For this panel and despite the difficulty in representing fairly “Asia”, I did my best to get speakers from all key geographies: Japan, Korea, China and South-East Asia. The result was a quality of shared knowledge rarely seen on a topic that is already mainstream in Asia, but still avant-garde in the Western world:

“Asia: Digital Life, Real Billions”

Panelists:

Naoki Aoyaki, Senior Vice President, Business Development & CFO, GREE > GREE is a mobile SNS making over US$500 million revenue this year with only 22 million users, in Japan only!

Yiqun Bo, Vice-President & Co-Founder, Great Wall Club > Organizers of the “LeWeb of Asia” in China, and a recognized expert on mobile and web in China.

Steven Goh, CEO, Mig33 > Largest mobile SNS in SE Asia with 40 million registered users.

Chang Kim, ex-CEO of TNC, Product Manager, Google Blogger > Entrepreneur & expert blogger who was first to sell a company to Google in Asia.

Jimmy Kim, CEO, Nexonova > Nexon has 15 years experience with online gaming in Korea and overseas, and is on track for $1 billion revenue this year. No need to say more!

Takuya Miyata, Senior Vice President, Global Business, mixi > Closest SNS to Facebook in Japan. Miyata-san is also a serial entrepreneur.

Video of the entire panel for your enjoyment (45 minutes with Q&A):

My talk focused on how our society and culture shape us so much that it makes it hard override our “default settings”. I believe it undermines our happiness by preventing us from understanding what really matters to us. One specific area where it impacts our lives is socialization. This is a topic I have been researching on for quite some time due to my work on online communities. As I invested quite a bit of effort in this talk and only shared it with the 50 or so people who attended, I went the extra mile and subtitled it for online viewing. Enjoy!

“The Myths of Innovation” talks about the misconceptions around entrepreneurship and innovation.
In a nutshell: entrepreneurs who make it big are lucky people with not only ideas (which they might have borrowed), but good timing (too early and you’re doomed) and access to both talent and capital. There is a significant incentive to iron out this narrative into a super hero story, and a huge selection bias in doing so.

“Digital Innovation in Asia” is about some innovative services and business models found in Asia.
The Western framing of innovation has short-changed the rest of the world despite their achievements, and Asia is definitely doing fine in many aspects.