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Samson Lai

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Media & Press

Unlocking the Secrets Behind Hong Kong’s 18 Unicorns: Insights from Cindy Chow, Executive Director of Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund

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💡Have you ever wondered why Hong Kong could create 18 unicorns (3 were already listed) in the last 8 years? Grateful to have an opportunity to discuss with Cindy Chow, one of elite and pioneering leaders in the Hong Kong startups ecosystem, on this topic in our 🎬🎙#RTHK New Management Thinking programme #管理新思維. Cindy is the Executive Director of the globally-known #AEF Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund. Really appreciate and heartfelt thank to Cindy for her insights and inspiring sharing.

AEF has invested and nurtured more than 60 startups since founded in 2015. 5 of those companies were either unicorns (#Airwallex, #AnimocaBrands, #WeLab) or listed companies (#GOGOX, #Prenetics). Impressive and what a miracle that we had here in Hong Kong! However, we only had less than 0.5% of over 4,000 startups made this list. How can startups learn from the best and enhance their chance of success? I have discussed this theme with Cindy in our programme.

We looked at a few key things in specific.

1. What are the critical success factors and characteristics of the unicorns?

2. What has AEF done to nurture these unicorns?

3. How can we encourage and nurture more young people especially female students to participate in tech entrepreneurship journey?

4. How can we empower our startups to capture the opportunities in #GBA? How can Hong Kong play a pivotal role to empower GBA startups to expand to ASEAN and global market?

5. How do we pick the right startups to invest on? What new direction or types of startups that AEF is looking at? How do we attract the best startups to be our investment portfolio?

If you would like to learn more about all these questions from my discussion with Cindy, please tune in #RTHK1 radio this Sunday Jun 18 from 2pm to 4pm. Stay tuned and don’t miss it. https://lnkd.in/f-X8RaN

Yes, it is on the Father’s Day. Our gift for all fathers and all your beloved. Wish you all have a wonderful and warm Father’s Day. Cheers.

Remarks: If you cannot make it, I will post the link here for you to replay the recording later. Check this post again Sunday night and onwards.

As promised, here is the link for the replay. Enjoy!
https://lnkd.in/gYddhHHW
https://lnkd.in/gFgthySQ

#Startups #Unicorn #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #Technology #TechInvestment #TechInvestor #VC #VentureCapital #WomenInTech #Alibaba #FathersDay
CUHK EMBA CUHK Business School #CUHKEMBA

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Events & Activities

Unlocking the Secret to Data Monetization: Insights from China CITIC Bank International’s Agile Culture Transformation Room

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Change Starts With “YOU”. What a quote posted on the wall of the Agile Culture Transformation #ACT room in the China CITIC Bank International #CNCBI 中信銀行(國際) in Hong Kong. The Bank really understands how important culture is to make any change work. It is so inspiring and a perfect place for us to hold our forum there with the main theme on Data Literacy: From Data Insight to Data Monetization.

The secret sauce of monetizing data asset effectively is in fact Data Culture of the organization. Our audiences were from different business units of the Bank. They also agreed with us that data culture is the top challenge to monetize data asset of the bank.

Frazer Lam, CIO of CNCBI, and I have delivered our speeches to set the scene. We then had a fruitful discussion with Patrick Khong #HKEX, Michael Yung #Google and Victor Ng #OpenCertHubAcademy #OCHA. Really grateful having them in my panel. We all learnt a lot from their sharing. Thank you.

My 3 key takeaways on monetizing data effectively are as follows:

1. Collaboration across business units, IT and Data teams are super important to capitalize data asset.

2. Users at all levels should speak the language of data as their habit to solve problems, seize opportunities and communicate/agrue with stakeholders.

3. Building a sustainable data culture is the most critical success factor for data monetization rather than talent, data, technology, financial support and business cases.

Victor Ng and I have been empowering quite a few enterprises with our Data Literacy Empowerment Programme #DLEP. It is a data culture change programme and is a journey instead of a project. Please find out more https://ochacademy.com/

Really appreciate Denny Woo, CPFinT(M), Salina C., Sunny So, Joel Tse and many others from CNCBI and my OpenCertHub Academy’s colleagues to make this happen. Thanks for all participants on site and online today and their sensible questions. Happy to catch up with good friends Benedict Lau, CSM, CSPO, Lam Holly, Hongming Hu,CFA FRM and a few more now with the Bank there after the long Covid time.

Change Starts With “YOU”. Let’s empower ourselves to be a data citizen and speak the language of data every day.

#DataLiteracy #DataCulture #DataMindset #DataCitizen #CitizenDataScientist
#DataMonetization
#Data #BigData #AI
#Change #Culture #Agile #Transformation

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Key Associations

DaLa Supports The 8th Cloud Forum Organized by KORNERSTONE

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It is our honour that DaLa – Data Literacy Association is one of the supporting organizations for the well-known Cloud Forum organized by KORNERSTONE Institute 8 years in a row. I would moderate one of the high-power panel discussion.
https://lnkd.in/gVnhqfsi

Thanks the leadership of Catherine Chan and her teammates to drive the growth of the Cloud Forum in the past n years. Wish it be the most successful one ever this year.

See you all there!

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Key Associations

SAP NOW Hong Kong 2023: Exploring SAP’s AI Strategies to Empower Enterprises

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Grateful to see that the SAP NOW is back to Hong Kong. It is another great signal of the fast recovery and the strong resilence of our vibrant innovation and technology ecosystem in Hong Kong. Let’s add oil 大家加油! 👏💪.

My radar is always on data and AI. I was keen on learning more on how SAP leverages AI to add values to their clients. Learnt a lot from the renowned speakers from Hong Kong Jockey Club, Swire Coca-Cola, AS Watson and SAP certainly. Here are my 4 key takeaways today:

1. Business Process-specific Generative AI to empower the SAP customers to make use of ChatGPTs to solve problems. SAP has a strategic partnership with #Microsoft on Generative AI for enterprises.

2. Swire Coca-Cola collaborated with SAP not just on AI but data culture. They empower users and IT/Data teams to collaborate and unlock the power of data. Thanks to Matthew TC Wong from Swire Coca-Cola for his sharing on Data-driven culture and the One Team initiative.

3. Domain, technology, data and people are always the key for any change or transformation. AI adoption has no exception. Thanks to Andrew Ma for his sharing on New Retail eLab Tech @ A.S. Watson

4. Focus of SAP HK on 3C: China, Completeness and Customer. Thanks to Esmond’s and his teammates for their commitment and contribution to HK.

Thanks for the leadership from Esmond Tong and the great effort of many good friends in SAP like Andrew Ling, Cannie Tsang, Helen Lam, Greg Wong and many others to make it happen. I believe a few hundred audiences attended this conference in the Ocean Park today. Well done.

Met many old and new friends today like Randy Lai, Keith Chan, Ravel Lai, Vincent So, Henry Hui, William Chan, Ricky Lee, Dustin Lee, David Chan, emily chan, Godfrey Poon and many more. Really pleased to see smiling faces and missed the f2f chats.

Ravel, Henry and I from #DaLa founding team shared with many of our friends there on the mission of our DaLa – Data Literacy Association – to empower everyone to speak data in the AI era. See you guys around in the journey of our Data Literacy Empowerment journey.

#DataLiteracy #Data #AI #ChatGPT #GenerativeAI 微軟
#SAP #SAPNOW SAP

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Media & Interviews

The AI Hurricane Triggered by ChatGPT: Insights from Economic Journal’s Special Edition

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AI hurricane has been triggered and highly accelerated by the #ChatGPT tide. Thanks for the Economic Journal #HKEJ #信報 to arrange a special edition on this hot topic. Cally Chan #Microsoft, Crystal Fok #HKSTP and I (in the capacity of #CUHK and DaLa – Data Literacy Association), had a chance to sit down and shared our view on this unprecedented storm to the whole mankind and more importantly its impact to Hong Kong.

My view is that we have one more key stakeholder in our ecosystem. That is the AI-driven robots. Just like other key stakeholders such as startups, investors, professionals, and more, they are one of the key partners for us to co-create values for our customers and societies. Human-AI collaboration is the ultimate competitive advantage in the Digital Era (Oh well, at least this decade). Whoever can make this right will lead the market and advance their career far better than who can’t.

Please have a look of our views. We will for sure discuss even more in the upcoming many occasions and many years ahead. See you and bots around. Cheers.

信報
微軟 香港科技園
#DaLa #MSHK CUHK Business School
#AI #Data
#Innovation #Technology

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Competition

Collaboration for Co-Creation: Runnovation Place Hosts B4B Challenge and DaLa Crossover Event

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Another meaningful gathering for data experts and users to learn from each other this afternoon in the amazing #Runnovation place of China Resources Capital. It was a crossover for B4B Challenge #B4B and Data Literacy Association #DaLa. Appreciate the support from Dennis Choi, Philip Cheng and Xinyi L. #CRCapital.

B4B Challenge B4B Limited has been a platform for Hong Kong and mainland data startups to apply their data expertise to solve real world problems for the last 7 years. DaLa – Data Literacy Association has just started last year with aim to empower users to make use data effectively – “Empowering Everyone to Speak Data”. Both organizations are joining hands to bring experts and users together to learn and co-create values from data.

In the capacity of Founding Chairman of DaLa and Principal Advisor of B4B, I was pleased to see more collaboration across two communities to co-create more synergy. Grateful to see our DaLa founding fellows Michael Yung, Matthew Chan, Nixon Chau, Elaine Wang were there to support the event. Thanks Candi Yeung and her teammates to make this happen.

DaLa has started organizing company visits, forums and training to help our members to learn more data literacy in different functions, companies and industries as well as connect more like minds data friends to know each other. In early May, DaLa led a delegation to Macau. Here is a short video to get a feel of our inspiring and fruitful trip.
https://lnkd.in/g5ZT-22M

More on B4B Challenge 2023:
https://lnkd.in/gD79Uz_P

More on DaLa’s Study Trip to Macau:
https://lnkd.in/gaqfYZkd

If you, as company or individual, are interested to become a member of DaLa and participate our activities, please visit our website https://lnkd.in/gPzbeTmp. We look forward to welcoming you especially the users who are keen on upskilling on data literacy and unleashing the power of data in their businesses, operations and daily work.

#DataLiteracy
#Data #AI #BigData
#Innovation #Technology
#ChinaResources

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Key Associations

12th Customer Caring Scheme 2022 Awards Presentation Ceremony and Solution Day Empowered by Data and AI

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Caring our customers is the key for success for small to large companies from the old days to even now digital era. Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon, said repeatedly, ‘The Most Important Single Thing Is to Focus Obsessively on the Customer’. To encourage customer centricity, GS1 HK has been organizing the Customer Caring Scheme #貼心企業 for years.

The Awards Presentation Ceremony of the 12th Customer Caring Scheme 2022 was held successfully yesterday. It was our honour to have Lilian Cheong JP, Under Secretary for #ITIB as our Guest of Honour today. Appreciate it.
https://lnkd.in/gNu-hXM4

In the capacity of the President of GS1 HK’s IoT Industry Advisory Council, I was grateful to present trophies to the awardees together with a few other VIPs including Bernard Chan, Under Secretary for Commerce & Econ Dev of CEB, Duncan Chiu of LegCo (IT), Roy Ng #GS1HK Board and certainly Anna Lin #GS1HK. Congratulations to all of the awardees for their amazing work on customer care.

In parallel with this Awards Presentation, it was also a solution day. Elite partners of GS1 showcased their solutions empowered by GS1’s technologies, data and innovation there. Great to see many new and old friends in the ecosystem again there.

Our Data Literacy Association #DaLa DaLa – Data Literacy Association was one of the supporting organizations to fully support the Customer Caring Scheme. In fact, the best use of data is to delight our customers and create the best customer experience. There were 2 keynote speeches in the event. Both were focusing on making use of data and had great examples of AI and data applications on operation excellence, trading inprovement, safety, and more.

Thank you so much to Anna’s leadership and great effort from our GS1 HK colleagues including Corinna Fung, Dr. Stephen Lam, Mignone Cheng and many behind the scene for organizing such a meaningful award and a fruitful solution day.

#CustomerCare #CustomerCentricity
#DataLiteracy #Data #AI

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Activities

Crafting and Executing Winning Strategies: Insights from CUHK EMBA Class of 2024’s Learning Journey

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From group photo with masks to f2f live class without masks. Mission in action now! Our CUHK EMBA CLASS of 2024 has just started 9 months ago. I met our new students first time (with masks on) in our program called Residence Week back then. It was a fruitful orientation week for all of us. Last weekend, I was very pleased to meet them (without masks and with smiles) again.

Our students are taking our course called “Crafting and Executing Winning Strategies” jointly developed and taught by Dr. Gilbert Cheung, Professor Pong Yuen, Howard Lam and myself. Our objective is to empower our EMBA students to become strategic leaders. It is easier said then done to be a strategic leader. Are you a strategic leader? Does your company have a strategy? Why bother? Why Strategy failed? Or Do you really know what is Strategy? More to be explored in our learning journey.

Apart from our experience, we also leverage on our networks to invite the best strategic leaders in Hong Kong and the region to share their practical experience on strategic management.

My first guest speaker was Susanna Wong, CEO of YATA. We are so grateful to have Susanna to share her experience in #YATA, #SHK and #Mckinsey with us. Her sharing was really insightful, inspiring, impactful and practical as well. She discussed the challenging dilemmas that we always faced in practicing strategies like Stubborn vs Persistence, Change vs Plan, Financial Pressure vs Long-term Goal, Top Down or Bottom up, Communication vs Interpretation, Good Strategy vs Bad Strategy, and more.

We did have a good start of our “Crafting and Executing Winning Strategies” course in the last weekend. Our students started with some doubts on why we need to take Strategy seriously and now they are keen on digging wider and deeper on Strategy to master it. More to come in the next 3 months as the course continues. Stay tuned.

#Strategy #StrategicThinking #StrategicManagement
#Change #ChangeManagement
#CUHKEMBA CUHK EMBA CUHK Business School

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Talks / Seminars

Digital Strategy and Transformation at MTR: Insights from Elite Digital Leaders in Hong Kong

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Grateful to have a fruitful discussion with 3 elite digital leaders in Hong Kong and share our experience with a group of senior executives of MTR. Thank you to my panel guests:
Wai-yin Wan #MTR
Matthew Chan #JardineRestaurantGroup
Michael Yung #Google #GoogleCloud

Our main theme was Digital Strategy: Lead and Execute Your Digital Vision. It was really inspiring to many participants including myself indeed.

My 3 key takeaways are:

1. Digital Strategy should be seen as Strategy in Digital Era; Digital Transformation should be thought as Transformation in Digital Era; and certainly Digital Leader should transform themselves into Leaders in Digital Era. If we have no Strategy and cannot get transformation working, there is no place for Digital and certainly no place for Digital Leaders.

2. Cascading Strategy down is one of the major challenges for any companies. Just townhall communication is far from enough. Treat every employee differently just like how we are doing for customers. What does our Strategy mean to every single one of employees? Rather than just “Segment of One” for customer (customer centric or customer obsessed), can we do “Workforce of One” (employee centric or employee obsessed)?

3. Innovation will just become a threatre and showroom if we don’t understand the first 2 points. Even you got a fancy innovation head title, it doesn’t mean you can overcome all challenges in Transformation including Digital Transformation. Eventually you lose your passion and leave your company voluntarily or involuntarily.

more…

Thank you to MTR Learning and Development team and my CUHK teammates to make this meaningful panel discussion happen. Appreciate it.

#CUHK CUHK Business School
#DigitalTransformation
#DigitalStrategy #DigitalLeader
#Change #Transformation
#CustomerCentric #CustomerObsessed
#EmployeeCentric #EmployeeObsessed

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Training

Strategic Management of Innovation: Insights from CUHK Chinese EMBA Course

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Just delivered a challenging but rewarding 4-day intensive CUHK Chinese EMBA course on Strategic Management of Innovation. Really felt tired and exhausted but all my effort was paid off with the deep participation and engagement with my excellent executive students from the mainland.

My dear students presented beautiful flowers to me to show their appreciation. Wow! It was the first time in my teaching journey to receive flowers. What a surprise and touching indeed. Thank you so much my dear students.

We couldn’t have acheived that much without the great sharing from my guest speakers Miles Wen (温豪夫) #FanoLabs, Nixon Chau #SenseTime, Christina Ong #HSBC, Adonis Ya #NewRetail, and Thomson Lai #AECOM. They are all elite leaders from different industries. They openly shared their valuable experience on innovation from their perspectives. Our students including myself learned a lot from them. Thank you.

Felt particularly grateful to have Adonis as my guest speaker as he was my CUHK EMBA student who have taken this course (English version) before. He applied what I taught him so well and has created new breakthrough in his career. Really happy for him. He sincerely shared his experience with my students.

I would like to thank my senior executive students from different cities in mainland China for their effort to spend 4 consecutive days here and did a fantastic job in their group projects as well. I hope my experience in innovation has inspired them to lead their companies and teams to seek breakthrough and achieve their H3.

Recap, remember and redo… “What should we do differently from yesterday so we can survive today?”

CUHK Business School CUHK EMBA #CUHK #CUHKEMBA
#CorporateInnovation #Innovation #Technology #Entrepreneurship #Intrapreneurship

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