was innovative or not. Interesting in the sense that it revealed more about each committee member's own individual background and biases. For the teams, it's a bit luck-of-the-draw. We were randomly assigned our lot of submissions. Being in the travel industry, I found my interest piquing whenever I came across a travel-related idea, which also meant I might have been a bit harsher on the travel ideas than ideas in other sectors where I have less first-hand knowledge and experience.

Coincidentally, as I was writing this post, the judges' feedback for the 2007 Oxford University 21st Century Challenge Competition, to which two friends and I had submitted a plan, landed in my email inbox. We didn't make it to the final rounds (3 finalists were selected for our particular track and in the end Saïd Business School alumnus David Maren's Email Emblems team was the winner of the Tomorrow's Wealth track with their idea to support charitable causes through emails people send.), but I found the judges comments and suggestions very encouraging and helpful.

I wish each of the 300+ teams that made a submission to HSBC's Young Entrepreneurs Award could have the opportunity to have a 15-minute discussion with the advisory committee, because it's really through bouncing ideas off as many people as possible and getting as many differing viewpoints as possible that helps to polish and refine ideas to the point where they start to sparkle with life. Just by putting idea to paper, though, these teams have already taken the first step towards entrepreneurship. The rest is about faith, passion and perseverance.

TED Talks Diversion

Finally started putting together the business plan to submit to 21st Century Challenge. The clock is ticking; deadline for submissions is 12 October. I've always wanted to create a business that combines luxury travel, microfinance and technology, but for one reasons or another, there wasn't any urgency until I came across the Challenge in a Skoll Foundation newsletter. Nothing like a deadline for motivation! After a great luncheon brainstorm session with IE, the whole idea seemed to just reveal itself. So now I'm getting down to the nitty gritty details, combing the internet for relevant statistics.

Was googling for companies that offer mobile phone banking/payment systems in developing countries and came across Iqbal Quadir's GrameenPhone and his engaging TED talk, which then got me side-tracked to Hans Rosling's entertaining TED talk. His Gapminder World 2006 tool (which google now owns) is super cool, great for finding all sorts of interesting statistics such as comparing the number of internet users across nations (Sweden, where Hans Rosling is from, has 756 users per 1,000 people, higher than the US's 630 users) or phone users (Hong Kong has the second highest at 1,733 fixed and mobile subscriptions per 1,000 users, just slightly behind Sweden's 1,743).

TED Talks -- Hans Rosling: Watch the End of Poverty


TED Talks -- Iqbal Quadir: The Power of the Mobile Phone to End Poverty

Obviously, looming deadlines haven't prevented me from killing a whole afternoon watching TED Talks. The dangers of youtube...

Walking Tour Guide On Your Mobile Phone

It's always fun meeting other entrepreneurs; I just love listening to the how-it-all-started stories. Today I had lunch with Stefan White, one of the founders of Mobile Adventures that produces Walk The Talk mobile phone walking tour guides for Hong Kong and Macau. Last week, I had been searching for audio guide service providers for an upcoming project. I had loved the audio/video guide for Tate Modern's Gilbert & George exhibition, but that involved passing out handhelds. Then I remembered that the Matthew Barney exhibition at SF MoMA last summer had visitors dialing into the exhibition's audio guide with mobile phones. So I googled "museum audio guide provider" expecting to find a lot of overseas companies. But to my surprise, the first company to come up on the search was Hong Kong-based Mobile Adventures. And when I clicked in, I just knew I had heard of the company before. So I dashed off an email to the founders and after a few back-and-forth emails, SW, to my great relief, solved the mystery of how I had first heard of them last year. The connection was NL (we also found out we had a couple more tenuous links). I remember having thought it was a cool concept then, but hadn't really followed up by checking out the company's websites. But this time around, with a few clicks, I realized that Mobile Adventures would be able to deliver the solution that we were looking for. Now that the content-delivery system has been found, I just need to get cracking on the more time-consuming content creation side of things.

On another note, I ventured to Kowloon Bay to check out the newly-opened DIY shop B&Q (kind of the UK-equivalent of Home Depot) at the very new MegaBox shopping mall (the mall only just opened on 1 June, so a lot of shops still aren't ready yet). Not that I'm much of a DIY person (Ran into MP & CH though, who had spent nearly 4 hours there. And MP ended up buying a trunk-load full of things like power drills so that he could rehinge his doors!), but I found it fun walking around Megabox's three floors of home-improvement shops (aside from B&Q, there was also Australia's Spotlight among other smaller stores). MegaBox was quite clever to bring home improvement into a mainstream mall. Up to now, Hong Kong's fixer-uppers had to deal with the hassle and heat of walking shop-to-shop along Morrison Hill Road for lighting fixtures or Lockhart Road for everything else. Now, it's all to be found under one air-conditioned roof, even though it might be considered a bit out-of-the-way for some. But that's the definition of destination shopping. And there's the added attraction of MOS Burger!

Interesting Poolside Read

Was going through the latest Skoll Foundation e-newsletter and came across this item from SustainAbility: "Raising Our Game: Can We Sustain Globalization? is a new report that looks out to 2027 to examine future scenarios for the world’s sustainable development, and to propose a new set of rules for business to rise to the unprecedented challenges ahead. The interplay of sustainable development and globalisation is defining the future and the stakes for the planet are rising. Raising Our Game: Can We Sustain Globalization? looks at the trade-offs involved in future choices over environmental and social value, and at the role still to be played by innovation, entrepreneurship and the emerging economies of the South. There will be winners and losers, but no more business as usual."

Urbanespaces dig up designer diggs in Singapore

It's always fascinating and inspiring to come across other people who merge their passions with their work. Hajar's email introduction of urbanespaces, a "boutique real estate firm in Singapore specializing in architecturally distinguised, unique properties", landed in my inbox this weekend. I clicked on the link and was intrigued by this very trendy-feeling site (Mercan Dede's music paired with a series of very arty photos). Then I started going through the site and came across a lot of beautiful properties in Singapore for sale and for lease. I like this one in East Coat, whose asking price is S$2 milliion, but if you go through the listings, they're all pretty nice. And then it made me wonder why a company such as this took so long to appear (Hajar says the company's only slightly over a year old). How did it all start? Hajar wrote: "Generic real estate depresses me and I realized this when I first saw a truly well-designed house that was up for rent." And so urbanespaces was born. But what really got me interested in the company was not just their focus on beautiful properties (a lot of companies do that elsewhere in the world), but also their desire to do good and be an active participant in the creative community (for example, organizing an architectural tour for the Singapore Design Festival and an exhibition having to do with critical theory in architecture). In the works now is a charity flipbook project to educate Lebanese children on the dangers of cluster bombs (Hajar's all-time favourite city is Beirut). Am looking forward to hearing more about this project.

Entrepreneuship: A coffee man & a cake lady

It must be a week for meeting entrepreneurs. I just got back from an inspiring luncheon talk by Pacific Coffee Company founder Thomas Neir. He told us about perservering through the years in order to build a coffee culture brand in Asia. A lot of the things he went through really resonated with me and my own experience of being an entrepreneur. He talked about starting a coffee company and trying to create a coffee culture in Hong Kong when people here equated that to a char chan teng, one of those local cafes that serve yin yang (coffee and tea mixed together) with nai jeung do (toast with condensed milk and peanut butter) or gong jai meen (instant noodles). He talked about how people (including staff) didn't understand why he wanted to focus on serving coffee. He also talked about how important a company's relationship with their landlord(s) is. In his case, alienating Swire over installing an internet connection in their Pacific Place shop proved to be a mistake. Landlords in Hong Kong have the power to make or break a business, especially a retail business.

Someone asked him if he thought entrepreneurship can be taught. He replied that while he thought the skills required to run a business can be taught, the motivation, inspiration and the willingness to take on risk are more personality-driven and may not be teachable. I tend to agree. I don't know how many times I've heard friends say to me that the one thing keeping them from chasing after their own entrepreneurial dreams is fear. "You're so brave," they would say. But I never felt I was being brave. What I felt and still feel is probably what an artist, writer, composer, architect feels. In a sense, entrepreneurship is about having a vision or desire and trying to communicate and fulfill it. For Thomas Neir, it was the vision of the coffee culture in Hong Kong that he experienced in the Italian coffee shops in San Francisco.

There were similar threads in my conversations with Elayna Berean, who only this year founded her custom cake (they're more than cakes really, they're more like sculptures!) business, Elayna Maria Cakes. Similarly, she spent time in San Francisco training as a pastry chef after getting her MBA from Wharton. I came across her company when I received the email announcing her talk at a Wharton-organized lunch (the PCC luncheon talk was also organized by the Wharton alumni association). I couldn't make her talk because I was in Tokyo, but I immediately told NL, who's busy organizing her own wedding, about it. So NL and I met with Elayna yesterday to discuss NL's monkey wedding cake over lunch at Cafe Costa. Cake talk completed, we turned to talk about what it's like to start a high-end, highly-customised service business in a culture that still doesn't quite value (or think it should pay for) service and creative expertise. Elayna is off to a great start; she's been designing showpiece cakes for fashion events including the upcoming Juicy Couture opening party (which was why she couldn't take on my very last-minute request for bowling ball cupcakes for a birthday bowling party).

Tom made a profitable exit, selling PCC to Chevalier after more than a decade and is now eyeing an environmental business. Elayna has plans to expand her offerings. If anything, entrepreneurship is certainly a constantly evolving work-in-progress.