Have you heard about Second Life? It is a virtual world where you can enter as an avatar, explore, meet up and create communities with other people. It is generating an interesting virtual economy that is translating into dollars and cents here in the real world. Now, we have a chinese clone for Second Life, a company named HiPiHi. Our resident contributor, Bjorn Lee, co-founder of Entrepreneur27 gives us a review about HiPiHi and offers his perspective on the competition with 2nd Life in the near future.

Contributed by Bjorn Lee

HiPiHi: The World Exists Because Of You. (Literal translation from Chinese) The name is derived from 3 base words: I, Hi, Hapi (or the phonetically similar “Happy”).

Currently in closed beta testing, HiPiHi has generated some interest on Second Life Insider and debates on whether this will take off in China.

Some key observations (the entire site is written in Chinese, so I play translator here):

• - Hipihi was founded way back in October 2005 in Zhongkuanchun, Beijing. Second Life took a long time to be developed too before its launch.
• - The founders are mainly Xu Hui and Rao XueWei.
• - The founders are guys but everything else in their marketing, including their promo video here, appears to target the female crowd.
• - The whole site and virtual world uses Chinese as the main language.
• - There are two main products: Hipihi World and Hipihi Home
  • Hipihi World is exactly like Second Life: avatars can fly and modify their own appearances, build houses, explore the land with planes, choppers and hot air balloons, which HipiHi calls public transportation systems. You can also have steering controls over your flight, offering a chance to fly your own plane. Options for parachuting also exists. The World seems to be organized around malls and town squares with socializing at its very core. Of course, avatars can also buy land and build their own houses. I see a lucrative industry coming up.
  • Hipihi Home appears to be modelled after CyWorld. It is positioned as a personal space and private communication platform between friends. Users will own their “living rooms”, procure furniture and be able to invite their friends to their “homes” and attend parties at others too. Whats most interesting is the mention of a convergence between internet and mobile. Could Hipihi be a dual-screen innovation? We will have to wait for the launch
• - Like Second Life, Hipihi users will own the property rights to their in-world creations.
• - There will also be a in-world currency, implying a virtual economy to facilitate user-to-user transactions. Perhaps the first and Chinese-originated millionaire in Second Life, Anshe Chung, has made virtual world creators think Chinese are the best market for such a product?

Kaiser Kuo, who is accredited for this post, has the following thoughts:

My gut tells me that done right, this could be quite substantial in China, and might have more legs than its U.S. counterpart. For one thing, MMORPG culture is pretty deeply embedded among Chinese netizens, and many players are very used to “repatriating” currency earned in the in-game economy to real life. HiPiHi seems to have made dumbed-down object creation tools available while keeping more advanced options available to the more proficient–don’t quote me on that, I’ve not really played around with it yet.

There’s a definite feminine sensibility to the pitch video, which you can download (.wmv) here: a female narrator and avatar, emphasis on the outfits, the landscaping, the houses. Going after women is probably the right move: there are plenty of online gamers in China, but few of the hack-and-slash MMORPGs really work for women.

The promotional video done by Hipihi is available below. Again, its all narrated in Chinese but it being visual-based video, is self-explanatory enough.

Editor’s Note: The article is reproduced from Bjorn’s website.

Recently, James Seng lamented that Singapore is not ready for web 2.0. He listed out three important factors that impede us from entering into that industry namely, no talent, market too small and no private VC funding. Of course, this is a highly debated topic, given that a lot of people are skeptical whether we can create another Skype or YouTube (You can listen to this Mr Brown’s podcast for his skeptism on the web 2.0 revolution in Singapore). Our resident contributor, Bjorn Lee, co-founder of Entrepreneur27 offers his own perspective towards the points raised in that article.

Contributed by Bjorn Lee
apore_is_not_ready_for_web_20.html”>James Seng’s post. James is considered one of the Internet pioneers in Singapore, based on Wikipedia. He is also an advisor to the non-profit organization that my friend Ming Yeow founded – The Digital Movement. I should start by thanking him for approving the E27 submission on Tomorrow.sg, Singapore’s top social media news outlet (which James founded). Thanks, James. =)

James had 3 points on why Singapore is not ready. I generally agree. I am nowhere near James in terms of reputation nor experience and all I am doing is to offer my humble viewpoints. Almost exactly a year ago, I blogged about finding zero Web2.0 startups in Singapore, only to amend that statement when I found some and profiled them at the first E27 event. Still, we are a far cry from the Web2.0 frenzy in Silicon Valley. I know it’s unfair to compare, although recent media exposure on the national (rather the government’s) desire to create the next “YouTubes and Skypes” from our shores have made this a hot topic again. Below are my personal views on his various points.

Lack of Talent

I wholeheartedly agree. As a NUS student, I was indeed very shocked, upon my return from Silicon Valley in early ’06, when I failed miserably in finding talented programmers in Javascript, Ajax, or even familiarity with LAMP systems. There are a few, but I expected at a minimum, not proficiency, but awareness among the majority of students. It’s not just NUS, but NTU too. My interactions at the various universities and polys, during E27 outreach sessions in 2006, proved this hypothesis correct. There is an abject lack of students educated or aware of the technical building blocks of Web 2.0. I am a Business student, but I found my knowledge of the latest changes in the web industry better than students in the computing faculties. We need young university students in Singapore to be aware, understand, be excited to learn and envision more about Web2.0 because the older generations can’t.

Chats with friends in the Computing faculty also do not reflect well on the faculty staff who are neither favorable towards supporting new initiatives (such as events on web 2.0) nor proactive in communicating the newest trends in the IT industry to them. There is a high emphasis on pragmatism in the design of the curriculum which aims to, IMHO, produce only skilled technicians, network administrators and “technical plumbers”. In other words, with our already small population size, the odds of finding tech visionaries like Steve Wozniak, Marc Andressen, Blake Ross is disappointingly low. Numerous theories abound on this phenomena like lack of funds, national policy focus etc. I don’t want to guess.

Solutions? We need to hire professors who understand what Web 2.0 is, invest some funds on flying entrepreneurs and visionary leaders from Silicon Valley, Israel, Japan, Korea, China a to speak here and do some workshops, seminars etc. Curriculums need to be amended too. And a culture of optimism needs to be injected across the faculties in order to change people’s mindsets that IT is a dead industry. This culture has to be bottom-up too, in the form of brainstorming sessions, hack days, unconferences in order to foster idea-sharing and provide a social support ecosystem to like-minded thinkers and entrepreneurs. Let those who have ideas know where to go and who to talk to to share ideas in this field.

Singapore thinks small.

We might be small, but our appetite for web-based media is voracious. Many times have Singaporean-related news memes made it on Technorati (for either blogger chicks, controversial hangings and s’pore elections) and even the recent “Pok Curry” video on YouTube garnered 6-digit views, coming in above 400,000 for the first video alone. That is very good ratings for a YouTube video with the short span of time it was available.

I disagree on using Metcalfe’s law to measure network value. Reed’s law is more appropriate in explaining viral processes that grow exponentially on the web through group-based channels like email or IM. I think Reed’s Law explains the cliched “network effect” better than Metcalfe’s Law, the latter of which was conceptualized more for technical networks (like telecom or fax) where the marginal cost of a connection/link is higher than social networks like email/IM networks where linkage cost is negligible.

At a consumer level, I am saying we do seem to have the masses for good content. The real problem I see is in scalability of our content material. Stuff that we like are culturally contextual. Our content producers are not geared towards making content for a regional or global audience. Our jokes simply do not work outside of our meager 700+ square kilometres. Maybe a bit of Malaysia or Indonesia but it stops there. It doesn’t help too when our media laws here do not sustain a gossipy culture with paparazzi and tabloids coming up with sensational juicy materials. Our “boring” media culture with coverage and scrutinty of local celebs are very civil with whatever few scandals contained within the evening Chinese dailies. If we have a HK-style paparazzi, we might be able to have more content sites here that can sustain more adventurous experimenting with social networks, blog networks and create more advertising inventory to challenge the mainstream print media monopoly here.

Note I am only talking about content-based sites here. An extension from content-centric sites will be to build communities around them like those social networking sites. I am shying away from the really innovative service-based companies like search, Joost-style P2P media streaming services or web telephony services like Skype here cos we don’t have the technical talent. I think we stand a better chance with content and community-based sites as there is a shortage of Asian-oriented online ad inventory. No fantastic technology but they earn money at least by displacing spending on traditional tv, print, radio. There’s now a gold rush towards the buying out of content-heavy sites like CollegeHumor.com .

No VC funding

MDA can argue there is the $500M IDM fund now. And I agree that to really push a Web2.0 industry forward here, you need investors who have made their money successfully on investments or startups that do not think too much about short term revenue obligations.

But Web 2.0 doesn’t need too much money to start, seed-funding wise. The lack of funding is not really an issue because when Web 2.0 startups really start gathering the traffic numbers, VC money from Singapore-based VCs will flow back from India/China, or we can get money direct from the Silicon Valley VCs. Rather than argue about lack of money, I think the more important issue to focus on is lack of traffic.

Until traffic and inherently bandwidth costs become an issue, I think it is premature to say that Singapore has no VC money to support a successful Web 2.0 site that has say, a million page views per month. I know of almost no Web 2.0 sites, save for TYLER projects, that have that kind of high traffic. You can setup the servers, code out the applications with free open-source software platforms and rely on web marketing, which again, dun cost money when you target the right communities with the right message.

Related Links:
[1] BL, Can Web 2.0 companies make money in Asia?
[2] Justin Lee, Wanted: S’poreans to develop the next YouTube or Skype. Can it be done?
[3] Lim Der Shing, Can Singapore produce our own YouTube?

Editor’s Note: The article is republished from Bjorn’s site.

Apple Computer Inc was recently renamed as Apple Inc, in the recent Mac Expo 2007. With the success of the iPod and the introduction of the iPhone in the coming months, Apple has defied the odds of making a transition towards a highly competitive consumer electronics industry. Our resident contributor, Bjorn Lee, co-founder of Entrepreneur27, traces how Apple has been mutating in the changing face of innovation and technology in the 21st century.

In 1984, Apple pioneered the Graphical User Interface (GUI)’s usage on computers and began the killing of the mainframes along with IBM. They were the first, real PC company although they didn’t really benefit from the PC boom over the next decades. Thankfully, Steve Jobs retained his visionary instincts to launch the iPod at a time when Apple was a lackluster competitor in the ever-increasing competition of the PC industry. Its integrated software-hardware approach to making computers was not going to hold against Dell and Microsoft in their respective strongholds.

Faced with increasing ecosystem pressures, the business organism we know of as Apple, simply evolved. From Apple Computer Inc to Apple Inc, the Apple of 2007 made more than a cursory semantic change in its name, but a paradigm-shifting strategy that had taken shape over the past 5 years. Apple and Steve Jobs (to be used interchangeably here) realized they were no longer in the business of digital education, as was the 19080s vision of Bill Gates who wanted to “put a computer in every family”. No, Steve Jobs just hated being beaten to that goal by Gates. So what did he do when he lost at that game?

He changed the rules and created a new game.

Today, the game is digital entertainment. In the same way humans of the 1980s ditched text-only computers for those with colors and graphics, humans today don’t want to only work on their computers, they want to play, communicate and show themselves off to the whole world over the web. The iPod unearthed the innate need of humans for entertainment, from both the professionally-produced, copyrighted kind and the user-generated, “copyleft-ed” genre. But Apple itself knows the bulky form factor of Personal Computers (or Macs for some of you) hardly suffice in serving the entertainment needs of today. The willingness to take both its software and hardware competencies, from making big desktops to the miniaturish iPod, was a bold and ultimately right move. It won’t be a surprise if Steve Jobs has a secret goal to have “an iPod in every human’s pocket”, just like his nemesis Bill Gates 2 decades ago.

The iPhone is another bold leap of faith.

If there is one company that is as ruthless as it is successful in conquering new markets, it is Apple. It successfully grew the MP3 player market to a multi-billion dollar business and created iTunes, the world’s first legal music downloading service that actually made sense. It has also killed off so many generations of iPod since its debut on October 23, 2001 that we have almost stopped counting. Few companies in the world, especially Apple’s competitors would have the gall to kill the iPod Mini, which was the best-selling player of its time, and make way for the iPod Nano. But Apple did it, or rather Steve Jobs did. Will the Midas touch apply too for his next killer product, the iPhone?

According to this iMediaConnection article, the iPhone might herald the true growth of mobile advertising. A new world, where low-end phones are subsidised by advertising and given away for free, could emerge when high-end phones like the iPhone forces a new round of innovation in phones and new demand from consumers. The iPhone, with its fully-featured and more powerful Mac OS X, might be the panacea to solving the software problems plaguing the data access capabilities and content consumption abilities of cell phones today. Integrating solid software engineering with a beautifully designed phone might just convince consumers that the phone is the new computer. Should that belief hold, technology will be no barrier as companies invest millions in order to chase this new, previously undiscovered need.

Yes, I believe Apple is a mutant. A mutant strain that forces evolution of the technology race. Sometimes, all we need is a vision and a leader with the guts to see that vision and the gumption to see it through. Much like how John F Kennedy initiated the vision of humans on the Moon, Steve Jobs might be crafting the digital future of mankind with the visionary iPhone. Like the crazy Moon-dream of yesteryear, many of us might be skeptical today, but some of us have seen the future. And hell, it sure looks like a beauty.

Hope that you have enjoyed a happy National Day. How did the marketing campaign for our NDP go this year? Good or Bad? Of course, our resident contributor, Bjorn Lee offers his views about the marketing and branding campaign of this National Day 2006.

Editor’s Note: This article is reproduced from Bjorn’s blog. It is rewritten before the National Day, but I thought that the points he brought up about the marketing and branding aspects in this article are of value to our readers.

Contributed by Bjorn Lee

In less than 30 hours, Singapore celebrates our 41st birthday and the whole nation expects a rolling good party! There’s something for everyone, be it the multi-million dollar fireworks, the parades by the armed forces and social organizations, the aero-batics by the elite troops, aircraft fly-bys, the breathtaking performances put together by students, youths and with both amateurs and professionals co-operating together in what has always been the nation’s biggest social equalizing event of our diverse races and social classes.

This year, nostalgia will meet the usually unbridled joy of the attendees and participants as the National Stadium @ Kallang will host its last ever National Day since 1966 before its torn down for a new sports hub. And the organizers have really leveraged on this memorable moment and created the most awesome multimedia experience for web-savvy Singaporeans.

As you saw above, the website this year has truly been worthy of the occasion with brilliant colors that exude the brilliance of color and celebration while not being overly cluttered and messy. Best of all, it loads fine on the Firefox browser. In addition, there are:

The obvious Web 1.0 package of:

Even though Web 1.0-ish, the wallpapers are a nice touch, finally some decent and actually a few impressive shots of our city-scape that makes me use one as my wallpaper for today.

But whats new, souped up and exciting is the new digital media package reflective of the more recent digital revolution on the internet and mobile phone platforms:

1. near-comprehensive collection of free MP3s since the 1988 National Day,
2. free video clips of event highlights during the celebration since 1997, even overseas celebrations such as the air force base in Arizona, USA,
3. free polyphonic ringtones to the tune of popular National Day songs and easy-to-follow downloading instructions by Iguana Mobile
4. and mobile messaging (SMS/MMS) greeting portals by Singtel

So what’s Bjorn gushing about, you might think? The organizers have not really done anything new this year or truly revolutionary.

Well, I do and here’s why:

• Youth Appeal. I really think the new media material of ringtones, videos, MP3 songs will stick due to the high adoption rates of cell phones and immense amount of time kids spend to personalize their phones. Not even mentioning the amount of time young people spend just surfing the web. The Singapore National Day event has always focused on involvement of schoolchildren from 8 to the college students of 20+ in all the rehearsals and actual event. Last week, I was on the MRT and noticed primary school kids fooling around with National Day music on their phones. The inclusion of such content have definitely given more relevant choice to the youths of Singapore who now have more local media alternatives to the Youtube videos and foreign-made MP3 songs. But i will suggest uploading some of these to Youtube too so as to improve the chances of Singaporeans watching it or even adding sections for bloggers to paste code of the videos, or email the links to their friends through MSN IM easily. Making the videos compatible with multiple formats for mobile phones, iPods will be awesome too. And maye consider a NDP blog in future? Complete with RSS feeds for those who like the updates? These little features will help in spreading this content virally.
• Focus on User Experience of Website. I never felt inclined to visit the National Day website in past years, always stalling at the homepage, which is god-awfully ugly all the time, slow to load and loaded with text no one wants to read. THis year, the website is fun, easily navigable, colorful (yet not gawdily so) and cleanly designed at the same time. Perhaps the Web 2.0 inspired round boxes framing the main categories of sub-events and content helped. =) And maybe thats why I clicked to more pages and discovered all this media that might have been there in earlier years. Finally, somebody understands that the homepage is the digital equivalent of the shopfront and that web surfers have the same behavioral patterns of window-shoppers.
• Tearing down the Walled Garden of past and present National Day media content. Opening up the historical digital archive of National Day songs and videos. Finally again, such media is no longer confined to the ownership of schools or governemtn agencies and are now uploaded for access by any web user. When I was in California last year, I always wonder where and when I will be able to listen to these tunes and let my foreign friends hear them since these songs are not even downloadable on Bittortent, Limewire etc… I am glad the organizers did not think of selling them and this enlightened approach towards releasing free MP3 versions might really help in allowing Singaporeans or even foreigners to listen to the catchy though propaganda-esque tunes many Singaporeans grew up with. Its an integral part of our local culture and by democratizing the songs, Singapore is really placing the tools of nation-building in the hands of the citizens or well-wishers. Quite a liberal approach for our government.

Having a strong web presence for National Day is definitely useful for the legions of overseas Singaporeans who hunger desperately for local cuisine. I have seen some of these people and even was one of them last year. Without the physical proximity of soaking in the atmosphere and mood of National Day, the next closest thing will be a rich media experience over the Web. And I think 2006 is a watershed as we are finally in the right direction, digitally.

Contributed by Bjorn Lee

I have a very good friend who always asks me: “How do you make a million bucks?”

There’s a lot of vaporish theories lotsa smart alecs try in wrestling over this question.

But, here’s a smart-ass answer I like: Make a $1000 a 1000 times.

There’s another way to interpret the question though. A two-sided answer to this classical question:

1. Sell a lot of a few items (be it goods or services)
2. Sell a few of many items.

The Autocratic World of the Creator Age

The thing is, in a time not too long ago (before the Internet Age), there’s an amazing homogeneity in the products we buy, the clothes we wear, the books we read, the movies we watch, the songs we listen to. You go into a shopping centre and you end up buying the same birthday gift for every friend, disappointing the poor fella who wonders what he did wrong to receive three CDs of the latest hit album which he hated but was considered a safe choice.
Many successful enterprises today subscribe to Point 1. They hold a carefully-groomed, meticulously-managed product portfolio and hire legions of pesky salesmen, clairvoyant crystal-ball-gazing marketing gurus, self-righteous management consultants in an attempt to uncover the Next Big Thing before their “Auld Enemy” or competitor beats them. In order to manage the scarcity of their resources enforced upon by the classical laws of “brick and mortar” economics, they focus their efforts on a select small group of products and attempt to homogenize product selection choices of customers. They treat customers as target boards and call effective marketing “targetting” as if finding customers was an activity akin to shooting at the rifle range. During selling, some seek to convince you honestly, some to brainwash you and totally rewire your brain (check multi-level marketing), and some just plain tricking/ scamming. It was a Command and Control Economy.

Jailed by the Space-Time Continuum: The Autocracy of Shelf Space and Distribution Cost

In pre-Internet Days, consumers were dung, subjected to the whims of Creators also known as manufacturers and their partner-in-crime, the Retailers. Retailers had finite shelf space, finite stores, limited human and financial resources to make and subsequently sell products. This is the Spatial Limit.

During the Cold War, the communist regimes best exemplified this as they gave out ration coupons for goods no one had a choice to say no to. With Democracy, we had Sears, evolving to Walmart today with thousands of selections. Yes, the regimes are getting ircreasingly democratic, but the democratization process is by no means complete for us the consumers.

Add the Time Limit too. Our world is segregated by our natural universe of Light and Night. Barring nocturnal humans, our modern society adjusts to nature and structure our social and economic activities in line such conventions. Save for 7-Eleven, most stores earn diminishing returns once we go past peak hours of human activity and encounter rising labor costs.

The Democratic World of the Consumer Age

Enter Ebay, iTunes, MySpace, Amazon. No longer are consumers subjected to the tyranny of the physical world. The Digital Age brought us the Internet, a virtual marketplace of unlimited ideas, products and opportunities. It injected transparency into the consumer world, bringing us hope and optimism while conversely bringing gloom to the Creator class that now has to grapple with a “sentient” Consumer Class no longer shackled by lack of choice.

• Why buy a whole CD when u only like one song? It took almost a decade of online piracy and still the music industry, which is supposed to be in the business of providing listening pleasure, is not listening.
• If you thought you liked Artist A, well there’s tons of Artist-A clones, or remixes. And this is just the variance in terms of product – the “What”. The “how” of listening to music by Artist A is no longer only your local record store, you could still choose classicial CD format, or DVD of the music video versions, MP3 format, AAC for your iPod. Same goes for say a book u liked.
• If you thought Dan Brown was good, check out the clones he spawned, the reviews on Amazon, the thousands of retailers you could possibly get it at, at a price cheaper than your local brick and mortar store. Or perhaps you can buy an “ebook”. Maybe you prefer listening as it fits your commuting lifestyle in the mornings while fighting with the peak-hour traffic in the trains or the highways. Buy an “audio-book” then.
• No time to shop because you are at work all the time?

Disrupting the Space-Time Continuum

Well, the Internet Store’s open 24/7/365. Globally. Anytime. Anywhere. Any customized format.

I just had to plug this book. I am halfway through and I can’t stop nodding my head all the time as I read it. The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. He inspired me to write this dead in the middle of the night at 3am.  There’s a Long Tail blog too. Click here to check out Guy Kawasaki’s new-found affection for Long Tail theories too.

Editor’s Note:This article is reproduced from Bjorn’s blog with the same title.

VCs love to list their portfolio companies as shining badges of honor, but how many dare to show off their closets of mistakes, oversights and horrendous ill judgment that led them to pass over great startups that went on to become mega-hits at Wall Street? Thanks to Noah for sifting through the web uncovering this gem of quirkiness from BVP.

So here’s what Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), arguably one of the oldest VC firm, invested in:

While, over the course of our history, we did invest in:

• a wig company
• a french-fry company
• the Lahaina, Ka’anapali & Pacific Railroad

Yes, french fries, I wonder how that business plan look like. But below is another list of “small fries” they decided to pass over for a multitude of reasons unbeknowst but now deeply regretted. Bracketed comments lifted from main site here.

• Apple Computer (BVP had the opportunity to invest in pre-IPO secondary stock in Apple at a $60M valuation. BVP’s Neill Brownstein called it “outrageously expensive.”)
• eBay (“Stamps? Coins? Comic books? You’ve GOT to be kidding,” thought Cowan. “No-brainer pass.”)
• Federal Express (Incredibly, BVP passed on Federal Express seven times.)
• Google
  (Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine”. Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”)

My point:

• VCs ain’t gods. Dun get disheartened to be rebuffed by a few. Maybe they dun and can’t get it.
• Small things can be big ideas. Whoever thought selling vases, stamps, coins and other crap could become a billion dollar company?
• Just dream. Sometimes, dreams come true. And dream big. There’s this weird truth in nature and society that favors the bold and fearless. You dun get wildly successful by doing the same crap everyone else is doing.
• Hence, celebrate the unorthodox. Some happen to call it innovation.

Look where being unorthodox got BVP. I actually have a good impression of them now. Kinda endearing and approachable now, don’t you think? I always believe learning to take yourself less seriously helps.

Editor’s Note: This article is published with the same title in Bjorn’s blog.

“I just spent the past 50 mins of my life listening to this ETL video-cast of Google’s Marissa Mayer where she was sharing her lessons on innovation from her past 7 years of working experiences there.”. One of our contributors, Bjorn Lee will talk about the lessons he learned about innovation and technology from this video and how it inspire him on what he does with E27.

During these 50 minutes, i wrote down stuff, thinking of recapping the lessons by blogging and thinking as i write.

And I spent the next 10 thinking what to actually blog about.

I wasn’t going to just do a point-by-point summary of what she said. Thats not blogging, thats called reporting, (like how secretaries take down notes mindlessly during meetings)

So my key takeaway wasn’t thinking about her lessons in the context of innovation, but of culture. Specifically, building a conducive culture in any organization.

Its a no-brainer that we spend about 50 years of our life working. For educated people with access to key information troves such as the internet like yourself, we are the educated strata of society who have the choice to decide what life, or rather working life, we want to have for a significant portion of our lives. Our companies become our “families” for a good part of the day and as we are emotional creatures since we are humans, we tend to bring the same emotions we have from our work back to our homes and the rest of our non-working lives. Which also means its very important to work in a positive work environment because it extends naturally to your ENTIRE life. Its not just the job function you are performing, not just the money you are in for, but its a lifestyle you choose when you choose to work in one particular company.

Which is why I think Google is great. The same theories that they learnt and applied to innovation or from their own product development extends beyond their applications in the workplace and can be used for personal enrichment too. I will highlight some useful ones.

SHARING –The Good Type

Marissa talks about the case, based on an analogy from Tom Kelley’s book Art of Innovation, of a hypothetical employee telling all his colleagues this great idea he/ she has for the main purpose of taking personal credit. This sounds great, pple are sharing ideas in the organization but the lesson is there is good and bad sharing. While sharing ideas are very important in any organization, a company should emphasise the message that:

• no one shld get territorial over ideas because it doesn’t matter who thought of them in the first place
• cultivate the culture that no one and nobody has any control over ideas and are free to conceptualize, daydream and contribute
• focus on what the idea and how it can add value to their daily way of doing things

EXPERIMENTING — Because Innovation is not instant perfection

• When you build something, can you really learn quickly about yourself, learn quickly from your users such that you can iterate more efficiently the next time?
• Every time you make a mistake, you iterate out of it. Make more mistakes but make sure you learn and get smarter every time.

Google encourages failure. Because hope springs eternal when an organization has dreamers that act on their dreams and constantly try to make them realities. Nobody succeeds by doing the same thing all the time. You got to be different, which means you have to innovate, and when the correct approach towards innovation is adopted and this becomes something synoymous with the Google culture, pple join the company believing they can do the same experimenting and thats when the founder’s habits and beliefs become immortalized as the culture of the company.

Data is A-Political

TO eradicate office politics, take a very quantitative process towards decision-making and even suggestions. Numbers don’t lie, and using them to back up statements creates a meritocracy that is not based on relationships but your ability to use number-crunching abilities to support your thought process.

The QnA session took up half the 50 mins. I love Socratic dialogue style of learning by discussing, not preaching. Thats why I organize E27 events.
This guy asked what was one of the toughest questions for Marissa:

Q: What are some personal characteristics that made you successful?

A:

• Passion to work
• Her Decision Process: Compile a list of the best decisions you have made and try to find out what is common between them. Especially when some decisions are really different from each other.
• Work with people smarter than you are so you learn.
• Challenge yourself by doing things that you are really not ready to do. Because you acquire new skill sets.You know your boundaries and you expand them.

Just a parting note, she had a really amusing gigglish laughter that is almost self-deprecating at times, endearing her to the crowd. 6 months away from Silicon Valley have almost made me forgot how much personality and charisma top executives like Marissa Mayer have compared to the many dour figures we have in Singapore where speakers seldom break out of their self-imposed shells once they step onto that stage to make a public presentation. Personalities like Marissa Mayer are icons and rallying points of a company culture.

They inspire. And thats another important hallmark of a good company culture.

Editor’s Note: This arrticle contributed by Bjorn Lee & is also published under the same title in his blog.