Insights success the 30 most creative ceos to watch 2017

www.insightssuccess.com JUNE 2017

The way of business solutions The

30 MOST CREATIVE

CEOs TO WATCH Entrepreneur of the Month

Sanjeev Saxena POC Medical Systems, Inc

Nina Simosko CEO & President

Nina Simosko: An Inspiring and Compassionate Leader

LIFE IS

DIGITAL MOMENTS and we are on a mission to perfect them

www.comptel.com

Editorial

T

he leading nations and businesses are falling behind in verticals where they once dominated others, and makes the point crystal clear that the organizations cannot maintain status quo for forever. Then, the questions occur: How to cope with unanticipated events, challenges and crises, and how to evolve the strategy? What is the role of leaders to balance the work life and work environment that will not only help survive a crisis but will capitalize on today’s disruptive and accelerating changes? The answer is – to survive, embracing the change is mandatory.

Organizational survival demands a faster and quicker change than the one in the wild within the methods that leaders use to study and divulge operational knowledge. The novel strategy of leaders must be about adapting to change continuously in an ever-changing landscape.

Their focus must be about looking beyond market share and competition to more fundamental questions of sustainability and survival in a turbulent and continually changing environment.

The Need for an Adaptive Nature in a Constantly Changing Business Landscape

Like the high-speed racing vehicle around a circuit, where the extreme weather elements and changing direction throws exciting challenges every second, understanding the role and responsibility of the organization in the context of the entire environment are highly critical. However, the key to achieving triumph in dealing with the change – at an individual as well as at an organizational level lies in the willingness to accept change and responding at lightning speed to all the demands placed by the environment with sympathy for all those who are involved.

It is okay not want to change: to try haggling and to bargain things back to the way they were. It is similarly important to understand these feelings on leaders’ level as well as all team members’ and must be dealt with, if the organization is to flourish as a unified group. To survive in a global society and a constantly changing universe, leaders need to see the change for what it is: the natural sequence of things! Leaders need to recognize this and master the practices to become a part of that natural order so that the business survives and blossoms in the storm of change.

Abhijeet Parade

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Senior Editor Ariana Lawrence Managing Editor Abhijeet Parade Co-Editors David Smith Archana Ghule Stephanie Andrews Poonam Yadav Rajarshi Chatterjee Visualiser David King Art & Design Director Amol Kamble Co-designer Alex Noel Picture Editor Shaila Buchade Art Editor Shweta Shinde Business Development Manager Mike Thomas Nick Adams Marketing Manager Chris Clarke Business Development Executives Andy, David, Peter, Kevin, John, Brian Research Analyst Jennifer Circulation Manager Robert Database Management Steve Technology Consultant Vishal More sales@insightssuccess.com

JUNE, 2017 Corporate Ofď€ ces: Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: Visit www.insightssuccess.com 7

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Contents 10 Cover Story

Nina Simosko: An Inspiring and Compassionate Leader

16

20

Article

28 Editorial desk

company of the month

WHAT TURNS A PERSON INTO CEO

iProspect: The Global Business Performance Agency

Entrepreneur of the Month Sanjeev Saxena: A Social Entrepreneur Who Makes Things Happen

Cxo Standpoint

40

34

entrepreneurial talk

54

Necessary Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Anthony Chow: Smart Access - On The Rise In Homes, Properties, and Vacation Rentals

James Munro Boon: Social Business‌ Cambodia, a look at the country and people who make Elephant Branded possible

46 MICHAEL Taylor: A Leader Turning Struggles Into Success

36 Chris Behrens: A Passionate Leader Transforming Ideas into Innovation

42 Dr. Cindy Gordon: A Visionary Change Agent Making Sales a Science

30 Amy Read: An Innovation Driven Entrepreneur

50 Monica Kang: A Passionate Community Builder

52 Nicolas Jouvenceau: A Diamond in Which Passion Resides

38 Derek Goh: A Tenacious and Determined Leader

32 Arash Asli: An Inventive and Avid Trailblazer

44 Hardik Parekh: Helping ‘Futurify’ Businesses

The

30 Most

CREATIVE E

S TO WATCH

The Need to Learn About Enhancing the Productivity of Workforce

B

eing an engaging leader is not everyone’s cup of tea. The leadership status quo is shifting and the leaders of tomorrow will be a lot different than the leaders of today. Likewise, the challenges will be different as well.

Employee engagement will be one of the most challenging demands of management. By engaging with the employees, leaders can enhance the productivity of its workforce which is an office truth that every CEO should learn.

Insights Success Magazine, after in-depth research and studies, has shortlisted “The 30 Most Creative CEOs to Watch,” considering every potential leader of the businesses. It is interesting to know the inspiring tale of every potential leader.

Their triumph over the challenges they faced are motivational stories for other leaders and employees.

In this edition, we have enlisted thirty talented and most creative leaders who are changing the organization’s scenario in the business, representing their spirit of enthusiastic visions, and inspirational leadership to build excellent businesses.

We have included “What Turns A Person Into CEO” and “Necessary Entrepreneurship Ecosystem” from the editorial desk. We also have “Smart Access – On The Rise In Homes, Properties, and Vacation Rentals” and “Social Business…

Cambodia, a look at the country and people who make Elephant Branded possible” from thought leaders.

While flipping the pages of this issue, do not miss out our cover story which features Nina Simosko, President, and CEO, NTT i3 considering the leadership positions she has performed over the years. For more than 20 years, Nina has been a passionate leader and advocate for technology innovation, always with a focus on the people who make it happen.

Let’s get started reading then!

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Nina Simosko CEO & President

Cover Story

Nina Simosko: An Inspiring and Compassionate Leader

P

otentially, everyone is a leader. More than a title, leaders are people who make sound decisions, act in ways that motivate others, and consistently solve problems and celebrate successes. They engage with others, stay focused even in tough times, and enjoy the ride.

Fundamental to strong leadership is the belief that people can make a positive difference in the world—and for customers, colleagues, the organization and shareholders.

Along with that belief, most effective leaders are keenly aware of the key principles that guide their day-to-day thinking and motivational strategies. Scratch a little below the surface and they will tell you that those principles include fairness, trust, and a large dose of compassion.

Nina Simosko, President and CEO of NTT Innovation Institute Inc (NTT I³), reflects this way of thinking and working to a tee.

For more than 20 years, Nina has been a passionate leader and advocate for technology innovation, always with a focus on the people who make it happen. “I feel so fortunate,” Nina says, “to have worked with some the smartest, most innovative and hardest working people in the industry. And my team at NTT are among the very best!”

During her tenure at prestigious organizations such as Oracle, Nike and SAP, Nina has always sought to bring out the best in people, drawing from and building on their strengths, passions, skill sets and drive. She believes that engaging with people and understanding what makes them tick is key to her own leadership development and the many successes she’s enjoyed. “Dynamic engagement and developing a common vision is fundamental,” Nina says.

“And you can really only do that by understanding each and every person and making sure they feel truly valued.”

A Strong Advocate of Technology Innovation While some kids wanted to be teachers, doctors or musicians, even at a young age Nina’s mind said

“entrepreneur” even if she didn’t know the word until much later in life. “My first jobs were so important,” Nina recalls.

“I worked in call centres, retail shops, restaurants, and even sold insurance. Each job helped me to learn something about people, myself and getting the job done. I also learned a lot from my mom, a single woman who worked primarily in the public sector and helped bring out significant social change around the world.”

Entering the technology industry, Nina worked at Oracle and Siebel where she purposely transitioned her role from call-center management to managing and driving outside sales. Her role at both organizations evolved as she took on more and more responsibility and assumed growing responsibility for managing increasingly large and diverse teams of people and ever-expanding P&Ls for multiple business units.

At SAP, Nina was Senior Vice President of SAP’s Global Premier Customer Network (PCN). There she led both the PCN Center of Excellence and SAP’s Global Executive Advisory Board. During her eight-year tenure, she became an integral part of SAP’s Global Ecosystem & Partner Group which was charged with continuing to build and enable an open ecosystem of software and develop service and technology partners with SAP’s communities of innovation. She also served as the Global Chief Operating Officer for the worldwide Customer Education organization and had responsibility for driving more than half a billion euros in global education software and services revenue.

Following SAP, Nina joined Nike to lead the creation and execution of Nike Technology’s global strategy, planning and operations. Working at Nike, with its very different culture, changed her perspective and ultimately, her career.

“When I first went to Nike,” Nina says with a smile, “I had to get used to going to work in jeans! Believe it or not, it took a bit of personal flexibility. Nike taught me a lot about

Cover Story

‘

When it comes to the way that I approach each day at work, there are two main themes that I always emphasize: “optimistic leadership” & “business bravery”

‘

organization culture and perspective.” Nina adds that had she not taken the bold step of transitioning her career to the client side at Nike, she would not be in her current position, nor would she be able to fully understand and appreciate how to collaborate and support innovation initiatives for global companies.

Focused on Fostering Strategic Innovation In her current position, Nina is focused on fostering strategic innovation. NTT Innovation Institute Inc. (NTT i³) works with established enterprise companies looking to adopt new and evolving approaches into technology-first and digitally-driven businesses. Likewise, NTT i³ partners with early-stage digitally-native businesses are keen to expand their presence and establish competitive differentiation within their respective marketplaces. “As one of the most prestigious and largest ICT companies in the world,” Nina observes, “we have a huge opportunity and equally, a huge responsibility. There is always a bit of magic between those two and thankfully I have a fantastic team to enable us to navigate the course!”

Chiefly, NTT i³ accelerates the movement of innovation from an initial idea to commercial implementation. As Nina describes it, NTT i³ enjoys access to significant global infrastructure resources, investment funds, vast research knowledge, and trusted long-standing customer relationships of NTT Global which has its own software startup expertise and deep enterprise relationships.

“Working in this environment is incredibly challenging and stimulating,” says Nina. “It is so exciting.” Nina believes that an essential part of her job is to create a positive work experience for everyone involved NTT’s many initiatives to

ensure that each person feels valued, is able to give his/her best, and routinely have a chance to develop and enhance their opportunities for personal and professional growth. “I love to see people grow into new positions and contribute at a higher or more demanding level,” Nina says. “When that happens, I feel I’ve done a good job of encouraging or inspiring people to challenge themselves and continue to grow. Watching that happen is one of the most satisfying parts of my work.”

CloudWAN: Empowering Businesses with An Accelerated Path NTT i3 recently announced the global delivery of a product named called CloudWAN in partnership with Internet Solutions (IS), the leading pan-African telecoms services provider and NTT PC Communications (NTTPC), a network service and communication solution provider in Japan. A collaborative, worldwide development effort across several members of the vast NTT Group, CloudWAN combines both software-defined Wide Area Network technology (SD-WAN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) into one environment, enabling enterprise customers to deliver advanced services to the computing edge.

CloudWAN empowers businesses with an accelerated path to leverage new software easily and in an agile way at the “edge of their network”. This opens the door to a whole new level of business flexibility and enables rapid business transformation. “It is the very heart and soul of what NTT I³ does,” explains Nina. “CloudWAN delivers an enhanced user experience, powerful flexibility and extraordinary agility to NTT’s enterprise customers.”

Cover Story

“When it comes to the way that I approach each day at work, there are two main themes that I emphasize: optimistic leadership and business bravery. Optimistic leadership is about being more than a mindless cheerleader.

It’s about coming to work each day and being positive about yourself, your company, your mission, and your team – but making certain that you are backed by the facts.

Business bravery is another way of talking about the need for leaders to have and follow a clear moral compass.

Companies don’t necessarily have moral compasses.

Leaders must have one and use it to set the tone and guide the company at large. A lasting and innovative business can only be built on top of a base of meaningful relationships that reflect honesty and transparency,” Nina says emphatically.

Believer of People-Centered World Having worked as an executive at several top-tier technology companies in Silicon Valley, Nina has learned that people come to work searching for purpose and meaning, much as they do in their everyday lives. People ask themselves why the organization that they work for exists. She has observed that if they come to believe that the company’s sole mission is to make money for shareholders, they don’t find that attractive or meaningful.

As she puts it, “Most people are searching for a more noble purpose, which doesn’t necessarily mean something along the lines of “we are going to end world poverty”. Rather, it can be a software company saying, ‘our purpose is to connect communities via infrastructure’ or ‘our purpose is to empower innovation in technology so lives are improved’ or ‘our mission is to develop new technologies so that businesses and their employees can run more efficiently.’

People can go to work in those kinds of organizations knowing that they’re making a difference, that they have an opportunity to be part of the equation in a people-centered view of the world.”

Throughout Nina’s career, her goal has been to be part of an organization which is human-centered, that consistently puts its people first. According to Nina, organizations should strive to recognize that there is a certain way that people and their teams want to be treated. “People want to

know that they are essential to the creation of a business environment in which people have room to flourish as individuals and become the best they can be.”

A People’s Favorite Leading from the Front When asked what motivates her, Nina provides more insight into her own set of values. “Stan Slap, a bestselling author, always told me: ‘Be human first’. Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP frequently repeated, ‘Believe it. Achieve it’. I think and follow these pieces of advice daily. But the net is you do what you love, have fun every day and the rest will follow. Maybe it was my mom who told me that for the first time, but of course we all hear this or similar sentiments all the time. It’s so very true though. Never be beholden to a paycheck. Personal happiness and satisfaction are much more important.”

Nina has many mentors and has written more than once about it taking a village for her to show up and do what she does every day. Her family, numerous amazing women leaders she has worked with in the past, all the colleagues within NTT that she collaborates with every day and friends and colleagues, past and present, who are in her professional network are all sources of inspiration. She sees acts of professional heroism happen frequently. It all adds to increasing her enthusiasm and driving her forward.

An Open Innovation at the Core NTT i3 is founded on the principles of “open innovation” and the way that they create, share and learn from each other. This is a core premise of the company’s innovation practice, the belief that the best ideas come from and are developed by a well-curated and engaged global ecosystem of technologists and business experts. Nina considers

‘

A lasting and innovative business can only be built

‘

A Path Finder on A Mission Nina believes that there is no single path to success. Rather, many different and diverse paths can lead to the same outcome. She is a strong advocate of hiring people who are more accomplished than she may be. This means truthfully acknowledging her own strengths and limitations within the team. “Leaders need to know how to ‘find the better person’ rather than always needing to be the better person in their organization. It takes a mature, self-aware view of the world, and a lot of experience, to get to this place,” shares Nina.

on top of a base of meaningful

relationships that reect honesty and transparency

‘

Cover Story

Optimistic leadership is about coming to work each day and being positive about yourself, your company, your mission, and your team – but making certain that you are backed by the facts

‘

herself very fortunate to have an amazing group of individuals with which to engage, from NTT’s own operating companies, to the startup community of technologists and investors, to NTT’s global customers, to industry partners, and to their own executive advisory board. “How can you go wrong with a group like that,” Nina asks rhetorically. “I feel so grateful to play a small part in this incredible group of global leaders and great minds!”

Over the next year, Nina and her team are doubling down on hands-on innovation partnerships, investigations, and proof of concept development with their colleagues at NTT’s operating companies around the world. Their particular areas of interest include healthcare, sports, artificial intelligence, machine learning and IoT. In support of this, they are also reaching out to select startups with relevant technologies to explore and integrate, and customers with interesting challenges to explore and solutions to pilot.

Nina believes that these collaborations will not only enable NTT i3 to address real industry problems (as opposed to the theoretical explorations of traditional research), but also to create best practices, learnings, and IP that they can share with others. As Nina puts it, “We have the opportunity to meet and discuss these problems—and potential solutions—with executives who visit our Customer Experience Center (CXC) in Silicon Valley. Our executives integrate these problems with all their inherent challenges into their ongoing work and discussions with companies around the world from South Africa to Germany to Singapore and Japan. With the collaborative innovation approach and the building of technology proofs, all engaged parties benefit from taking ideas and solutions that were once only in the lab to real marketplace settings.”

The Philosophy of Compassionate Leadership Since her early days in Silicon Valley, Nina has seen first-hand a belief among many people that a high salary is sufficient motivation for top performance. Yet, as she’s come to realize, money is not necessarily the reason why people excel in their jobs. “Yes, people want to earn fair wages for their professional efforts,” Nina explains. “But more importantly, they want non-pecuniary benefits including recognition, validation, and working in an environment that fosters their individual growth.

I think we all want basically the same thing: a caring and nurturing setting in which we can contribute our best, share a sense of purpose—and enjoy a laugh or two!”

Nina’s advice for entrepreneurs is straight-forward. “For entrepreneurs, young and old, I believe that working towards a philosophy centered on compassionate leadership will bring both personal and professional success. Traditional leadership theories have told us for years that the best managers are the brainiest and most analytical—intentionally insulated from emotions. In fact, traditional leadership is often oriented toward a “command and control” mentality and approach. I disagree strongly with this notion. Rather, I believe that compassion fosters, supports, and promotes risk, the only environment in which real innovation and discovery can soar. Compassion, a cousin to empathy, enables us to understand other’s distress or concerns and explore ways of alleviating them.” Without this, it would be too risky to share new ideas at work. If employees are frightened or inhibited to present new ideas, innovation can never happen. Compassion builds trust in the workplace and most anywhere else for that matter.”

Picturing Beyond the Future Nina sees NTT i³ continuing to evolve as one of the premier innovation centers in the world. There are so many vibrant regional innovation centers and creative people around the world – Tel Aviv, Austin, NYC, Boston, South Africa, Singapore, and Poland to name a few and she thinks the team at NTT i³ is fortunate to have the opportunity to meet and work with many of these worldwide innovation centers, both on their own and in partnership with NTT’s operating companies, Nina says, “By learning and working around the world, and bringing executives and entrepreneurs from those areas to our offices to learn and collaborate, we get to see a picture of truly global needs and opportunities, and not just those that directly impact us within a 50-mile radius of Palo Alto.”

Company of the Month

The Global Business Performance Agency

Ruth Stubbs President

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Company of the Month

M

arketing is no longer the same as it was a few years ago. As digital media permeates into all aspects of our lives, straightforward and intuitive media, (for example, tweets, status updates, and videos) turn out to be increasingly useful. Such abundance of opportunities gives advertisers a significant advantage, yet it additionally drives higher client demand. Everything is going mobile, and clients require the services and content at their fingertips—anytime, anywhere.

This is where iProspect leads the market. iProspect is a global business performance agency – buying media and driving business performance for brands. The iProspect global team works across the network of 4,000 employees spread over 89 offices in 54 countries.

Founded in 1996, iProspect has since become part of the Dentsu Aegis Network, and now drives business performance for some of the world’s leading advertisers including Gucci, AccorHotels, DIAGEO and General Motors.

At iProspect, they not only have specialists who understand different avenues of digital marketing but also know how to bring it all together.

Keeping clients on the highest pedestal, they engage in a simple yet effective approach that helps them connect with consumers across every channel. Their pivotal goal is to grow and evolve businesses in a tangible manner.

A Passionate Leader with Rich Digital Experience As Global President, Ruth oversees

the worldwide iProspect proposition, business growth strategy and the development of focused initiatives and workstreams bolstered by the Dentsu Aegis Network.

Ruth has more than 25 years’ experience in Media and Digital Marketing. She joined iProspect Asia Pacific to administer the search and performance marketing service and quicken the digital media capabilities across the group in 2011. Before this, Ruth held leadership positions with Mediabrands and GroupM Interaction Asia Pacific in the capacity of founding CEO and put in 10 years with Euro RSCG Worldwide heading its digital

Performance.

It’s not what we do.

It’s who we are. media operations in New York, Hong Kong and Sydney.

During her five years as CEO for iProspect Asia Pacific, Ruth expanded the business from 40 individuals to more than 1,000, brought seven businesses into iProspect through acquisition and accomplished more than 50% growth in revenue YOY. Ruth considers herself fortunate to have been surrounded by leadership that supported her progression and strategy for the business over the years.

Obstacles we face on a daily basis are common to most people in our industry I believe. We are impacted mainly through navigating legacy business models in our ability to drive real growth in the digital economy. This impairs our ability to be agile and innovative most importantly. I believe the best way to navigate challenges

and obstruction is head on, with logic, honesty and a commitment to finding a solution together. I believe iProspectors share this approach. After all, we are evaluated on how we perform and deliver. It’s in our DNA. – shares Ruth.

Distinctiveness in Everything iProspect does The exclusivity of iProspect in every aspect of business has helped them understand client better and provide them with the best solutions possible.

Throughout these years, they have been – Bold: iProspectors are swift. They tackle their clients’ business challenges with digital strategies built on data driven insight and delivered via smart technology use.

Pioneering: iProspect drives a culture of innovation and a mindset of ‘constant curiosity’; they are an inquisitive culture always looking to challenge the status quo.

Ambitious: The iProspect team is always aiming for a better tomorrow.

As they move forward with awardwinning campaigns, top-of-the-line expertise, and highly motivated customer service, the team make sure that they never miss the mark and carve out newer possibilities.

Responsible: They believe in getting genuine results and delivering it the right way. Quality is of paramount importance; they take ownership of their actions and keep an open communication—iProspectors believe in treating people well at every level.

Collaborative: The team collaborates not only with the global iProspect

“We fundamentally believe that business (and brands) that support and prepare for change will be the winners in the digital economy JUNE | 2017 |

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Company of the Month

‘People, Values and Approach’ A significant amount of key assets has helped iProspect overcome every roadblock, but the most important ones according to Ruth are their people who have stood by them at every point, their network and values which are at the core of iProspect, and their approach to partnerships. We believe the key factors that help us are – Our people – because we are performance, we share the same values and aspire to a common ambition. Our network and our values – because they are reflected in the way we work and the way we treat each other and our partners every day. Our approach to partnerships – we believe collaborative, responsible, authentic partnerships result in positive shared business outcomes.

Getting Motivated at Every Corner Ruth has inspired numerous individuals throughout her life. Talking about inspiration, Ruth believes that learning something new every day and seeing how her teams address challenges inspire her. Also, the people

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she works with and exploring the possibilities of how she can influence change, drive progress and perhaps even impact the digital divide, excel her every day to do more and be the change she wants to see in the world.

A Wholly Digital Business Heading into Digital Economy As iProspect heads into a 100% digital

“

Our development roadmap is supported by our commitment to organizational agility – behind the scenes

“

network and Dentsu Aegis partners but also with their clients. They drive a culture of unity by working together to elevate their expectations, work, partner and client relationships.

economy, Ruth sees a lot of disruption ahead. The firm is already a 100% digital business and their role in influencing the direction their clients take becomes critical now. Emerging markets are leapfrogging the west in

the utilization of technology and platforms. And the team believes that this is also an area they will drive a lot of progression and innovation, from the role of voice, AI and machine learning – especially about mobile and commerce. Their capabilities, solutions and relationships have shifted from using data they collect and analyze to reflect media performance – to using data and technology to deliver better outcomes. These factors and more are shaping the direction of their business today and into the future.

Future of AI, ML and iProspect As there will be a lot more attention paid to automation (AI and ML), innovation pertaining to search (Voice, ecommerce and data) and omnichannel platforms for optimization – a more from iProspect is expected in these areas. “We continue to develop new solutions through smart application of our core product set, combined with aspects of our key partnerships (including our sister agencies, our clients and tech and media partners). In 2016, we launched Intelligent Content (through our partnership with John Brown) and Co Op (with Google). We will deliver more solutions that will address some of the biggest challenges our clients face,” adds Ruth.

Sanjeev Saxena:

Entrepreneur of the Month

A Social Entrepreneur Who Makes Things Happen oday, the healthcare vertical has drastically improved, but so have the causes and diseases. The importance of a high-quality health care is not a thing to think again, and it is of vital significance for a reduced price. Also, healthcare now demands early detection of diseases rather than specialized treatment in the late stages. The diagnosis time is also valuable as people are now more concerned about their time rather than their health. These problems have been here until Sanjeev Saxena stood and decided to change with POC Medical Systems.

The service that is being offered by POC Medical systems is above and beyond what exists in the health care system today. Founded by well-experienced technology and biomedical professionals, with a patent-protected Point of Care Testing product for Breast Cancer, POC Medical Systems is bringing accessible, next-generation diagnostics to market.

A Series of Moments that Led to the Formation Sanjeev was in India with his last company when he realized the significant gap between health care providers and patients. He saw hundreds of people lined up in front of prestigious institutes like Tata Memorial and All India Institute of Medical Sciences for weeks, far away from their villages just to get a chance to see the doctor. Sometimes this would come at the cost of their livelihood so that they could get a better chance of living life. Unfortunately, this pushed them into more debt which made Sanjeev think about how could he do something that would help change this situation.

Sandia Labs, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, and UC Irvine were developing a few independent technologies at the time. Sanjeev thought himself that if these could be married together, he could come up with the solution which would impact these lives and bring these diagnostics to them. It got him thinking about forming something revolutionary, and thus, took place the birth of POC Medical Systems four years back.

However, the pivotal moment that Sanjeev believes behind starting POC is when he was watching television and seeing children die due to lack of healthcare facilities. He then decided to create a lab in a box by which life-saving health care technologies can reach every human being in every remote part of the world.

The Diversity that Molded His Entrepreneurial Skills A social entrepreneur by birth and after founding several successful companies, Sanjeev was excited about getting new technology into the market that would help the masses. Sanjeev is a skilled Engineer, and more than 30 years of experience in the life-science & biomedical space has molded his entrepreneurial skills and helped him serve people’s lives.

Sanjeev’s goal has always been about developing or creating something that would create a lasting effect on people’s lives. Sanjeev believes that this can be made available to the 80 percent of the world who are not being served today. He wants to make medical treatments available to them, which can only happen by a distributive yet connected point of care (POC) systems at a little cost in the villages, cities, and slums.

The Journey which was a Tough Row to Hoe Starting POC was a tough row to hoe, but Sanjeev’s never giving up attitude helped him make it through. There were several instances when he could have opted something else, but changing lives mattered to him, and it kept him going.

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“If you believe in something, don't let someone tell you no”

Sanjeev Saxena, Founder & CEO POC Medical Systems, Inc

When POC was started; it took almost four years for him to raise money, and move forward. In the meantime, he had raised a small amount of money, but he invested it in the business and paid the salary of his team. He was not paying himself, and this made a difference. When the team noticed it, they believed in the cause and decided to follow his suit.

A Fight Against Breast Cancer At POC, Sanjeev and the team have designed a medical platform called Pandora CDxTM which allows the diagnosis to be brought to the masses in the major cities like Mexico City or farmers in Brazil or slums of Mumbai or villages in Rwanda. The first test on this platform, the MammoAlertTM is screening for breast cancer. The technology platform allows them to take the screening test to the masses. Today, the commonly used screening tool for women for breast cancer is using mammography. Less than 4% of the women get screening using mammography because it’s expensive and it’s not available, it’s got too many false positives and not a high accuracy or sensitivity rate. But with POC’s technology, they can go in and screen 1.6 billion women over the age of 40 around the globe essentially.

The team believes that they can test each woman at the cost of fewer than 2 dollars as compared to mammography which cost over 200 dollars. They have a technology platform that allows them to do something which was never possible before. Other than the breast cancer, they are also developing tests for other cancers such as cervical and oral and other diseases such as cardiac and infectious diseases.

JUNE | 2017 |

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The Never Give up Attitude that Kept Him Going According to Sanjeev, an entrepreneur is always willing to take a risk and change the world. Everyone who has fought with status quo and changed the world is an entrepreneur, and Sanjeev is no exception. It is one of the times when he was talking to his attorney Casey Mcglynn at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. The attorney told Sanjeev that he’d be willing to invest in his business, only under one condition, ‘Sanjeev won’t be going to give up.’ Sanjeev never forgot that.

Understanding and managing people is what he has learned over the years.

His father used to say, “Hey you need to work with people, and you need to hold them accountable and meet them daily to sit down and talk.” At the time, he considered his father wrong. But after Sanjeev had run few companies, he realized that his father was right. He constantly had to work with people and educate them on the vision and help them with problems.

“As a leader, you need to help with problems. My dad told me to roll up your sleeves and help them. You don’t need to be an expert in everything; you need to know enough, give the support they require. You have to be out there with your team in the field. Keep your team motivated then they perform,” asserts Sanjeev.

That Moment When A Client Became An Investor and A Close Friend While POC was in early stage, he was working in the evening delivery food. One particular time, he told one client, Amrit Raj that he would not be delivering the following week. Amrit was all right with it but asked the reason. Sanjeev replied that he has conference calls and meetings to attend. Amrit then asked him about the profession. When Sanjeev responded about what he does, Amrit got impressed and decided to invest in the company. Later they became very close friends.

Amrit tells me you know when you told me you’re on a conference call with an investor next week and you won’t be delivering food. I thought that was a bunch of baloney. What’s this delivery boy talking about? He then told about my previous companies, and that I’d been interviewed by various TV programs, etc. He googled me, and he found all the information. The next time I went to deliver, he said how did the conference call go. I said it went well. He asked if they are going to be investing. I said yeah, some amount to some extent. Then, he said I’d like to invest too, can I invest? I said sure. So, he and his family came in and invested 250,000 dollars, and that was the first major funding we received at POC, which translated later on to other investors to $21 million dollars. But he goes on and tells me this story about how he googled me and that it got him excited. He said that he didn’t believe me at first because a lot of people used to come and say things, – Sanjeev recounts.

That is not the only case; over the course, it happened with other clients as well. Sanjeev kept pitching this story to people, not as a pitch, but as a friend. It is always exciting for entrepreneurs to build their own company, but they need to believe in “not to give up if you believe in it go and take that risk.”

The Picture for the Better Tomorrow Sanjeev sees POC getting a lot more process-driven like other companies. “POC is still my baby and I hope it doesn’t change, as much as it becomes so process oriented that the innovation gets lost. Innovation is the ground reality of this company and has to remain that. Remembering what we in for, and to never forget the vision – to innovate and help others lead a better life. That’s what this company is about, while other changes are happening, that part will never change,” Sanjeev concludes.

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The

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Company Name

Management

Brief

A.T. Cross cross.com

Robert Baird CEO

A.T. Cross’s innovative products appeal to a growing market of consumers who desire distinctive accessories that enhance their image and facilitate their lifestyle.

Channelzero channelzero.com

Michael Taylor CEO

Channelzero is a creative agency providing services in advertising, marketing and branding.

Credit Sesame, Inc creditsesame.com

Adrian Nazari Founder & CEO

Credit Sesame is an educational credit and personal finance website that provides consumers with a free credit score.

E- Bisprint ebisprint.com

Paul Freeman Executive Chairman

E-Bisprint is a Managed Services Provider (MSP) who supports and simplifies your purchasing and operational activities.

Garçon Consulting Limited garconconsulting.com

Antoine Blum Co-Founder

If you are looking for a detail oriented team of social & digital experts with a social approach, Garçon is your partner!

Gifts Less Ordinary giftslessordinary.com

Amy Read Founder & CEO

Gifts Less Ordinary is an online marketplace selling unique and personalized gifts.

InnovatorsBox innovatorsbox.com

Monica Kang Founder & CEO

InnovatorsBox is an education smart business, pasturing creativity and innovation for professionals and organizations.

Interaktco interaktco.com

Redickaa Subrammanian CEO & Chief Strategist

Interakt is a top digital marketing company delivering strategic and creative digital marketing solutions for brand success through Communications inside out™.

iProspect iprospect.com

Ruth Stubbs President

iProspect is a global business performance agency – buying media and driving business performance for brands.

IQD AGENCY iqd.agency

Alexander Novicov CEO

IQD AGENCY is a content marketing agency that delivers the best results in branding, digital Marketing, web design, eCommerce and social Media, and authentic brand stories.

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Company Name

Management

Brief

Kagiso Interactive kagisointeractive.com

Priven Reddy CEO & Founder

Kagiso Interactive is a leading, Durban based, web and mobile applications development agency.

NetScore Technologies netscoretech.com

Raj Kellampalli Founder & CTO

NetScore Technologies is a one stop solution shop for Retail, Etail and Wholesale distribution verticals when it comes to NetSuite implementation services.

NTT Innovation Institute, Inc. (NTT i3) ntti3.com

Nina Simosko President & CEO

NTT Innovation Institute, Inc. (NTT i3) is the Silicon Valleybased innovation center for NTT Group, one of the world’s largest ICT companies.

OC Group o-cgroup.com

Patrick Clarke Co-founder & CEO

OC Group is an Integrated digital marketing agency with strength in social media marketing, digital marketing, below the line and events marketing since 2004.

PINK Diamonds pinkdiamondsboutique.com

Nicolas Jouvenceau Founder

PINK Diamonds is a diamond expert company specialized in the art and science of natural fancy colored diamonds.

Pixels Limited pixels.asia

Kevin Huang Co-Founder & CEO

Pixels is Asia’s leading multi-screen advertising technology company enabling advertisers and brands to reach their customers and marketing objectives online.

POC Medical Systems, Inc pocmedicalsystems.com

Sanjeev Saxena Founder & CEO

POC Medical System, Inc is a young company founded by well experienced technology and biomedical professionals, with a patent-protected Point of Care Testing product for Breast Cancer.

Prizm Media prizmmedia.com

Zeeshan Hayat CEO & Co-Founder

Prizm Media provide medicare and commercial DME leads for businesses looking to get new clients immediately.

QasiCo qasico.com

Ardi Arif Suden CEO

QuasiCo Creative Studio specializes in Graphic and Web Design for entertainers and entrepreneurial clients such as life coaches, non-profits, wahms, start ups, and midsize companies.

SalesChoice saleschoice.com

Dr. Cindy Gordon Founder & CEO

SalesChoice is the #1 Predictive and Prescriptive Sales Analytics Cloud Company.

The

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Company Name

Management

Brief

Searce searce.com

Hardik Parekh Founder & CEO

Searce is a cloud, automation & analytics led process improvement company helping futurify businesses.

Serial System serialsystem.com

Derek Goh Executive Chairman & Group CEO

SmartIScity smartiscity.eu

Blaz Golob CEO & Partner

The SmartCityPlatform connects all the core elements of a successfully managed city. It allows the SmartMayor to manage urban development, socio-economic development and technological development of the city, measuring and reporting progress in real time.

Spark Digital sparkdigital.co.nz

Nick Davies Founder & Director

Spark Digital help its clients to connect with their customers using amazing technology, solutions, partners and people.

Tagnos, Inc. tagnos.com

Neeraj Bhavani CEO & Director

Tagnos uses smart technology to improve client experiences, as well as improve Hospital productivity to get the most out of both assets and people.

The Sphere Agency thesphereagency.com.au

Michael Abdel Founder & Executive Creative Director

The Sphere Agency in Melbourne has been established for 17 years and provide out of the box creative, media and digital agency services.

Verizon verizonwireless.com

Lowell C. McAdam Chairman & CEO

Verizon help people, businesses and things communicate better.

W&S Group wsgroup-asia.com

Ibuki Shuichiro General Director

W&S group runs the largest panel sites in Southeast Asia such as “Vinaresearch for Vietnam”, “ Nusaresearch for Indonesia”, “Yimresearch for Thailand.”

YA yaengage.com

Chris Behrens President & CEO

YA is a marketing agency that assists enterprises to sell more of their products and services using their promotional engagement solutions.

Yocale yocale.com

Arash Asli Co-founder & CEO

Yocale is a local appointment engine that brings consumers and businesses together in every neighborhood.

Serial System is an integral component of supply chain, bridges the gap between our suppliers and manufactures, and shorten their time to market.

Entrepreneurial Talk

Necessary

Entrepreneurship

Ecosystem T

he craft of entrepreneurship is observing creative avenues for success. People are finding their path towards entrepreneurship in new ways.

Entrepreneurs put their “art” into the startup. There is no right way formulated to succeed as a startup, and that is why the people who start startups are characterized by flexibility, adaptability, and the ingenuity to do business out of an idea. Entrepreneurship does not occur in isolation or silos, but by collaboration and community and may require more than that.

Entrepreneurs throughout the world seek supportive environments that through contiguity provide collaboration, culture, and resources that encourage entrepreneurial pursuit and reward innovative mindsets. The administration of new ventures gets strongly influenced by something much higher than the business itself: the surrounding ecosystem. Essential constituents which are fundamental for a startup success encompass appropriate talent, solid marketing strategy, funding of startup and the most important is the supportive government ecosystem with better policies, laws, and regulations. Without them, it’s uncannily difficult to start a business. To thrive, entrepreneurship needs a supportive ecosystem of compromising factors ranging from infrastructure to financial access to supportive government policies. A

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government is the single biggest enabler for the entrepreneurial ecosystem, play a vital role in ease of doing business and supporting companies to start and expand.

The big question is, what exactly is an entrepreneurship ‘ecosystem’, a perfect blend of attitude, resources, and infrastructure? An article published in 2010 by Professor Daniel Isenberg from Babson College helped to boost the awareness of the concept. Isenberg outlined various constituents for the totality of an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

According to Professor Daniel, ecosystem should be built on regional conditions. Expand existing industries and build on their foundations, capabilities, and skills instead of trying to launch high-tech industries from scratch.

Beginning a new company is the easy part, and successfully expanding it is the challenge. The primary focus should be on encouraging sustainable, growth-oriented and innovative firms not just cultivating more start-ups.

At the center of an entrepreneurial ecosystem typically there is at least one, and usually many, ‘large established businesses,’ with important management functions as well as undertaking R&D and production activities. These firms will also be rich in technology. They play important roles in strengthening the ecosystem. They are ‘talent magnets,’

hiring large numbers of skilled employees, and many of them are recent graduates, irrespective of their field. They provide necessary training to their workers and allow them to advance up the corporate hierarchy. It is through this procedure that staffs who were initially hired for their technological know-how acquire management skills to become technology managers. This exemplifies a propitious resource for small firms. They are also a source of new businesses as few of their staff will leave to start their own company.

Government plays a decisive role in cultivating enterprise and innovation. Their role is to direct the public departments and agencies to focus on the problem and develop effective policies. It makes a good economic reason for governments to implement policies that encourage business growth since most of the business being conducted by new entrepreneurs. The major five ways in which government can have the highest positive effect are by making capital more accessible, promoting entrepreneurship, facilitating business education, protecting intellectual property, and reducing regulatory burdens.

Banks never directly engage or interact with entrepreneurs, and they help financial markets mature and indirectly impact the entire value chain of investing which makes them relevant for the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Bankers

make a lot of money investing in somewhat later stage technology companies, which in turn increases the confidence of early stage investors that if their investments grow, they would obtain the capital to fuel their expansion.

Most of the leaders are unsure about exactly how to start creating the programs, policies, and culture to draw out the entrepreneurial spirit that almost always is lurking beneath the surface. Leadership programs like BEEP are must in every region. The Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project is directed by Professor of Entrepreneurship Practice Daniel Isenberg, a renowned authority on entrepreneurship around the globe, and a former Harvard and Columbia Business School professor, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. It stimulates and supports entrepreneurship, fostering an entrepreneurship ecosystem in which development oriented entrepreneurial businesses can thrive.

Today, it’s crucial to understand the best practices in fostering entrepreneurial ecosystems, which helps inform the participatory and democratizing potential of technology.

In turn, that can lead to widespread adoption of digital technologies and services accompanied by a global surge in economic development.

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AMY READ: An Innovation Driven Entrepreneur

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he debate on - are entrepreneur born or made is unending. But it’s not untrue that the startup idea can be found anywhere, anytime. It’s just that you have to be ready to open the door when an idea rings your mind bell. One such entrepreneur is Amy Read who got an idea when she least expected it. Just after she had her third child, a friend sent her a gift from the UK that contained the most beautiful set of new baby clothes and shoes, personalized with her son’s name. She was overwhelmed with how much thought had gone into the gift, it felt so personal to her. All her life she wanted to be an entrepreneur, but the timing was never right. But maybe all moments in her life led her to that moment. She thought it was now or never and took the plunge. Next thing she knew was – she had ventured on her own with Gifts Less Ordinary, an online marketplace selling unique and personalized gifts.

Launched at the end of October 2015 in Singapore and Hong Kong, Gifts Less Ordinary has now expanded to Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the US. Life before Gifts Less Ordinary Amy grew up in North East Scotland, but spent most of her adult life in London. A little over six years ago, she moved from London to Singapore with her husband’s job.

Prior to moving to Singapore, she worked at BT (British Telecom), heading up their online sales and marketing department. With vast digital marketing experience of over fifteen years, Amy is all-time passionate about everything to do with online.

After moving to Singapore in 2011, she worked at Facebook for a short period, before taking up a role as the CMO of NMG Group, a global financial services company headquartered in Singapore. A happily married Amy has three young children who are all at school in Singapore.

A Unique Platform for Personalized Gifts Since the inception, Gifts Less Ordinary has proved to be a

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I have no doubt that we will face competition, but as long as we do things right by our Customers and Partners, I’m not worried we will lose them to the competition unique platform selling personalized gifts. Most gifts on their site come personalized and beautifully wrapped. They source luxury, hand-made gifts from the most creative businesses across the globe. All products featured on the website have been hand picked by their team. The site is lovingly curated, only featuring the best of the best, so the experience is likened to shopping in an exquisite boutique.

Personalization is at the heart of everything they do, from the products they feature to the customer service they offer, they are doing something no one in the Asian market does.

They offer over five thousand products on the site, and their typical products include Morse code bracelets, beautifully carved oak tablet and phone holders which can be personalized in any language, luxury travel mugs and cufflinks personalized with their child’s drawing, local Asian art, to cashmere baby blankets and rocking chairs all hand engraved with any message you like.

Catering to the needs of Well-aware Customers If there is one thing that has become widespread in retail – it is the move away from fast shopping to personalization.

Today, customers are looking for more than just beautiful products with exquisite quality, they want to purchase unique, one of a kind gifts, gifts that tell a story. A recent research study suggests that more than 50% of consumers expressed an interest in purchasing customized products, and one in two consumers feel that customized products make great gifts (Deloitte Research, June 2015). at a critical time in your growth can be detrimental.

“Resilience, don’t give up. Delegate, don’t get bogged down with admin. Recruit someone who can manage that for you and allow yourself more time to focus on the strategic aspects of the business. Surround yourself with a great team who share your energy, drive and vision. Only by working with others can you make great things happen,” shares Amy. The Key Values that Helped Amy Determination, hard work and trust have been the key things that have helped Amy on this entrepreneurial voyage.

Trusting your instincts, if something doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. In the early days, she listened too much to outside advice and now realizes no one has all of the answers, you have to believe in yourself and follow your own gut when making executive decisions.

Amy Read Founder & CEO Gifts Less Ordinary

Thus, to cater to all the needs and requirements of customers, Gifts Less Ordinary are coming up with the new products in the next few weeks that include glass wear, silk scarves and candles which can all be personalized with a bespoke message or name. They have also launched the first-of-its-kind Corporate Gifting platform that connects small creative businesses to the online Corporate Gifting market. With this launch, corporates are now able to individually personalize each gift with an individual’s name or initials as well as adding their logo, to create a truly personalized gift. Also, they can benefit from a minimum order quantity of ten units, alongside real-time visibility to the overall pricing and discounts.

It’s about Recruiting the Right People The most pressing challenge in every startup is about recruiting the right people and incentivizing them to make sure they stay with you on this journey. Losing good people

Amy’s Advice for Young Entrepreneurs Believe in yourself. Being an entrepreneur is hard, some days are harder than others. Never stop believing and always take time out to reward yourself, and what you have accomplished so far. I’ve never worked harder in my life, and as everyone says ‘welcome to the world of start-ups’.

But one thing I would say if it wasn’t so hard, everyone would be doing it, so just stay focused and keep going.

What’s next?

Amy and her team have proven that they have a unique concept, the demand is there and they are on the verge of becoming a highly profitable business. The company’s challenge is to scale, and scale fast. Ahead of that, they are in the process of restructuring the team, recruiting new members and prioritizing their efforts within each market in which they operate. Amy looks forward to further invest in her corporate business, which she recognizes has fast mover advantage and is not only unique to Asia, but globally too. www.giftslessordinary.com

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ARASH ASLI:

An Inventive and Avid Trailblazer

B

ecoming a strong leader is not an easy row to hoe, and it isn’t something that happens overnight, but it can be accomplished through discipline, and a commitment to do better every time. A strong leader isn’t born, as some people suggest; instead, one is shaped over time. He ought to be believable, proficient and visionary, with extraordinary relational abilities and lead the organization through the ebb and flow in the best path forward while leaning on the learnings articulated from experience. Being a maverick CEO and a resilient leader, Arash Asli is leading Yocale and its team to new heights while Yocale provides a great service all the time to the customers. Leading from the forefront of business growth, Arash has a unique blend of technology, business development, corporate, and finance experience.

It’s ok to fail, but learning quickly from the mistakes is essential

A Rich Experience Helping Diminish the Obstacles Before Yocale, Arash managed a half billion-dollar portfolio of big business and SMB business arrangements at Aptean as Executive Vice President of Business Solutions and Strategic Alliances. He likewise developed the firm’s biggest worldwide division to profitability and held roles including EVP Professional Services, Worldwide VP of CRM, and VP Sales Consulting. Perceived as a down to earth and transformational pioneer, his mastery spans numerous ventures including monetary administrations, assembling, social insurance, and land. Over the years, he has had the opportunity to travel over 600 thousand miles around the world which has given him a great global business acumen.

Arash studied engineering at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. He graduated with Masters in Business Administration with specialization in Executive Management from Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC which has contributed greatly to his career today. Arash has also been featured in several publications. Especially in 2013, when he was profiled by Business in Vancouver as passionate and “completely different”. Arash is also a

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prominent member of the Young Entrepreneurs Council, as well as the Forbes Technology Council, and has also contributed to the Huffington Post, Inc, and Forbes among others.

The Beginning of The Rise Having reached a senior administration position, Arash ended up wanting a different challenge for himself. Being an entrepreneur at the heart, his hunger to grow beyond where he was, proved impartial. He was halted at working towards a passion that he always had – to furnish little organizations with the tools and the advances accessible to the greater organizations, so they can also develop. After a skiing accident, Arash was frustrated with the difficulties of attempting to book a medical appointment. The need for a platform that could connect services to clients and make the whole process much easier was greatly needed and seemed

rational. Thus, the idea of Yocale (Your + Locale), a commercial center for arrangement based administrations, was born. Once Yocale was established, there was never looking back.

Creating Meaningful Relationships When it’s about local communities, a local business already knows how to create meaningful relationships and often knows their customers personally. By bringing social, has brought businesses and consumers together in one place while helping shape healthy, thriving communities.

Willingness to Learn and Seeking Feedback The willingness to learn and seek feedback is what Arash believes a key to success. “I knew that with hard work and dedication, I could overcome any roadblock. Through my experience and with the help of my team, I found a way to always find solutions to what challenges I was facing. In addition, I found that working on my emotional intelligence allowed me to be a better leader and help overcome challenges,” Arash shares his views on values that helped company grow faster than ever.

Arash’s Advice for Young Entrepreneurs Arash Asli Co-founder & CEO Yocale

mobile and local technology to local businesses, helping them connect with customers in new ways, Yocale takes it a big step further. Yocale’s vision has always been about empowering the small and medium appointment-based businesses to have access to business management and marketing tools that the bigger businesses have, but with an ease of use at an affordable price.

By incorporating social, local, and mobile technologies into company’s business management software and enjoining users of these software into a community based online marketplace - connecting the local consumers to local businesses, Yocale has achieved a lot over the period of course. It is all about leveraging the mobility of smartphones and local technologies, and equipping local business providers, which are mostly small businesses, with the tools that the rich people have, and Yocale has exactly followed it. Dedicated to help local businesses grow, Yocale

Stay focused on your dreams and desires, and keep your chin up because it’s a tough road ahead, but something that is well worth it, and very attainable if you stay the course.

Don’t take things personally and always be on the lookout to learn. Find your passion early, and do what it takes to get there. It's ok to fail, but learn quickly.

Continuing to Connect Local Consumers and Businesses Together Coming time will see Yocale connecting more local consumers and local businesses together. Arash strongly feels that together the team can help many more people that are looking for an easier way to connect with these servicebased businesses, and he looks forward to do this by being involved in local communities across Canada and the United States as well as other parts of the world. More businesses that Arash thinks they can bring on board in more areas, is an opportunity to also bring on board the people in those local communities. “I feel this snowball effect will be great for the businesses themselves, the consumers, and the community as a whole,” Arash encloses.

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CXO Standpoint

Smart Access T

he introduction of smart technology is gamechanging, and there is no doubt that it has been taking over the world by storm in recent years. It is reshaping how we live – from personal needs to social demands, many aspects of our day-to-day lives have become integrated and in turn, made easier.

‘To do more with less’ pushes us for greater efficiency in our daily tasks. People nowadays lead a busier lifestyle than ever before, creating even more of a need for convenience and multi-tasking capabilities.

Tremendous growth of the smart lock industry expected

Letting the delivery man, or part-time cleaner, or pet-sitter in remotely - smart access will facilitate the growth of the on-demand sharing economy as it lowers barriers and improves the experience for both host and guest.

A generation of smart locks has been developed in response to this. There are numerous brands out in the market, such as August and Kwikset, which promise the freedom to be where you want and yet still retain control over your home access. igloohome products do the same, and even work offline, which demonstrate how technology is pushed beyond boundaries to meet home owners’ needs.

Home automation is one sector that is receiving an increasing amount of interest. Home owners can now control different parts of their home with a single device the smartphone - even though they may not even be physically present in the home. Over a wide range of household applications, access solutions are an area that is expected to experience tremendous traction - the smart lock industry is projected to reach USD$25 billion in 2024.

These smart locks commonly allow for access sharing through various forms, such as bluetooth keys or PIN codes. These can be created from the smart lock mobile app, and easily sent to visitors across different messaging platforms, making it that much easier to grant access.

2 key areas of growth in the smart lock industry in particular are hospitality - with expected compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) year on year of 80% - and sales in Asia Pacific - with over 70% expected CAGR. As a growing smart access solutions provider, igloohome has built a strong focus on these 2 key areas that are projected to take off in the next few years.

Door locks, ultimately, are made to allow owners to manage their properties with a peace of mind. With this in mind, these virtual keys that are created can be set with a validity period which only allows your visitor in for a limited period of time. When the time period has passed, the virtual keys no longer serve their function. This ensures that the property remains secure.

Consumer Expectations on Smart Access

Aside from providing convenience, another feature of smart locks is their ability to store information, for retrieval when necessary. Access logs is something that many home owners find helpful - being able to retrieve the exact dates and times at which visitors enter their home gives them much greater visibility over their home access.

Beyond just going keyless, home and property owners are now expecting the convenience of remote management for home access. It is not uncommon that home owners find themselves wanting to let a visitor in even though they are

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not at home. Based on an internal study conducted, over 30% of consumers surveyed were interested in letting the housekeeper in remotely.

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Anthony Chow Co-founder & CEO Igloohome

Smart Locks in Hospitality The features of smart locks mentioned above are perfect for the hospitality industry, in which short-term visitors are a frequent occurrence, and there is a need to restrict access based on time.

Costs can be cut for hotels, hostels, serviced apartments and more being able to manage multiple guest entries from a single dashboard means a lot less manpower expended.

Vacation rentals too face the issue of key handovers, and the industry has been showing their support for the smart devices which promise to make check-in a breeze. Remote management of access eliminates hosting worries of key handovers at awkward hours, and has been very much welcomed by the big players in the rental industry. Airbnb, for example, has launched its Business Travel Ready badge - that indicates which property listings fulfil a certain set of criteria such as self-check in and fast wifi - and smart locks such as igloohome’s help hosts to attain the badge.

The New Chapter – Identity In this new age, convenience is key, information is essential, and efficiency is paramount. Smart technology has made a lot of people’s lives easier, and is likely to continue to do so. As for smart access, this is what the future is likely to be - identity. Being able to verify the identity of visitors who enter your home will bring about a whole new level of surveillance and peace of mind for home owners and rental hosts, thus making it an essential component of the smart home of the future.

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CHRIS BEHRENS: A Passionate Leader Transforming Ideas into Innovation

T

here are hundreds and thousands of books, articles, and blogs written about leadership daily. Any aspiring and ambitious person could pick them up and skim through them, or even read them closely. But, as a matter of fact, all the knowledge in the world can’t make a good leader. It’s only the care for the work and the people who collaborate with you that makes the difference. This is in large part just because people want to follow a passionate and agile leader. For innovation to flourish, organizations must create an environment that fosters creativity; bringing together multi-talented groups of people who work together in close collaboration— exchanging knowledge, ideas and shaping the direction of the future. Passionate about offering clients impeccable service and new, out-of-the box solutions to serve their promotional marketing programs, and creating a work environment that makes his organization an employee destination of choice is one such ingenious leader, Chris Behrens, President and CEO at YA.

Always listen to other people’s experiences and also take your own experiences and apply those learnings to new challenges and opportunities

The Pivotal Propelling Instance Back in 2000, at the age of 39, Chris had the opportunity to lead a business for the first time. It was a Software-as-aService (SaaS) business named eTrac that created, delivered and serviced 911’s emergency tow management software.

This was a strategic model where a venture capital firm acquired three businesses and needed someone to integrate them to create a new business. It was a significant and successful challenge, and the business was sold a year later.

That started Chris’ journey of growing and transforming companies and set him on the path of leading and guiding emerging organizations to ongoing success.

It also taught him how to maximize the confluence of marketing and technology and manage the break-neck speed of change. Back when Chris worked at eTrac in 2000, if one was lucky enough to have a mobile phone, that’s all it was – a phone. Chris is already imagining past today’s mobile/social-first environment to pursue new offerings in the marketing promotions space.

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A Sagacious and Adept Professional It is quite evident that the organizations led by creative leaders have a higher success rate in innovation, employee engagement, change and renewal. Chris took the helm of YA as the President and CEO in 2013. However, his journey to joining YA and helping the company achieve a strategic and financial turnaround began 17 years ago as he first executed business strategies to “turnaround and grow” companies. Before coming to YA, Behrens was at Baird Capital Partners. There, he was hired to develop and execute acquisition and investment strategies to build a company in the digital marketing services industry, serving as CEO and/or Board Member of the acquired company. Chris’ diligence at Baird led to an opportunity to represent banking lenders as their new Board member of YA, serving as Chairman starting in April of 2013.

Previously, Behrens was the President and the CEO of SourceLink, which, under his leadership, grew to become the fourth-largest privately held marketing services company in the United States. He worked to provide sales, marketing, operations and management leadership to extend SourceLink’s direct marketing capabilities to its customers by integrating direct marketing’s accountability, brand building impact and e-marketing interactivity. Prior to SourceLink, he was President and CEO of ETrac, his first platform for genesis as a leader. Behrens also held various management tools, moved the technology footprint to the cloud, reduced inefficiencies in processes, and recovered lost billings through improved contract management.

A tangible example of how this has positively impacted the business is a new client-friendly customer proposal process.

The increased rigor in management and tracking has dramatically shortened the time to close a deal – from an average of a 6-9 month sales cycle to as short as 10 days from lead generation to contract signing.

Learn from the Learner Himself The ability to think creatively to solve problems and motivate people is centered on common objectives. In today’s competitive environment, being smart is table stakes. A CEO today needs to show respect, listen to others, and have integrity to do what’s right.

Chris Behrens President & CEO YA

positions at GE Financial Assurance, including Senior Vice President of Sales and Client Marketing. He began his career at OAG, a global publisher of airline and hotel information.

“When I first started at as CEO of YA in 2013, I was the 7th CEO in 12 years. Later, I learned that some of the staff members referred to me as “Next….” People who had been here for decades questioned what I know about YA and about promotional marketing. And, it was a legitimate point. I had to prove my worth to the team and I knew that I had to earn their trust, not just expect it,” says Chris. The way forward was a shared vision that would succeed as a result of working together, and it’s manifestly working.

Pioneering Services and Solutions Foreseeing Innovation and Growth As YA continues to innovate, the marketing promotions company is enhancing its client-centric approach to leapfrog the efforts of competitors. YA’s efforts are focused on easing the consumer journey so that they can provide and deliver ongoing engagement from clients to buy more without the concern of volume or scale.

The team, led by Chris, has successfully streamlined sales and account management, the contact center and promotion operations. YA has also invested $10.5M over the last three years in technology that transformed the company’s ERP, contact center, financial and HR systems and workflow

Chris envisions transforming and scaling YA both through acquisition and organic growth, and enhancing the career opportunities for the people who work at YA with new product offerings and capabilities. The team will continue to push the needle on technological advancements, applying them at a faster rate to meet their clients’ marketing requirements using a business platform that can scale.

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DEREK GOH: A Tenacious and Determined Leader

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o achieve colossal of triumph, you need to put your heart and mind to that great work. But what else you need is to hang in there no matter how bad it gets.

You need to continue doing what you do in a defined way, even though you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

And only then through the ages of nightmares, you will emerge as a winner. Among all the successful leaders who remained constant in their views, passion and dedication and gave all their efforts to make their dream come true, one is Derek Goh. Fight from the Deep End of the Pool Goh was among the ones whose life is a true rags to riches story. Juggling between work and studies to bring additional income for the family was a tough row to hoe. It was the time when he was thrown into the deep end of the pool, where one has to either sink or swim. But this early taste of hardship came with many life lessons, which later helped Derek shape his life and work philosophy. From a young age, he learned to be pragmatic and opportunistic. He knew his strengths & weaknesses well and it always reminded him that he was in control of his life and could change his path anytime and in any shape he wanted. Derek was in his late teenage years, when he joined the Navy to serve the next eight years. During that time, he seized the opportunity for self enhancement, and furthered his studies. There he earned an NTC certification and developed a passion for engineering and IT. After that, he left the Navy to start his own electronics businesses.

A Humble Beginning After the Navy, he started trading electronic components.

It was a humble beginning – one man, one telephone, and one fax machine located at the back of his wife’s florist shop.

It was a solo-man operation: he was the salesman, delivery man, driver, manager and the boss. At that time, electronics manufacturing industry was growing rapidly in Singapore, and gradually his business began to flourish. His confidence was improved and it led him to establish Serial System in

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Never force a succession unless the candidate is adequately prepared and aligned to the company’s vision 1988. However, the early years of his startup were as difficult as his life back then, and there was no absolute certainty over the future. Life was never easy for Derek. He faced many challenges and obstacles in his path, but one thing kept him going – he was determined to succeed.

When Persistence Paid Off Initially, Derek had no reputation nor backing, thus no supplier wanted to entertain him. He kept his rounds of approaching alive and the persistence paid off. Soon, he managed to win their trust as well as established a close rapport with them. Within the first year of inception, Serial System started to show revenue and the business grew.

Serial System was later listed on the SESDAQ board of the Singapore Exchange in 1997 and was subsequently promoted to the Mainboard of the Singapore Exchange in July 2000. Being listed, provided Derek with funds for rapid expansion enabling them to widen their geographical

coverage to even second- and third-tier cities in China. As a listed company, they also gained greater credibility among their customers and suppliers. Having more than 6,000 customers, Serial System is now the largest electronics distributor listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange and is among the leading companies in Asia for the distribution of electronic components.

When the Mistake Became a Lesson!

Although, Serial was growing rapidly, there came a mistake

Dato’ Seri Dr Derek Goh BBM Founder, Executive Chairman / Group CEO Serial System Ltd

which became a learning lesson for Derek. As a part of Serial’s succession plan, Derek decided to step down from his position as CEO and became the Chairman. But it didn’t go according to the plan. Within 2 years, the company suffered huge financial losses and the revenue plunged from a high of S$200 million in 1998 to S$80 million in 2001.

Serial lost about S$40 million in cash, which had taken Derek years to accumulate. “I knew that I had to take over the helm and restore the company that I had built with my sweat and blood. As Serial was already a listed company, I had to endure scrutiny from the media, pressure from the shareholders, and queries from our customers, suppliers, bankers and SGX. It was the lowest period in my life, but I never gave up. Serial was my baby, and I had to see this through. From this experience, I learn an important lesson – Never force a succession unless the candidate is adequately prepared and aligned with the company’s vision,” asserts Derek.

Wide as the Sky Customer Base Today, Serial System has 53 offices and 13 warehouses across key Asian markets, to ensure maximum support provided to their customers. Serial System’s major suppliers include Texas Instruments, Broadcom Ltd, ON Semiconductor, Fairchild Semiconductor, SK Hynix, OSRAM Opto Semiconductors, TE Connectivity and Fingerprint. In Year 2014, Serial System entered a new chapter of growth by diversifying into the distribution of consumer products. It’s current portfolio of consumer products consists of household appliances and lifestyle goods, including camera accessories, printer accessories, timepieces, motherboards and hard-disk drives. Major suppliers of consumer products distributed by Serial System include Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Asus, Apple, Canon, Samsung, Advanced Micro Devices and Fossil.

Hiring, Training and Retaining Talented Staff Every CEO needs to possess foresight and strategy, so they can able to make difficult decisions for the sake of long-term gains for the company – even if these extend beyond their core competencies or will result in temporary setbacks. One challenge that every company faces is the cultivation of their brand loyalty. Derek believes that a key part of this is hiring, training and retaining talented staff whose visions and values are in line with the company’s.

“Companies such as Serial, which have a diverse international clientele, will also need to be mindful of new developments in the political sphere so as to mitigate any impact on corporate activities,” shares Derek.

Derek’s Advice for Young Entrepreneurs “Identify and build on the unique selling points that you can offer to the masses, then tailor your approach to each client as needed. As more businesses in the region expand and/or go digital, it is also important to adopt a savvy approach to fund-raising in order to attract new partners and grow a respected global brand. Always ensure that you have strong internal structures in place to manage your company’s operational costs, so the business does not fail before getting off the ground.”

Awaiting Future of Glorious Days Derek sees Serial as even further on its way to consolidating its position as a global leader in the distribution of semiconductors and other electronic components. In order to achieve this, Serial will stay abreast of technological trends so it can expand into highvalue segments such as security and surveillance, mobile devices and enterprise cloud solutions.

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Editorial Desk

WHAT TURNS A PERSON INTO

CEO

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hat makes you think that when you order a team of hundred people to do a certain job, they will do exactly what you say? Why do you think all of them should follow you? Why should each one of them risk their professional life on you? Even if they follow you what are the chances you are taking them on the right path?

becomes a million times harder when everyone is counting on you. Handling the pressure and keeping the senses on its peak are important at those times.

Realistic: Many people think that a CEO must be optimistic, but very exceptional people will understand that, irrespective of how well one has studied pros and cons, there always remains some probability of failure. One must Everyone dreams to become a leader, a successful leader.

But very few strive to be the one. Learning in same school, keep that in mind, so that he could choose the best strategy earning the same degrees, playing the same sports, still very and must also be equipped with a plan he would be using it when hit by failure. Hence, being realistic rather than being few of them become leader and the rest of them become optimistic adds more chances in becoming a successful followers. Every employee in a company is at the most CEO. suitable designation, if it is true, what makes a CEO to command everyone? The leadership quality is the most mandatory thing, but it takes many more qualities than that. Neutrality: The most important and most forbidden quality nowadays is emotional neutrality. People, who believe in, Courage is other important thing, but for being a CEO, many other professional skills are in charged. The following ‘if you think it’s going to work, it will work,’ are most are few underrated but crucial attributes required to become likely to fall. Deciding that you need to start a company or lead a bunch of people in the spell of rage has probability of a CEO or to hire a CEO for the company. regretting their decisions after the effect of the spell. Also as a saying for Godfather goes- ‘never involve your emotions Decision Maker: Every successful CEO will agree that in business, it affects your judgment,’ one must be able to making a decision becomes very difficult when everything depends on your words. Deciding which strategy to follow, think above what he feels about the outcome. One must be calm enough to observe the market, patient enough to which deal to close and what should be on the priority list, acquire the required skills and wise enough to start the journey when the market needs him most.

DECISION

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Risk Taking Factor: Here is another controversial thing they say about entrepreneurs - sometimes they need to risk everything. This sentence is partially true, because knowing the meaning of ‘Risk’ is very important here. If people think that, “If the result of an act depends purely on ‘fortune’, it is called risk,” then people are not using “Risk” with the context of business. Maximizing the probability of wining and hoping that everything will go according to the calculation and executing the act is “taking Risk.” As winning is never guaranteed, risk taking factor affects

greatly on the success of a CEO. Hence, taking risk is mandatory but great business people never risk everything, that’s why it’s called Business, not Gambling. A good strategist always keeps his assets safe to use during the calamities.

enough to make the company successful and win the respect of people in the market. But for the people of the company, with the above materialistic characteristics, having 3 C’s is very important - Credibility, Competence and Caring. People must trust you, your words and your way of doing business. Even if things go wrong, people must be by your side instead blaming you. ‘Having good relations is the key to have good to gain the 3 C’s. As the saying from ‘House of Cards,’ goes, “Generosity is some kind of Power,” you must be generous enough to make the people believe in you.

“Give Respect and Take Respect,” is the secret to gain Respect. Loyalty of people is the most difficult and highest of the medal a Leader can achieve. As people follow leader in all aspects, loyalty is also a quality that people acquire from the leader. For that the CEO must be loyal to the company, to its people and to his work, because of this, irrespective of the success company gets, the CEO wins the Judgment: Having a good judgment is as important as loyalty of his people. Also, promoting loyalty is another having leadership qualities. And the secret to make the kind of skills which includes- respecting and promoting old judgment better is to learn continuously. employees, fulfilling personal demands of employees, celebrating success of company with all employees, giving The success of a CEO is measured by two parameters- what credits to all, etc. people in the market thinks about him and what people in his own company thinks of him. The above qualities are JUNE | 2017 |

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DR. CINDY GORDON: A Visionary Change Agent Making Sales a Science

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great leader often possesses the ability to see beyond the foreseeable future. Dr. Cindy Gordon, Founder & CEO of SalesChoice, a SaaS company, is one such leader. She did her research thesis on Smart Card Technology over twenty years ahead of its introduction in North America. Her entire career has been seeing what is possible with technology and helping businesses and the community take advantage of new possibilities for securing a competitive edge. Cindy has truly stayed ahead of the market adoption curve.

Life Before SalesChoice Cindy’s career began with teaching English and drama at the age of 21, before she moved to the Information Technology domain during her Masters. She founded an IT strategy firm, called InfoTech Consultants, before joining Trigon Systems Group, a consulting firm founded by Futurist IT Guru, Don Tapscott. In this role, she was primarily leading strategy innovation projects bringing business, process, people and technology into alignment. She then moved to Citicorp as a VP to run IT Client Services and later joined Nortel Networks as Head of Global IT Strategy and Architecture.

It was followed by 8 years in diverse roles at Xerox, where she finished her career as a Senior Director and General Manager running an outsourcing LOB. She also started her doctoral studies during this tenure, and completed her dissertation on Collaboration Commerce and Social Networks, advancing the field of Innovation Ecosystem research, and validating the value of collaboration and depth of social ties in optimizing top line revenue growth.

Subsequently she wrote the first book on Collaboration Commerce, with the Founder of WebEx, Subrah Iyar.

Cindy joined Accenture as a Partner, running the NorthEastern Strategy and Change Transformation practice. After three years of extensive travel, she saw the dynamics of the internet market’s growth and excitement. She convinced three experienced VC’s that they needed her. After spending three years with them, she founded Helix Commerce International Inc, a strategy and technology innovation firm that specialized in innovation, collaboration commerce and social media, working with brands like CIBC, Davis and

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My entire career has been seeing what is possible with emerging technology to help business and our community to secure a competitive edge.

We are here to help our world advance and share our knowledge to evolve human intelligence Henderson, IBM, LG Electronics, Microsoft and TD Bank in designing and building out large-scale innovation transformation programs. Over the course of her career, Cindy has written 14 books and is working on 15th one.

Beginning of a New Dawn Cindy’s holistic experience helped her to start SalesChoice Inc. when she saw that 30-60% of sales professionals in the middle tier failed to achieve their sales plan while 30% of sales professionals suffered from attention deficit disorder.

She felt that the use of AI or Machine Learning could help sales professionals to focus on doing the right things. So, she spoke to Dr. Yannick Lallement, Chief Data Scientist, SalesChoice, Jim Cloughley, and Michael Weinberger, CTO of SalesChoice, to explore the “Fit” of artificial intelligence to crack this problem. They thought it could, and wrote a patent on AI methods, which could guide sales professionals to focus on sales opportunities rather than chasing duds.

After robust research validated in brands like Accenture and Intel and large Telco’s, they have now learned their AI proprietary ALGO can predict the future with up to 95% of

accuracy to solve prioritization issues, predict forecasts more accurately and alter future outcomes, with actionable insights.

A Unique Organization with Unique Products SalesChoice Inc. *(SC) specializes in Cognitive Sciences and Artificial Intelligence and helps organizations advance the growth of sales top line revenue and improve sales productivity by 20-30% using augmented intelligence.

Today, the company has four products: Predictive Analytics, Perspective Analytics, Propensity to Purchase and Data Science as a Service (DSaaS), where they are tackling early

Dr. Cindy Gordon Founder, CEO SalesChoice Inc.

Predictive Churn Solutions. SalesChoice is a certified ISV partner of SalesForce but has an open API, which can easily integrate to other CRM platforms too.

Additionally, SC helps to improve sales forecasting accuracy by 20-50%, and also gives insights on customer’s intention to purchase from sourcing diverse signals, inside or outside the CRM. The company also helps its clients solve data science challenges using AI/ML and advanced data science methods. Cindy comments, “Our advanced AI and augmented intelligence methods can release trillions of $ into the global economy by enabling customers to focus on the right opportunities or identify the best fit to sell to.

A real strength of SalesChoice is our predictive sales forecasting accuracy. The challenge is we are in an emerging market, where sales professionals are learning to trust advanced AI driven data sciences to guide them. This is the First Augmented Intelligence Sales Generation in the history of mankind.”

Strong Foundation of Great Values As a CEO, integrity and transparency in all actions, and appreciating diversity are critical success factors. “The most pressing challenges I face as a CEO daily is our agility due to rapid demands and being obsessed with customer success. Capitalization is also a challenge, pioneering in AI, as many VC’s are unfamiliar with these approaches. So finding the right VC is key to our growth strategy to further capitalize the company, now that we know we have a proven ALGO that is uncannily accurate,” says Cindy.

The key to being a successful CEO, as per Cindy, is stepping back, reflecting and learning. She is a big believer in fact-based leadership and continuous improvement, learning from her deep skills in Quality & 6 Sigma developed at Xerox. During her leadership in SalesChoice, she has seen instances where customers decided not to proceed with a software installation, even when the AI facts demonstrated value. She adds that some decisions are out of a CEO’s control but one must graciously accept a customer’s decision and be genuinely thankful for the customer experience; perhaps why creating a learning culture is always top of Cindy’s mindset.

Cindy’s Advice to Young Entrepreneurs Be agile, reflect daily, have many mentors, trust your gut, don’t overthink, make mistakes and learn from them, make decisions based on facts, learn as much as you can, listen to your team, be a value-centered leader and practice mindfulness. A family is your anchor; hold them close always. Without trusted friends and family standing for your success, one is not always as grounded in making value-based decisions. Stay healthy as a healthy mind must have a strong body to handle the demands of entrepreneurship. Life is not a marathon; it’s a journey.

The Future Roadmap The field SalesChoice is in is Big Data, Cognitive Sciences and Augmented Intelligence. There are very few companies doing what they do, few of which have been acquired lately.

Cindy has a big vision and will need more capital and the right talent to keep climbing at the speed the company is learning.

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HARDIK PAREKH: Helping ‘Futurify’ Businesses

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lot of businesses start daily. Few survive beyond the initial start-up euphoria, and even fewer are able to thrive within this ever changing industry landscape. The one quality which sets the leaders of the thriving ones apart is the ‘ability to stay persistent’ as they navigate the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey.

They are steadfast while being humble and open to any course corrections on the way. They value the trust which their employees and customers bestow on them and constantly work towards maintaining it with integrity.

Technology is changing rapidly. Traditional business models are being disrupted and today’s leaders need to constantly adapt to newer business models. As businesses work towards staying relevant for the future, visionary CEO’s are constantly looking for ways to fundamentally transform their own businesses leveraging new age technologies and provide even greater value to their customers. To be the most trusted partner helping businesses navigate their futurification journey while disrupting his own enterprise by constantly identifying better ways of doing things, is how Hardik Parekh, Founder and CEO of Searce defines his organization’s vision.

Hardik’s Background: After successfully completing his Master’s in Industrial Engineering from the Texas A & M University, Hardik started his professional journey as a management consultant based out of Seattle providing Business Process Improvement consulting to several large enterprises including 10+ US State Department of Transportation. As a firm believer in the opportunities which the growing Indian economy had to offer, Hardik championed the ‘Reverse Brain Drain’ cause while in US before finally settling back in India in 2004 and founding Searce - which he has successfully molded into one of the fastest growing cloud, automation and analytics led business transformation company in India and APAC. Hardik addresses any problem thrown his way with a futuristic approach. His ability to identify emerging trends, quick adaptability to newer business models and visionary ideas on

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Don’t be late, time to transform is now!! how technology can fundamentally transform the way people work and live, quickly earns him a ‘Futurification Consultant’ title wherever he goes.

Under Hardik’s Leadership, Searce has grown to be more than just a consulting company which helps ‘futurify’ businesses leveraging cloud, automation and analytics.

Searce’s services are aiding businesses to Reimagine ‘what’s next’. Redefine the ‘how’ & Realize the ‘next now’ while internally developing a culture of continually experimenting & challenging the status quo.

An example of how Searce innovates while believing that best practices are over-rated is it’s “Beyond Consulting” practice which Hardik defines as “Our unique philosophy of delivering ‘real value’ to our customers and not just another 80-page PDF document. We sit very close to the execution layer which allows us to focus all our efforts in driving true

business transformation for our customers. Searce’s growth from a couple to over 1200+ enterprise customers in the last decade is a testament to the value this boutique beyond consulting firm is able to offer to its customers.

Searce specializes in helping businesses move to cloud, improve on cloud, build on the next generation cloud and truly adopt SaaS solutions driving change management.

Some of the core service offerings include Cloud automation and Analytics Advisory, IaaS; PaaS, SaaS-

Hardik Parekh Founder & CEO Searce

Migration & Deployment; Change Management & Process Improvement Consulting, Cloud Solutions & Platform Engineering; Robotic Process Automation, and Business Process Management. Searce’s customer base across various sectors such as Logistics & Transportation, RetailManufacturing, Oil & Gas, Technology start-ups has benefited from Searce’s ability to drive collaboration across IT and Operations, automate business processes leveraging GSuite and Google Cloud Platform and build next generation technology solutions to solve real business problems leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Hardik’s Advice to the Budding Entrepreneurs - Hardik advises entrepreneurs should never stop experimenting. It is never easy for an entrepreneur and being persistent is the most important quality a business person should develop.

He says, “Advancements in technology are changing the

industry landscape for good. The ‘everything on-demand’ industry is helping bubble up individual creativity. Very soon, all one might need to launch his or her own start-up is a great online presence strategy, a skill/product which drives value & a good marketing plan. Times could not be more exciting to go out there and experiment with that crazy idea of yours! But most importantly, as you focus on reaching your ‘particular’ destination, don’t forget to enjoy the journey!! While he is firm about his idea’s, he is not rigid and is always open to suggestions for improvement and this is what he suggests others to do.

Hardik’s view on the future - The world is getting more and more connected, computing power becoming less expensive and the era of ‘everything as a service’ is becoming more prevalent. This is a phenomenal change as compared to anything that has ever happened before businesses that adapt have a strong chance of surviving and riding this change to their advantage and the ones that do not, may no longer exist. For all the businesses who want to just move to cloud because everyone is, he says,”Moving to cloud is not going to transform your business, it will just enable the transformation. We help our clients realize and more so truly experience that cloud is more of a *strategic growth engine*. A strategic growth engine that accelerates innovation and helps you transform your business. This is a very different position that the cloud has taken. ” This is the beginning of the end of the ownership era and businesses need help to embrace everything as-a- service business model, which is a stepping stone to stay relevant for the future. Paying for access versus buying permanent licenses will help the transformation from exclusivity to ubiquity and prevent the wastage of resources that come with the ownership culture. He adds, “It’s not just about sharing files versus sending, its about changing the business model to apply the same principles to your business and think about how a TV, phone, mobile, car, printers & even a WC manufacturer can create a growth engine by creating new products & services - and Searce can help enable that for your business. ”

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MICHAEL TAYLOR: A Leader Turning Struggles Into Success

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vidently, one of the most important characteristics that every CEO should possess is finesse. Anybody can read a book and understand what the role of a CEO involves. However, to be a genuinely successful CEO, you need the finesse to build a culture that not only wins, but wins regularly. You need to be able to create total organizational clarity and foster a cohesive culture. This requires softer skills that often go unstated. A pressing issue for all CEO’s to contemplate is how to build and sustain an incredible culture. Each person in the company needs to be an advocate for the business.

One such prominent personality is Mikey Taylor, CEO of a creative platform for advertising, marketing, and branding Channelzero. The branding expert, Mikey has experience working with major MNCs such as PepsiCo, Lion Nathan, Bacardi, and McDonalds.

Journey of an Inspirational Innovator Mikey’s career started within the legal profession in the United Kingdom, and it wasn’t long, before he realized that it wasn’t the career he wanted so he switched to a sales and marketing role with Pepsi. Whilst he was working at Pepsi, he was approached by two archetypal Australians who were about to launch a juice brand in Australia. They were brash, savvy and a lot of fun, so he decided to join their clan and moved to Sydney in 2003. He used his expertise in sales and marketing to help grow the startup juice brand, Nudie. His adventure with the juice company saw the company grow from start-up phase to one of the Australia’s largest juice brands.

In 2008, he saw a gap in the creative agency landscape ─ he noticed that many agencies were focusing on award winning work, rather than on creative work specifically designed to deliver sales results for their clients. This was the premise upon which he partnered with Francis Callanan to develop Channelzero. Their work at Channelzero is predicated upon the idea that they must change results for their clients businesses.

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No matter the challenge, we’ll nd a creative way to solve it Mikey believes creativity is the only legal unfair advantage that any company can exercise over their competitors.

Therefore, at Channelzero he focuses on the return from creativity. Channelzero’s philosophy is that if they manage their IP well and produce great advertising - they will genuinely change results for their customers leading brands.

Channelzero has grown to become one of the region’s largest creative agencies. They are trusted with the advertising accounts for some of the world’s most iconic brands. They have also started a number of their own brands through Channelzero, to illustrate that they practice whatever they preach.

Strive to Thrive Mikey was impelled to become a CEO of his own business by ‘large agency frustration’. He had worked with many of the big advertising agencies as a client, and he found the process of dealing with some of them deeply bureaucratic,

costly and focused on the wrong outcomes. They would have their clients spending hours over results tables with endless metrics about reach, pouring, TARP weights, CPC’s and so on. These struck him as vanity metrics, designed purely to baffle the less discerning and to justify excessive spending. He remembers intellectualizing that surely the only metric that really matters is whether they are growing their client’s business each month. Subsequently, he created a Channelzero model for creativity that is based on simplicity.

Envisioning Growth Through Acquisitions Channelzero has used their creative agency to extend their business operations into ownership of a few popular brand names; Cor de Coco, Foxy’s, SuperCubes, Newtons Nation, Super 7’s Rugby and BBQ Mudd.

Mikey and his team plans to expand Channelzero through the twin engines of organic growth and the acquisition of high quality agencies with unique offerings. Their organic growth will be driven by their first global product, a free brand DNA analysis tool. This will give them unparalleled data that will be used for a white paper on internal branding metrics.

Recently they have also completed two tactical acquisitions, a retail agency & a content agency, that add new services and expertise to their business. These acquisitions have been very successful in increasing the depth of relationships with their clients, allowing them to use the agency across a broader range of projects. For the foreseeable future they will seek opportunities to acquire agencies that are a good partnership for them.

Mikey Taylor CEO Channelzero

Channelzero’s IP is designed for their clients to simply: Get noticed - Get remembered - Get bought - Get bought again. As a matter of fact, Mikey’s early career in law has had a profound influence on his work as an advertising agencys CEO. He has seen how some of the biggest global law firms control their margins, systemize their workflow and plan for the best resources. He took this learning into Channelzero, and to set up the business to be efficient, but without the need to focus so heavily on the dreaded ‘billable hour’.

Advice for Ambitious New Entrants Mikey asserts, “50% of businesses fail in the first year and only 4% survive to make it to 10 years. So, if you just want a happy and peaceful life, with a nice little house in the suburbs you should get a good job and work for someone else. If however, you’ve got some fight in your belly and you want to change the way things are done then buckle up because you’ll be tested. Your resilience, tenacity, energy and your closest relationships will all be tested. Be sure that’s a challenge you are up for. If it is a challenge you want to tackle, make sure you value people over profit on the journey. You have to aim for happiness first and success second.”

This means that a properly defined brand culture is an essential element, and sadly it’s too often overlooked. As an entrepreneur, it’ easy to get caught up thinking that the next deal, the bigger house, the faster car, etc. is what’s going to make a business successful. But that’s really not the case.

Mikey discovered that if an individual wants to be genuinely successful, he/she needs to treat themselves kindly. Make time for the things you love.

As energetic and pragmatic leader as Mikey already is, he envisions, “My ultimate goal is to be the ex-CEO of Channelzero, in that I want to build a business that has a strong legacy long beyond me. I aim to have some fun along the way and to engage and inspire others by always being the most positive person in the room.”

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MONICA KANG: A Passionate Community Builder

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he destined leaders are the ones who create their own pathways when they are stuck on something. One such passionate leader is Monica Kang, who was once stuck onto something she thought was her dream career, only to find out later that creativity was calling her for something bigger and better. Her calling to help create the world where people would never get stuck at work like she did, led her to the formation of InnovatorsBox®. A social entrepreneur on the mission, Monica is empowering the workplaces with innovation and creativity.

It all started when she was puzzled at her nuclear nonproliferation job that she had loved so much. She was tired of her colleagues telling her that being stuck and stressed at work is normal. But, maybe being normal was not something she was destined to. Her prior journey had taught her that building a creative mindset is unlocking your full potential and moving from burnout to empowerment. But the absence of platform which could show her how it can be done only left her more puzzled. Left with no other choice but to take the matter in her own hand, Monica started InnovatorsBox®. Through the experiential workshops, community events and tools they provide, she is happy to say that 90% of their 1,000 participants who took part in their 56 events in 8 cities shared how those programs and products changed their lives and gave renewed confidence.

A Creative and Innovative Educator Leading from the Front The CEO of InnovatorsBox®, Monica is a creative educator and a passionate community builder at her heart. Since its inception, she has led InnovatorsBox® to be recognized as the only creative education firm that is teaching creativity in a tangible, practical and relatable way for professionals to understand.

In 16 months, she has hosted over 59 events for 1,000 leaders in eight U.S. cities in which 90% participants share how this changed the way they think about creativity and innovation. Prior to her business, she was a nuclear nonproliferation expert and worked in public policy for

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What would it look like if more professionals felt happier, condent and creative at work instead of being stuck? I want to help create that world 9+ years in three continents. By being an Organizer and Facilitator at Startup Weekend, and President of DMV Startup, she continues to play an active role in global entrepreneurship. She completed her M.A. in Strategic Studies and Economics at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, and her B.A. from Boston University.

Being true to her Goal Since the Beginning Since venturing on her own, her goal to create the world where everyone would believe that they are creative and learn how to build their creative mindset has not changed for a bit. She has always focused on creating the world where all individuals can maximize their talent, curiosity and creativity regardless of their job title or industry and away from today’s state where 87% of the workforce feel stuck with a lack of an outlet for creativity. To make it happen, she along with her team takes a systematic approach. They do community events to raise awareness, educate the public and make their programs accessible to all. They also do

corporate trainings to empower leader and organizations that can create a ripple effect within their industries to bring positive change within their spaces.

Creativity is Contagious and InnovatorsBox® is spreading the Joy The key values that helped Monica along the way have been the practice of humility, honesty, curiosity and sharing these values consistently. Earlier, she knew that she is not aware of everything. She had no prior business education, nor knew a lot of entrepreneurs prior to her venture. She had worked in international affairs before, thus most of her

Empowering the World with Creativity To empower all with creativity, InnovatorsBox® provides services and games to B2C and B2B in various industries such as technology, consulting, government, nonprofit, finance, healthcare, and supply chain. Through their experiential & team-focused programs, specialized workshops, coaching, consulting, curriculum development and games, they teach how to build a creative mindset and creative confidence.

A card game called SPARK developed by the company, is a deck of question cards to spur creativity and a powerful tool with a reminder that – all you need at times is one open ended question and a curiosity to start practicing creative thinking. Their workshops in creative thinking, rethinking networking, and mindset development are renowned programs in the industry.

Unlike other programs that are done by artists, psychologists or researchers that are heavily theoretical or process based, InnovatorsBox® focuses on practical tools and honors how everyone is different. For instance, Mindful Play is a creative workshop that is a mix of reflection, discussion, interactive exercises, and problem solving.

Creative Jump is also a creative leadership program for the public.

Monica Kang Founder & CEO InnovatorsBox®

friends had seen startup as a foreign concept and did not really understand how much work happened behind the scene. To change this, she started sharing her honest challenges and thoughts more among friends and for that writing helped her a lot. Social media helped Monica clear her thoughts and also gave her the opportunity to explain something to a larger audience immediately. As a result, she not only created a space for her to reflect and share her challenges, but also created allies and gained wisdom.

InnovatorsBox® has been featured in The White House’s National week of making, selected as one of the top two DC small businesses by American Small Business Championship, was 1st Runner Up in Tech-in-motion 2016 and selected in Emerging Young Entrepreneurs by NMSDC and Fulbright. Also, Monica was selected as one of the top 7 finalists as the only female presenter at the USPAACC for emerging young entrepreneur doing business with Fortune 500 companies.

Knowing Yourself is the Child Step Learning and improving with the wave, Monica advises the young entrepreneurs to get to know yourself better. Because knowing yourself according to her is the first step before entering the battlefield. It follows by building allies everywhere and knowing that you are not going to go alone.

She also advises to be ready to learn, ask, observe all the time, and to be kind and giving. Finally, she asks entrepreneurs to take the time to reflect and unplug.

Future Roadmap By 2019, she envisions InnovatorsBox® to have built a strong national presence for being on the front end of rethinking innovation in the workforce and starting to make moves internationally. They would have had three new products – one book, growing community chapters, and a strong team making waves in corporate America. She also envisions to have started influencing America’s education thoughts on creativity by working with thought leaders and programs starting in greater DC. And she sees herself creating that change by continuing what she is doing today, which is doing 100% in this vision and with the added joy of knowing how much the world would be a better place when more people embrace creative thinking. www.innovatorsbox.com

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The

30 Most

CREATIVE E

S TO WATCH

NICOLAS JOUVENCEAU: A Diamond in Which Passion Resides

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assion is the word that best describes Nicolas Jouvenceau! A true passionista, Nicolas started his own venture driven by his passion for diamonds. It was his true passion for diamonds which drove Nicolas to talk about the products offered by his company, accompanied with an extremely strong drive and desire to build something great.

It is the beauty of diamonds that charms everyone!

Diamonds are always modern yet they are timeless, adaptable and iconic! The modern day generation also likes to flaunt jewelry in a fabulous way, making the jewelers and manufactures create the most astonishing designs.

Stepping up for the same, while pursuing his own fondness for diamonds, Nicolas came up with PINK Diamonds.

Born from the passion of Nicolas, a colored diamonds collector & GIA Gemologist, PINK Diamonds has become a reference in the industry as a supplier of some of the finest colored diamonds available today. Strong experience of 10 years in designing, polishing and grading (GIA), natural fancy colored diamonds, the company has established exclusive relationships around the world with leading sources of top of the range and exclusive gems.

Completing his Engineering degree from France and Sweden with a major in Energy and Environment, Nicolas is using his extensive experience running his successful venture.

However the success journey of PINK Diamonds was not as easy as it sounds.

His very first job took Nicolas straight to China, working as a technical director in a French company, designing and selling industrial & commercial HVAC and Central Vacuum Systems as well as Waste Collection systems using vacuum technology. Nicolas was always more commercial than technical. After 2 years in China he changed career and landed in the Music Industry as the Sales Manager of a German company selling musical instruments and accessories in China.

After 6 months with this company, Nicolas became the

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If you do it right, work hard and honestly in every aspect, I believe it will be recognized and rewarded General Manager which he ran for the following 8 years.

He was nurturing a passion on the side for minerals and gemstones which he collected. It was then that Nicolas started to study again at the Gemological Institute of America whilst still in that company, more by pure interest rather than having a specific goal!

Soon Nicolas became a certified Gemologist and started realizing the potential of gemstones in the Chinese market.

Numerous people came to him asking for advice and even sourced gemstones as they knew he was knowledgeable on the subject.

After his passion was slowly shifting, and coincidentally meeting a Colored Diamond Manufacturer, Nicolas literally fell in love with the diamonds and then decided to leave his comfortable position and took the challenge to start his own venture and promote those stones.

This was the pivotal moment when Nicolas first encountered colored diamonds. He was always passionate about gemstones but even as a trained Gemologist, he did not have the opportunity to see them. It was then that he knew it was the stones he needed to get involved with.

In the world of colored diamonds only a few specialized master the optics and the mathematics required to understand the ideal cut. One that maximizes the face-up color, weight and brilliance of the stone; all within the constraints set by the shape of the rough diamond.

Pink Diamonds, The Dream Nicolas is Living The timeless appeal of natural colored diamonds is a testament to their durability, beauty, rarity and value. They are a fitting symbol of love and affection, and a wise and discreet investment.

A fancy colored diamond master is an individual that must possess a good knowledge of diamond crystallography and geometry, an eye for detail and an acute sense of aesthetics.

Thus, every fancy colored diamond is a unique work of art; created by nature between 100 million years ago and crafted to perfection. Here at PINK Diamonds, Nicolas and his team take care of this all. With the expertise understanding and handling these precious stones, PINK Diamonds offers you the best experience possible.

PINK Diamonds supply rare colored diamonds, loose and mounted onto jewelry to jewelers, designers, private individuals, and investors. They also design and build bespoke jewelry and sell also investment grade gems.

Nicolas shares: “Our approach is highly educative what is actually lacking in famous brands. We spend a lot of time educating clients about gem quality and value”. They provide appraisal, sourcing and reselling services as well.

Nicolas Jouvenceau Founder PINK Diamonds

Throughout the ages, natural colored diamonds have been actively collected by the most powerful royal families and business tycoons; they possess a value, both aesthetic and pecuniary, that endures with the passing of years.

A collection of natural colored diamonds tells a story of achievement. This is an achievement of Nicolas in the form of PINK Diamonds Boutique. Here at PINK Diamonds, Nicolas and his team are helping educate clients’ choices in beginning a collection, adding to or perfecting an existing one and planning the building of a future legacy.

Passion and Charm for Colored Diamonds Fancy colored diamonds are extremely rare; for every 100,000 carats of diamonds mined, less than one carat will receive a fancy color grade. In addition to this, supply is dwelling and very few people in the world have the skills necessary to cut and polish such extraordinary gems.

A Dazzling Future Ahead When it comes to dreaming of the dazzling and shining future of PINK Diamonds, Nicolas sketches: “We have to grow in becoming more than a gem dealer or jeweler but with additional services to our clients, creating a full unique lifestyle environment, combining different luxury experiences in relation to our jewelry services. Driving that change will require me to innovate and take a different approach, using new technology and researching new ways to bring more to clients. For that I believe in staying open to new solutions, services, technologies, and spending time with new entrepreneurs and ideas that we can combine and use.”

Gems of Advice from the Passionista Be passionate about what you do, believe in it, no matter what….road to entrepreneurship is paved with challenges but believing and strong will power can overcome most of them. Having a true passion about what you do is extremely powerful, makes you a better sales person, a better manager and drives you in the right direction.

Every CEO should have inbuilt characteristics like resilience and adaptability. Markets are evolving very fast, especially with the expansion of social media and especially in a market like China. Competition adapts fast and we need to be in constant evolution even in a market as traditional as the gem trade or jewelry business. Seeing and anticipating the changes and innovating to reach the market is a constant challenge.

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A Tale of Triumph

Cambodia, a look at the country and people who make Elephant Branded possible

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even years ago, if you had told me that I would be spending my time between Hong Kong, Cambodia and South Africa, I would have thought you were

a business together. Whilst coming from very different backgrounds, it is our shared passion to build, make and grow that ties us together.

crazy.

You see, when I was still at University, as an undergraduate my only dream was to get a normal job, earn some money, get engaged, get a mortgage and have a happy life. Whilst the happy life and the engagement have happened the normal job, mortgage and money ideals have changed somewhat.

To be honest, I never intended to be involved in Social business, but kind of fell into it.

Two chance encounters and one lucky break are what have really defined the past few years.

I studied Architecture at University, we were given the chance to design and build a school in South Africa. Blood sweat and tears went into making the school, however after all the effort that went into the build, I was shocked to see children coming into the school without basic school equipment.

After University I was offered a one year postgraduate posting to China, and subsequently a year later offered a job in Hong Kong. The lucky break happened during the two month gap, between leaving my job in China and starting my new job in HK. Like many people my age, I travelled around South East Asia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. It was in Cambodia that I met Pry and Mey who had just started making bags out of old cement bags. I didn’t know it at the time, but we would go on to become close friends and grow

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Pry, the creative genius behind EB, had just started to make a simple bag out of recycled cement bags. I thought if we tweaked the design a little then we could sell some bags to my friends and help raise some money to buy school equipment.

Each bag is handmade from local recycled materials giving local ladies a way to run their own business and every sale helps to supply school equipment to children in need. It really is as simple as that.

When I was younger I used to see business books in my local book store. “How to swim with the sharks of business” or “How to make lots of money quick”. That’s what I used to think, that business was a dog eat dog world where the strong survived by stamping on the heads of those under them. It seemed dirty and slightly sordid. I didn’t want to do that or be one of those guys in a pin striped suit sitting down at board meetings.

Through working with Pry and Mey and Alex my business partner in the UK, I realised that business is about family, it’s about relationships and loyalty. In my mind, business is one of the few things in the world that transcends race, religion and politics, it connects people from completely different walks of life and links the world. In my opinion, it really is the strongest force for good in the world.

Over the last four years I have seen Pry and Mey’s family grow; they now have two sons Thomas and Boy Boy, both of whom I feel like an uncle to. They are energetic and fun, and possess many of the fantastic qualities of their father

A Tale of Triumph

James Munro Boon

James Munro Boon is an awardwinning entrepreneur, specializing in Start-ups and brand building in international markets. James set up his own ethical company Elephant Branded whilst at University and subsequently runs the global operations part time from Hong Kong. Over the last few years, it has been voted the 18th most ethical business in Britain and one of the top 25 Start Up’s of 2012.

and mother. However, the world they are growing up in is very different from the one that Pry and Mey were born into.

Cambodia is now prospering, no longer is it the war torn country of old, but the land of opportunity. In the surrounding neighborhoods, new houses are going up and the pace of change in the main city is unbelievable. Even in the last two years, more and more hotels, bars and restaurants have opened.

The dusty roads are still there, however Range Rovers now occupy the roads competing with the traffic of tuk tuks and bicycles.

With this new opportunity, there have also come issues.

Cambodia’s forests have been ripped up, logged and felled

by shady companies, and the country’s assets and natural resources shipped off through Vietnam to China. Much like the artifacts stolen from the temples and transported away to the European collectors during the civil war, now the natural resources; wood, oil and land are being syphoned off by greater powers, but this time from the East.

Cambodia and importantly the Cambodian people are resourceful and entrepreneurial. Many having lost everything, they are always looking for new ideas and ways to sustain themselves and their families. Their interest is not in aid, but rather in finding the means to start their own business or secure their own lives.

I do belive this is the potential of social business, the ability to give people the opportunity to make their own future, their own businesses and their own life.

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