2014年8月30日星期六

HKETA Symposium on Innovation & Technology 2014

Hong Kong Electronics & Technologies Association (HKETA) Symposium on Innovation & Technology 2014 was co-organized with Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks (HKSTP) held on 29 Aug 2014 at Charles K. Kao Auditor in Science Park. The symposium aims to provide a linkage between users, business, research institutions and government institutions through updating information on Innovative technologies for smart living.

Before the symposium, we took a photo with Hon. Charles Mok (Legislative Councillor) in front of symposium poster.
(Left: Dr. Aaron Tong (Managing Director, TQM; Former Chairman of HKSQ), Hon. Charles Mok and I)


In the beginning, Ir. Victor Ng (Chairman of HKETA) gave a welcome speech. Ir. Ng pointed out a question we frequently asked “How Hong Kong’s Technology moving Forward?” and then he thanks for all speakers and panelists, as well as participants.


The first keynote speaker was Hon. Charles Mok (Legislative Councillor) and his presentation topic named “Innovation”. Mr. Mok’s talk included “What’s an innovation?”, “Source of Innovation”, “Rise of Innovation Platforms”, “Innovation Ecosystem”, “Finding core competency” and “Role of Hong Kong Government”.


Innovation had many meaning / definition he said. It included a new idea, a new way to do thing, fulfill a need, technology related, R&D driven, driver for competitiveness, and “The Edge”. Sources of innovation could be changes in industry and market structures, end-user driven, technology enabled, crisis and any difficult situations, asking lots of right questions, as well as, come from the innovators. Then he introduced different platforms included iOS, Android, Facebook, Twitter, AWS, PayPal, etc.

Then he briefed the innovation ecosystem should have entrepreneurs/Talents, Funding and Market. However, it also needed public policy as catalyst. Role of government could be in different way such as Education, R&D support, Financial policies, Support measures and Lead in adoption. The most important was to establish Innovation and Technology Bureau. Finally, Charles concluded the talk in the statement “Reengineering, innovating mindsets!”


Mr. Ricky Wong (Chairman of Hong Kong Television Network) was the second keynote speaker and his presentation entitled “Innovation in Hong Kong”. Mr. Wong shared his fail experience and he had fully demonstrated his persistence and never-give-up spirits with actions on the road of striking for a Free TV licence. He joked that Hong Kong Government had very innovative reasons to reject his application. He shared that innovation was come from pressure. For instance, IDD cost structure changed in 1993. He either shutdown his business or create new idea to run his business that was call-back technology. After application of Free TV license failed, he was exploring business opportunities in E-Commerce, aiming to build the largest and the most diversified in terms of brand names, products & services e-shopping mall in Hong Kong, which provided one-stop shop and 24 x 7 services.


Group Photo


The third speaker was Ir. Allen Yeung (VP, Business Development & Technology Support, HKSTP) and his talk was “Emerging Technology”. Firstly, he introduced 5 Technology Megatrends that prepared by Institute for the Future which was founded in 1968 and their service was using different methodologies to forecast the future, applied to business, government and non-profits organization.


The Five Technology Megatrends included “The Cloud as Supercomputing”, “Material Shifts”, “Robot Renaissance”, “Manipulating Biology” and “Decrypting the Brain”. Then Ir. Allen Yeung said the innovation methodologies trends were citizen science and data-driven discovery that Innovation was able come from everyone and anywhere.


After that Ir. Allen Yeung introduced the innovation framework in which Science Park were implemented. Then he introduced tenant distribution in Science Park where 50x Multinational Corporations (MNCs), 250x SMEs and 150x Incubatees. Science Park would like to nurture future tech giants through Incubation Programme to Acceleration Progamme and finally our tenants to be IPO or M&A. At the end, Allen concluded “Complete Innovation EcoSystem” + “Leverage on Govt & HKSTP’s Support” + “Capitalize on Mega Trends” to be “Unlimited Business Opportunities”.


The fourth speaker was Mr. Matthew Man (Founder and CEO of Myndar) and his presentation title was “Changing Landscape of Retail with Big Data”. Mr. Man introduced why facebook book value US$6.3billion before IPO but increased to US$104 billion of IPO market value. It was because of Intangible Assets “Likes, Posted material and Comments” that were discrete data point (Big Data)!


Mr. Man said Big Data was equal to Transactions plus Interaction plus Observations. It has 3V characteristics that Volume (Data Size), Variety (Data Sources) and Velocity (Speed of Change). Then he introduced the retail technology under big data, Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of People (IoP). IoT was “Machines can sens, process, exchange information and take action independent of human intervention.” IoP was “People can communicate and access information anywhere.” Lastly, Mr. Man Concluded “A Big-Data Mindset to reveal valuable secrets to make a discovery.”


The fifth speaker was Mr. Fred Sheu (Director, APJ Presales, Enterprise Group, HP) and his topic named “Unlock Insights by Embracing Big Data Analysis”. He briefed the big data definition was high-volume, -velocity and –variety information assets that demanded cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing for enhanced insight and decision making.


Then Mr. Sheu briefed how to use data to get the answer for Clothing, Eatery, Home and Travel (衣食住行). He also said Big Data was for everyone. Moreover, he believed that Big Data would increase business through Foresight, Hindsight and Insight. He also said “Information has become a source of competitive advantage, and organizations risk becoming irrelevant if they can’t harness the power of their Big Data at the speed of business.”


Finally Mr. Sheu introduced HAVEn which was a Big Data platform from HP and ASTRI-HP Information Technology Research Centre which launched on 16 Dec 2013.

Panel Discussion with the topic “How Hong Kong’s Technologies Moving Forward” moderated by Mr. MY Wong (Chairman, ASTRI) and Prof. PC Ching (Professor of EE Dept, CUHK).
(Left: Mr. MY Wong, Prof. PC Ching, Hon. Charles Mok, Ir. Allen Yeung, Mr. Matthew Man and Mr. Fred Sheu)


Charles encouraged changing mindset to think how do we looking at technology. Allen said Science Park’s 5 technology clusters would match the 5 Megatrend. Matthew said to create business close to customer. New technology adoption could create market and user. MY asked Fred how technology of Clothing, Eatery, Home and Travel could be used for elder people? Fred replied simply to make technology easy for use. MY also ask Prof. Ching how to find Data Scientist. Prof. Ching said most of engineering school had statistics training. The most important thing was industry to tell university what type of talent they were looking for.

In restaurant, Mr. Eric Chan (Committee member, HKETA) gave short speech to start the lunch.


During the lunch, Dr. Alfred Ng (Assistant to Managing Director, Suga International Holdings Limited) presented the topic “IoT: New Challenges and Opportunities for Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturing Enterprises”. Dr. Ng explained why the value of normal electronic scale cost HK$200 but fitbit aria Smart Scale (with WiFi & Bluetooth) cost HK$1200. It was the values of being “Smart”!


Then Dr. Ng mentioned knowledge needed for making smart electronics appliances included “Microcontroller Programming, Mechanical Engineering, Circuit Designs, Manufacturing & Quality Control, RF, Cloud, iOS & Android Apps, and Network Security. He found that service needed by Electrical Appliances Makers was the last 5 elements but a service needed by small startup was the first 5 elements.


At the end, Dr. Ng concluded that IoT devices makers required more than just manufacturing services; and barrier to entry IoT can be very low by utilizing cloud services offered by global tech giants.

Reference:
HKETA - http://www.hketa.org.hk/
HKSTP - http://www.hkstp.org/


2014年8月28日星期四

CityU IIPCC Entrepreneurship & Innovation Seminar

The IIPCC Hong Kong Chapter Workshop/Seminar Series: Entrepreneurship & Innovation was organized by IIPCC-HK and coorganized by CityU Business & Industrial Club (CUBIC) and Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks (HKSTP) on 28 Aug 2014 in Lecture Theatre 15 at CityU. The International Intellectual Property Commercialization Council (IIPCC) Hong Kong Chapter is a non-political, non-profit/social organization for promoting IP Commercialization Best Practices to do common good; serving the socio-economic interests of local community; focusing on decent job creations, entrepreneurship and SME innovations.
(There were many participants in this seminar tonight!)


The guest speaker was Mr. David Ai (Director of Knowledge Transfer Office, CityU and Co-Founder of IIPCC Hong Kong Chapter) and his presentation entitled “IP Valuation: How to Set a Price on the Intellectual Property (Your Books, her Music, their Patents)?” He stated that not all patents are created equal and it could be classified three types as follows:
1) Utility Model Patents (Germany, Japan, China)
2) Patent Applications (“patent pending”) have risks
3) Even Granted Patents are NOT 100% Solid


Then Mr. David Ai introduced the Friendly FRAND Principle to us. FRAND stated to Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory. Then the case of Motoral and Microsoft indicated what was reasonable in terms of licensing.
(Avoiding photo copyright, I replaced the children photo to our photo (David and I took inside Golden Egg in Science Park).)


Finally, Mr. David Ai concluded why it’s Hard to Build IP Markets (comparison with Normal Market) as following points:
1) 1 seller, few potential buyers (Many buyers & sellers)
2) Truly unique product (Standard replaceable product)
3) Buyers Have Various Needs and in Complex Scenarios (Similar needs)
4) Many complex terms (Few terms and easy to transact)
5) Seller is disadvantaged (Equal access to information)


After the talk, four panel speakers were invited for discussion as follows: (From Left)
1) Mr. Johnson Kong who is a board member of IIPCC-HK.
2) Ms. Peggy Cheung who is a solicitor and registered trade mark attorney.
3) Mr. David Ai who is a Director of Knowledge Transfer Office, CityU and Co-Founder of IIPCC Hong Kong Chapter
4) Mr. Al Kwok who is Co-Founder of IIPCC Hong Kong Chapter and expert in semiconductor industry.


During the discussion, Peggy told us about JV in China and she said the most important was due diligent. Moreover, she said trademark was a very high value asset. Then Johnson said Patent was not guaranteed but it was only starting. Hong Kong needed to build IP trading ecosystem and to educate public about IP protection concept.

Then Mr. Al Kwok presented the commercialization Process of an invention from Idea (Problem-solving) to R&D Solution to Prototype and then to Product/Service. In this chain, the IP Value would be from Little (need proof of concept) to Some (need product realization) to More (if proven value to customers) and then to Much more (if very scalable). He also discussed the internal design (meaning engineer or infra-structure of system) and external design (meaning interface of human being). Finally, he said top management should be made sure “Integrated Design Capability” included Marketability, Scalability, Robustness, Manufacturability, Resuability, Quality/Reliability and Testability, etc.

Reference:
IIPCC - http://www.tmbell.com/hongkong/aboutiipcc.php
HKSTP - http://www.hkstp.org
CUBIC - http://www6.cityu.edu.hk/kto/index.aspx?id=PG-1200038
20140620 - Distinguished Entrepreneur Series: Recipes for Success - http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2014/06/distinguished-entrepreneur-series.html


2014年8月25日星期一

HKSTP Seminar on Business Model Canvas

The Seminar entitled "Introduction to Business Model Canvas (BMC)" was organized by Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporate (HKSTP) on 25 Aug 2014. The seminar aimed to shake up the start-up world by offering a very clear and well defined approach to determine and validate key elements of business building, while taking into account the rapid changes that is normal for early ventures.

The guest speaker was Mr. Deepak Madnani (Founder, Paperclip Startup Campus) and he briefed why 9 out of 10 startups fail. He said the different between Startup and Entrepreneur was that business model was known or unknown. Most of Startups did not know their business model. From Startup to Entrepreneur, the period of startup should be finished as soon as possible.


Mr. Deepak Madnani said the lifestyles of startups were working to live their passion. They would like to search Scalable Startup and to execute it to be Large Company. In here, we needed business model and risk capital. He also told us that multiple types of Startups had different education, funding and tactics; but they had the same techniques to build them. Moreover, he explained no business plan but survived first that you needed to contact with customers. 

Then Mr. Deepak Madnani defined that a Startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model!


He introduced the 9 boxs of Business Model Canvas (BMC) as below.
1. Value Propositions
2. Customer Segments (Who & Why)
3. Channels
4. Customer Relationships (Get → Keep → Grow)
5. Revenue Streams
6. Key Resources (Finance, Physical, Intellectual and Human)
7. Key Partners (Partners and Suppliers)
8. Key Activities (Production, Problem Solving and Supply Chain Management)
9. Cost Structure


Finally, Mr. Deepak Madnani explained the BMC through LinkedIn as sample.

http://businessmodelinnovationmatters.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/linkedin-business-model.png

Reference:
HKSTP - http://www.hkstp.org
Paperclip Startup Campus - http://www.papercliphk.com/en/academy
Business Model Generation - http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/


2014年8月22日星期五

ASQ InfVoices – Quality Evolution and Revolution (QUALITRIX)

Mr. Bill Troy posted the August topic of ASQ Influence Voices entitled “The Future of Quality: Evolutionary or Revolutionary?” I would like to explain the future of quality using the famous film “MATRIX”. Quality is in everywhere which like MATRIX. So I combined “Quality” and “MATRIX” to “QUALITRIX”.


Morpheus asked Neo for selection. He said “This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”  In here, blue pill is "Unchange" and the story of your company ends. Red pill is "Quality" and it is no turning back!

Being the Quality way, company will modify their product or service continuous. One of famous quality tools is Kaizen. The company will go through the Quality Evolution but it will be moving slowly and will be stopped based on the First Law of Organizational Motion (An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an Unbalanced Force (Friction)). (See reference)

Therefore, we needed “QUALITRIX RELOAD” for a period of time. It reminds us to review the theories from different quality gurus such as Deming, Crosby and Juran, as well as, different quality tools included six sigma, lean, SPC, etc.


The company usually involved both quality techniques and practices in their development journey and their product or service performance appeared S-curve. (Refer to Sustaining Excellence through Quality and Innovation)  Until the product/service stay in mature stage, we need some breakthrough to go to the next S-curve. That’s why we need innovation. One of famous tools named TRIZ (Theory of Solving Problems Inventively). Quality plus TRIZ that I also called it “QUALITRIX REVOLUTIONS”.


I would like to summarize my ideas in this topic as below.
i) Evolutionary change is continuous improvement. It could be employed Kaizen and Business process re-engineering (BPR)
ii) Revolutionary change is innovation breakthrough. It could be employed TRIZ or other new tools.
iii) Evolutionary change and Revolutionary change exist simultaneously. It is depended on which stage of company’s product/service in S-curve*.

Reference:
A View from the Q - http://asq.org/blog/
ASQ InfVoices - Law of Organizational Motion - http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2013/12/asq-infvoices-law-of-organizational.html
ASQ InfVoices – Sustaining Excellence through Quality and Innovation - http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2013/09/asq-infvoices-sustaining-excellence.html

*Remark: The early author stated technology innovation through S-curve was found as follows:
Abernathy, William J. and James M. Utterback (1978) “Patterns of Innovation in Industry,”  Technology Review, 80(7), June-July, 40-47.
James M. Utterback (1996) Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation (http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Dynamics-Innovation-James-Utterback/dp/0875847404)


2014年8月17日星期日

反佔中大遊行之我見

今天我刻意穿一件白T-shirt及用自制「反佔中之自由法則」旗幟來參加「反佔中」大遊行。我的兩位前輩分別參加了遊行因人太多,找不到。


兩位前輩對佔中者的看法和我相近,分別是「國際標準」及「袋住先」。
佔中所說的「國際標準」是指聯合國《公民權利和政治權利國際公約》下人權委員會就《公約》第二十五條所公布的《第二十五號一般意見書》。英文是「International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights」而Covenant一字意思是「a formal agreement between two or more people」。「國際標準」的英文是「International Standard」而它的意思是標準化流程及/或管理系統來達到一致性的目的。如ISO 9001及ISO4001。ISO管理系統上的國際標準一般都要求符合本地法律及法規的要求。泛民提出的國際公約,只可以在ISO中視為指引(Guideline)而不是國際標準(International Standard)。如不符合本地法律及法規,機構根本不可能被認証!所以本地的民主選舉是要符合基本法。在不同國家,有不一樣的民主選舉,而制度上都不能達到一致性,所以前輩們不同意有普選的國際標準。至於「袋住先」,其中一位前輩說應用六標準差來看,要一步一步持續改善(Continuous Improvement)。如果要一刀切,一是達到理想,一是拉倒不幹,就會沒有互信,最後不要成事。

梭羅是公民抗命(公民不服從)的始祖。他是用停止繳人頭稅來抗命,不違反自由法則即「在不妨礙別人的自由這個前提下,我們可以盡量爭取我們的自由。」
梭羅說真理不會自相矛盾,也不會專用錯誤的手段去彰顯正義。我認為佔中是錯誤的手段!而佔中最大的一個不一致的謬誤(自相矛盾)是「佔中公投的方案是經二千多名簽了意向書的佔中支持者在十五個方案中篩選出三個方案給公眾投票,來達到爭取沒篩選的普選。」陳健民說支持佔中者有理由可優先,因為始終最後身體力行去佔中的,就是這一批人。我理解即是他們對運動貢獻較大。用同樣邏輯,陳健民應該支持功能組別,因為專業人員及商人對香港經濟貢獻較大!

以下分享一下反佔中大遊行之我見。
開始時很多人,我找不到龍頭。(一時二十五分到)


因我是遊行獨行俠,所以見到那兒出發先就加入去!和泛民的遊行分別是組織及示威物品。今次大多數是不同組織出威物品,沒有蘋果的大字報及很少個別人士創作。所以我的「反佔中之自由法則」旗幟很受歡迎,不少人都拍了照。人群中說普通話多,香港人也不少,在乎你在什麼團體。


有中藥界。


看見有不少街站及議員。









以佔中黑金門為惡作劇如跳飛機。



反對派的街站。



還見到《城市論壇》大陸朱。


終於到終點了。(三時三十八分到)



獻花區(但開始時已經沒花派!)


回家時經灣仔天橋看到全條街都是人,好彩行得快。


我的遊行裝備有1.5L茶及朱古力麥棒。


後備T-Shirt,太陽帽,臉巾,旗幟及太陽傘!


參考:
(1)VIIV24之公民抗命-http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2013/06/civil-disobedience.html 
(2)Democratic & Freedom (民主與自由) - http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2011/06/democratic-freedom.html 
其他遊行:
(1)反暴力 ● 反佔中 - http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2014/03/blog-post.html 
(2)正義: 七一之旅 - http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2011/07/blog-post.html 
同道中人:
(1) 817 我在人群中 - http://lau-long.blogspot.hk/2014/08/817.html