Pascal Coppens on why entrepreneurs should be confident with China’s fast-paced innovation

Pascal Coppens is an international keynote speaker, sinologist, and technology entrepreneur, who lived in China for almost 20 years. He is the author of both "China's New Normal" and the newly published "Can We Trust China?"

In this episode, Pascal talks about how his trip on the Trans-Siberian Express made him fall in love with China and China's fast pace of innovation.

Key Takeaways:
-On the trans-Siberian train, there is a sense of community among the Chinese passengers.
-Alcatel Telecommunications Company is strong in China and around the world.
-Alcatel helped China make the switch from analog communications to digital ones.
-The speed of China is faster than that of Silicon Valley.
-Back 30 years ago, China only cared about making the best product they could. They didn't care what the product could do.
-Xiaomi is Apple's biggest rival both in China and around the world.

Best Moments:
-Pascal shares how he got a 50% discount on a trip by using a fake student ID card.
oSo I got 50% discount on my travel from then on. So that means travel twice as far. And so I was really happy with that. But the interesting thing is that I just said, "Yes. Okay. So should I come back tomorrow? Or how does this work?" And he say "No, wait." And so 10 minutes later he was there. He took a picture, 10 minutes later I had my student card. And so I give him way too much money because-- Yeah, speed of China. 30 years ago. (00:02:49.3-00:03:14.2)

-Pascal shares his experience with America’s slow progress.
oThat was my first experience with the slowness of America. I'm joking here, but the reality was we were pretty frustrated because we went to Ikea to buy all the furniture that we already had because we had no bed, and no table, and know nothings. So we got that all in doubles afterwards. And then, when the container arrived, there was only three people to do this job. And every half an hour they just had a smoke and had a talked, and it took a whole day. And this was just about unpacking. So that's where the first speed difference between US and China actually became very vivid. (00:11:51.6-00:12:25.3)

-Pascal admits he considered rewriting his second book into a different book. 
oAnd so that's why I started writing my second book, and then I said no. After one chapter. I said, I'm going to write a different book. And I started over again. (00:21:03.9-00:21:11.8 )


Post-production, transcript, and show notes by XCD Virtual Assistants

Transcript

Rich Robinson: 1:44

Excellent. Pascal Coppens, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the pod, all the way from Belgium.

Pascal Coppens: 1:51

Hi Rich, thanks for having me here today.

Rich Robinson: 1:54

Wonderful to see you. I'm in Bali, Indonesia, but, you know, I went to graduate school in Benelux. And I was in any part of Benelux, and we often went down to Belgium, and it's one of the most underrated places in the world for beer, chocolate, and food. And it's pretty magical, so I miss it.

Pascal Coppens: 2:12

Well, you're always welcome. I live in Ghent, it's my hometown, which is a fantastic, beautiful old medieval city. So always welcome.

Rich Robinson: 2:19

Lovely indeed. Like Bruges, there's a few medieval cities there that are just really terrifically well preserved, and that's wonderful. So speaking of which, let's take our listeners back to your origin story, growing up in Belgium, and then your path to China.

Pascal Coppens: 2:34

Yeah, well, I grew up in Belgium a long time ago. That say something about my age. But I studied Chinese back in'88, I started in university in Ghent, in my hometown. And so I always had a passion for Asia. Just didn't know the difference between Japan, Korea, China at that time. But it ended up to become Chinese that I wanted to study because the first time I actually made that decision was already in my second year of university, studying Chinese and Japanese at the same time at that point. And I went to China in 1990 for the first time to visit it. And that really made for me the difference because as soon as I landed in Hong Kong, but then when I took the train to Guangzhou, then suddenly I felt at home somehow.

Rich Robinson: 3:14

Right. That's so funny. I came from the north, I took the train through Siberia, Mongolia, and as soon as the train passed the border, I was like, "Wow, there's some electricity. This is not supposed to be..." Especially, we're about the same age, right? It's like in the eighties it was all about Japan and Russia and China was not radar. You smelt it, right? so what happened? You went to Guangzhou. Did you get off of Guangzhou? Did you keep going north?

Pascal Coppens: 3:37

Of course, I went north. I did a two month trip. I think, I took every train possible that I could go on. I mean, hard seat. You probably remember those things as rough travel 24-hours to get from Guangzhou to Shanghai with some more people than seats and some animals as well sometimes. So it was quite an interesting period. But when I arrived in Guangzhou back in 1990, what I always will remember is my first Chinese that I met. It was on the little island, Shamian Island I think it was called. And the first person that talked to me was actually talking English and saying, "Fake student card?" And so that was my first Chinese interaction. And it was so mind blowing, I didn't expect at all that to be the first thing that people would ask me. So I just said "Yes."

Rich Robinson: 4:22

But that's excellent. So the first thing, it's a business transaction, but also a business transaction with something fraudulent so that you could get discounts, right? So they know it's going to sell, right? So it's like, "How do you say no to that?"

Pascal Coppens: 4:33

So I got 50% discount on my travel from then on. So that means travel twice as far. And so I was really happy with that. But the interesting thing is that I just said, "Yes. Okay. So should I come back tomorrow? Or how does this work?" And he say "No, wait." And so 10 minutes later he was there. He took a picture, 10 minutes later I had my student card. And so I give him way too much money because-- Yeah, speed of China. 30 years ago.

Rich Robinson: 4:57

But you overpaid, but it was still cheap as can be back then, right?

Pascal Coppens: 5:01

Oh yeah. It was very cheap, but it was less than a 100 renminbi. So 10 euros. But I got so much discount that I could really travel a lot more. So this was really fun. And then, I just continued, I went to Shanghai, to Beijing. The first trip I did in 1990 was really to see all the usual cultural things, and of course, Guilin and so on. I wanted to see the whole China, but I would say it's primarily the trips on these trains that got me falling in love with the country.

Rich Robinson: 5:27

Me too. Yes. Because there's this camaraderie in this community that's built on the train. Once you're all settled in, "Hey, you want some sunflower seeds?""You want some of this dry pork?" And everybody's taking care of everybody. And it's just you feel like you've known these people for a long time, right? It's wonderful.

Pascal Coppens: 5:41

They want to be your friends and they want to know everything about you. And of course, my Chinese was not very good at that point, so it was terrible. That was another frustration arriving in China, having studied more than a year, Chinese in the university. And then, coming there and having no one understand what I was saying. It was a good practice though, but it was really frustrating. And there weren't many people speaking English back then, so it was really hard.

Rich Robinson: 6:03

Indeed. Wow. Excellent. Yeah, so that's an excellent choice. You've got to smell things early, literally, and figuratively, and not choose Japan, but choose China.

Pascal Coppens: 6:14

Yep. And then, I just continued. I went back in '93, another two months of travel. That was much more daring and adventurous. I went to the whole west of China, and then I took the trans-Siberian back to Belgium. So it was the longest train trip anyone can ever do in his life from Ulumuchi to Moscow through Beijing. But this was awesome experience. And I also experienced and or learned about different minorities and different type of China, and different ways of how China is actually evolving. Because there was a lot of poorer places back then, I mean it was really poor. And just having been there in 1993, and then in '96 I studied in Beijing in University. That's where I learned also the camaraderie or become really good friends with university students. And I think that's where really a lot of that trust between people is being built, if it's not in the family, it's often in the classroom or the universities. And that also, because you're talking about speed, is speeding up everything. And just the fact that you trust people, things go fast. And that's also something I learned. And that was in '96, '97, I was in Beijing in University. And so that's a little bit the start of my China obsession, if I could say. And then, in a good way, it's not an addiction yet, but it's definitely something I do daily. And then later it went all into professional life. So I started working in '99 in Shanghai for Alcatel telecommunication company.

Rich Robinson: 7:42

They were strong. They were strong in China. They were strong in globally.

Pascal Coppens: 7:45

Actually, Alcatel is an amazing company back then, because they were the ones that helped China to go digital on telecommunication. So the switching systems, which means that they actually helped China in communication and to leap ahead of the rest of the world almost because many were still on analog in the rest and even in the west at that point. So, it's quite interesting. So that's what I learned. Had a little bit of my corporate experience.

Rich Robinson: 8:10

What was your role there? Like, what were you focusing on?

Pascal Coppens: 8:12

I was in sales and marketing and that also meant lots of travel, which also learned me a lot about how Chinese sell in China. And I will always remember when we were doing some sales pitches to China Telecom or others, China Mobile and so on. I think it was China Unicom. And then, we were there with two, three people from Alcatel, and then after us came Huawei. And they were like with 12, 15 people, like ready to storm the room like an army that was going to kill the client. And we were like, "The difference couldn't have been bigger," and they won a lot of tenders. Although our products were better quality, I mean, at that time, we have great service. I mean, we were all good in everything. But day one, just because of their conviction and dedication to actually commit to things that the Chinese was asking, which we thought that Alcatel was like, "I mean, that's not normal." We can't agree to that and so Huawei did, and then all things like, being like almost 24/7 customer service at no price, and stuff like that. So they just did that, and we lost quite a lot of tenders at that, but it showed me the fact that Chinese companies, because they were much more Chinese than we were, although we had a lot of Chinese employees at Alcatel, that they really understood that it's about going there with full force and just dedication. And that's something I learned on the job, to work really hard. yeah, love it.

Rich Robinson: 9:35

Great insight. Yeah, and I think companies that are looking to get into China, like that super high touch. When you're in that circle of trust or you want to be inside the circle of trust, the way that high touch, like taking people as you well know, to the airport and then walking them all the way to the security line, right? And meeting people, crawling under the barrier to take people's luggage as they're coming out of the baggage claim, right? And like those kind of things. If you are a Chinese person showing up in the US, and nobody's there and they're just like, "Yeah, just figure it out by yourself," right? And I think that kind of like really going the extra mile, like when you're in that sort of "Confucian bubble," then the high touch service and the things you agree to is 10X maybe, what in the West, right?

Pascal Coppens: 10:19

Yeah, and I totally agree with that. And one of the experience I want to share maybe something that, yeah, for me, it always struck that it's not just about trust, but it's also trust plus what I call "Processing." It's like they can do that in parallel. And so one of the cool things I learned, I had a customer back then, it was in end of the 90's. And they were a president of the institute in Beijing, and he really wanted to take me out for dinner. And so we were there with a number of people having dinner, and was like, always"kampai" and just bottoms up, and drink. But every 10, 15 minutes he left the room, and then he came back like 20, 30 minutes later. And so this happened like 4 or 5 times over the whole evening. And then, of course, his other managers stayed in the room, and I never understood why he left the room. And he was always friendly, and so on, but the reality was that he had 3 different rooms where each of his clients were. And he just spent 20 minutes in each of them. And every time, he was the best friend of that person in that room. But in one evening, he actually had three meetings and created that bond with three different teams. It was fantastic. But that told me a lot about how China and Chinese think. They want time with you, but they don't always have the time. So then they split it up.

Rich Robinson: 11:36

I see hats. It's like some sort of TV show where somebody goes on a date with two different women and has to, like, go to different, "Oh, I'll be right back. And then I'll be right back," right? But for sure, I've witnessed people doing things. It's not even parallel. It's in triplicate or more, right? Different levels of chessboards being played at the same time. Great anecdote.

Pascal Coppens: 11:56

Yeah, so I left China for one year going to the US. That was in 2003. And that was because I was working after Alcatel for an American company, a US company based in Silicon Valley in the software industry. And they asked me to go to headquarters because I had quite some knowledge on that one specific product and I was a product manager globally. And this is also an interesting experience because, I mean, Silicon Valley I really loved and being in the software, you had to be there once. But 2003 wasn't the best moment, there was a telecom burst and layoffs everywhere. And so it was pretty tough but I learned a lot. But what I did see is that I underestimated the speed of Silicon Valley, or overestimated. So I really thought that it was going to go so fast in Silicon Valley, and I actually didn't feel that as much as I felt it in China. And this already started the moment I landed because the people that were moving our boxes in Shanghai. So we were working with a company, I think it was called "Santa Fe," it was a moving company. And so they came with like 10 Chinese, or like very small Chinese, and they came there. And it was like ants within hours. Everything was boxed in, everything was moved, like, there was even this little guy that was carrying our refrigerator on his back two stories down. And then everything went so speedy, incredible. And then we arrived in Silicon Valley, in San Francisco. We lived in the city a little bit it was Noah Valley, a district of San Francisco. And then, first of all, we had to wait a month on our container. Because there was a strike in the harbor. That was my first experience with the slowness of America. I'm joking here, but the reality was we were pretty frustrated because we went to Ikea to buy all the furniture that we already had, because we had no bed, and no table, and know nothings. So we got that all in doubles afterwards. And then, when the container arrived, there was only three people to do this job. And every half an hour they just had a smoke and had a talked, and it took a whole day. And this was just about unpacking. So that's where the first speed difference between US and China actually became very vivid. But of course, Silicon Valley was fantastic and the things I did there was amazing. So I wouldn't say they were slow, that company I worked for, was Wind River Systems. But still, I went back later on because I was kind of missing the dynamic, and it wasn't a really good period for a software business at that point in the US. So I went back in 2004, end of 2004, 2005. Started my own company, and that's when I started really distributing — or not distributing, but representing companies from Europe and the US in China and just selling their products. Later on, I grew the team, grew the company to also do customer service, customer support, but also we do started doing local marketing. We started to really do development of the products because there was a lot of customization needed, and this was all hardware, software products. So I had a team of 40 engineers that were all working 24/7, if I could or if they could. Because at that time everybody wanted to work a lot, and they could earn more money or a bigger title, which would earn them more money. And then that's what I did until 2016. And then I moved to Belgium just five years ago.

Rich Robinson: 15:18

Terrific. So tell us some of the lessons learned along the way. Like, why an international company would work with you? And what kind of secret sauce and good tips for companies looking to crack it?

Pascal Coppens: 15:29

Well, back then, reality is that most companies that worked with me were kind of mid-sized companies or family companies. So, I mean a number of maybe a hundred million dollars revenue, but it wasn't the huge multinationals, of course, so it was companies that were present in many countries. But China was, like, not on their map yet. And they typically, what they had is there were a few customers that bought some products from them somewhere in China city they never heard about. And they were wondering maybe there's an opportunity. I mean, there's 1.4 or 1.3 billion Chinese at that time. So now you were thinking maybe we can sell something there.

Rich Robinson: 16:06

One tube of toothpaste to each person, and we're rich. Yes.

Pascal Coppens: 16:10

That was the logic back then. And so I made them proposals to represent them. It wasn't a specific sector, which was very high-tech. So it was about "Digital Signal Processing," which is something we all use in our cell phones and cars now today. But 20 years back it was quite novel. And so this was something that a lot of Chinese companies the customers, they wanted to advance this development, wanted to advance their systems, and they usually got the money from the government at that time to do that, or some bigger companies like Huawei. And I was selling to these companies, but then, of course, the problem came with customer service with customizations, so China wanted something different. The one thing I always learned, specifically the first 10 years of this century, I would say, is that Chinese just wanted the best. They didn't care about what the product could do. It just had to be the best. And it was very difficult to explain back in the UK, or in Europe, or in the US why they didn't ask more questions about the product. Because typically in the West, people were asking a lot of questions like, "Yeah, does this product really fit to do, for example, 4G telecommunication or LIDAR or whatever?" And so they were asking millions of questions about these systems to know that they bought the right thing. In China back then, they just said,"Give me the catalog and what's the most expensive and the best thing you have." And then they were applying for budgets from the government and trying to get that. And so, if you're building a radar, or a 5G system, or something automotive, if you need to buy a different system, just give me the best one. That was typically the logic back then. And then what they did, because there weren't a lot of experts 20 years ago in China. So what they did is then put all their students of university on. And so most of the people developing on these systems are using it for the first time. And these are systems to develop a digital signal processing system or it was things like scanners for x-ray and stuff like that. So they were asking their students to use it, and test it and so I always gave a lot of lectures to students back then. And so I wasn't selling to the buyer, to the people who were buying. I was selling to the students because they were going to use it. And so that, changed a lot over 20 years. But back then, everybody wanted the best and wanted to improve. And it was also very easy to get into any kind of company, I mean, challenge you right now to go in a company like Huawei or ZTE and I mean, you get scanned if, because you would take something out of the company. Back then, it was the opposite. They wanted everything inside the company. Yeah. So a lot of change.

Rich Robinson: 18:40

Thanks for sharing. That's great. Yeah, I'm actually reading Dr. Kaifu Lee's autobiography right now, and he talked about building Microsoft Research Center in China and how there wasn't anything like that and how he had to basically do things in a very customized way to train people up, but then how quickly people came up to speed. And then now all these research centers that are often headed up by this mafia that he created at the Microsoft Research Center that's all distributed all around China now. So, Yeah. Fascinating. And tell us what you're working on these days, and tell us about your first book, which is sort of part of all that.

Pascal Coppens: 19:18

You're right. I'm working on a second one, but the first book, is something I started writing in 2018. But I came back five years ago to Belgium. It was mainly family reasons, my daughter studying here in Belgium. And then I started talking about my experiences in China, to many companies just for fun. And somehow people said, "Yeah, but this is really interesting because..." And I had no idea back in 2017 how little people knew about China. And I was just sharing my personal experience and stories and connecting some dots. And I just wanted to do this for fun, and it became a business. So ultimately, people were asking me to start giving lectures at their company. And started in Belgium, and so this grew very fast. And some people that were professional speakers then asked if I would want to join their collaboration, I mean their team. And so I became a speaker in 2018. Also doing a lot of tours, innovation tours to China that's what they did. They did that globally, but they didn't have China on the map yet. And so I started taking a lot of execs to China to show them the real China, because this was about visiting tech companies and innovation. And the eyes — they were opened widely every time I took them. And this was something I really enjoyed, but then I thought, "I'm going to put all my ideas in writing." Started writing a lot of book of blog, and then ultimately that became a book, which is all about innovation. It's called "China's New Normal." And it's a book that talks about how China is setting the standard for global innovation.

Rich Robinson: 20:50

Super, super well done. I have the book, and I think you set a standard for how a book should be published, right? The whole way that the book is done, from the cover and the way that it's laid out, and the photos and all the in addition to the meaty content that you put together with all the different industries, sectors by chapter, I thought it was quite worthwhile read even for like "China Insider" like myself, so I recommend it to other people.

Pascal Coppens: 21:15

What's typical when you write your first book? I don't know what your experience is, but the first book is typically something that you have no audience, so you just write what you think. Now I'm working on a second one, I'm always thinking like,"Yeah, what will they think?" Because now there's an expectation. But I do believe that just---

Rich Robinson: 21:31

Can you share anything about the second book, or still under wrap?

Pascal Coppens: 21:34

Well, I'm 80% done, so it's far enough. So it's going to be published in first quarter next year, so March. And yeah, the title is it's all about trust. And so this is a central team, of course, about China today: can we trust China? Can we trust what's happening there?

Rich Robinson: 21:49

More relevant than ever with the whole, you know, crackdown with Ed Tech ever grande and it's very timely.

Pascal Coppens: 21:55

I'm finishing up that book to explain if and how we can trust China. An impossible question to answer, but I wrote a few hundred pages to try at least to do that.

Rich Robinson: 22:05

That's terrific. That's wonderful. Yeah, I think it's a very important topic, and I think there is just a lot of disinformation even and ignorance about China.

Pascal Coppens: 22:13

And the reason I started writing this is really because my first book was all about innovation and getting inspired by the things that happen in China, whether it's about scale, speed, agility, or how they move so fast and so incredibly within groups and ecosystems and how they change constantly. But I thought I could write a second book about the next leap. But then the question was really for me, like, unless there's some kind of trust, I don't think people can learn. And so you can't learn unless you have some kind of trust. And so that's why I started writing my second book and then I said no. After one chapter. I said, I'm going to write a different book. And I started over again. So I said I need to explain more about why you can trust or how to trust. Somehow, the things that we learned, we can learn from China, so that's it.

Rich Robinson: 23:02

Terrific. Wonderful. Yeah, so that's an excellent segue. Having lived in China since '96, myself, I mean, anybody that lives there, they talk about, especially in the tech space that you and I are both at in major cities. The speed is just, something that is palpable, right? It's just you can like taste it in the back of your mouth, right? And it's a little bit more difficult to quantify In some ways, it's multi-variate. And I think trust is one aspect, right? Of course, when there is trust, then it's removing friction, right? And there's many reasons why speed occurs. But removing friction is an another way to do that. So I think that's another thing I want to explore in my book, attribute that thought to you and give a shout-out to your coming book. But one thing that you do particularly well — I mean, I've been on these innovation tours with you. I participated and you're an excellent sherpa for people, trying to unlock what's happening Belgian Crocodile Dundee getting people through the treacherous but fascinating outback of Chinese business and public speaking as well too. But these these YouTube videos like, come on, like, there's like tender loving care and lots of treasure put into these YouTube videos that you do, right? I really enjoy them, and I'll give a shout-out in the show notes, but yeah, maybe you could talk a little bit about the YouTube videos and then peel back the one you did about China Speed, which I thought was super, you know, clever and relatable and well done.

Pascal Coppens: 24:22

I YouTube a year ago now, a little bit more than a year ago. And this was just because of the pandemic that I thought to do something to keep people engaged and informed about what's happening in China or what the situation is. And very often when I am on stage and I give a keynote, at the end, they ask questions. And so I thought, "Well, I'm going to start writing down all these questions, and then I'm going to answer question by question." And this is what I did. So I had a whole list of, like, a hundred questions. Like things about what about privacy in, or how do people feel about talk about speed, for example, pizza? Yeah. If China's so fast, then is the quality still good? And so I had this bunch of questions that I was writing down every time I gave a speech, but then with the lockdowns, I had to do something because a lot of my assignments were delayed until I could be on the stage again. I did a lot of online work, but it wasn't the same. And then I started doing these YouTube videos, and little by little, the first half year it was like slow, but then I got into it, and I started really going deep into certain subjects. So I started with like five minutes and it ended up after half year, it became 30 minute videos. And so I started doing like 25, 30 minute videos on specific topics, and people loved it. And my audience really grew very fast, because I think, "No, thanks."I think that the big challenge is still to having, try to be unbiased in a very polarized world. And that is what I'm trying to achieve doesn't always work because of course I have my China experience, so you can feel somewhat sometimes the passion.

Rich Robinson: 25:55

Don't read the comments. Do not read the comments, no matter what. Yes, of course, your passion comes through, and of course, you can sell China a little bit, in some areas. But without being a panda hugger or a panda slugger, right? But, like, no matter what you say, just don't read the comments as you well know.

Pascal Coppens: 26:13

And most videos it's like, somewhere between 500 and a thousand at least, sometimes more. So I spend pretty much a whole day per week just answering comments. But I do this for a very personal, maybe even selfish reason, is it just helps me understand the mindset out there. And that helps me then to write some answers in my book that I'm writing right now.

Rich Robinson: 26:36

No, and you know what? I actually seen that, and I think that you are pretty reasonable. I had another author, Shaun Rein, who we both know. And he's a little more combative, which he'll be very openly It's not a secret, right? I mean, you read his comments, and he's not shy about getting into it with people, right? But I think there is a reasonableness. Some people are unreasonable and you know you can't control that and it's right? There is a Benelux. I would go so far as to say, "If you don't mind being lumped in, there is this sort of egalitarianism." That's, like, cultural, and I think it's pretty terrific. I love my time living in that part of the world. So take us through. I mean, I'll point people to this video about China speed, but I really loved your terrific parallels with the Olympics, and how you framed it in a way because it was during the olympics when you did it. And if you could just, let it rip in your signature style or some of the thoughts that you have about that?

Pascal Coppens: 27:25

The Olympics at that point, which was, I mean, there's three things about speed that I explained in that video. Which is about speed just a number of miles per hour, or there's also velocity and acceleration. And I said very clearly that in the West, specifically Europe and North America, it's a lot about efficiency, and efficiency creates more speed. But in China, it's much more about velocity, which means speed towards a certain direction. And then also acceleration, which means both speeding up and slowing down. And so I dissected that and just explained a little bit how Chinese have more velocity, and then how they also accelerate or slow down when needed. And the comparison with the Olympics was that, my experience is that when we look at athletes, it's we totally understand why they're working so hard, why they're so dedicated, why they understand pain, that this is the only way to success. Why they're extremely structured every day do the same thing and get practice there, and we learn a lot of things. We see a lot of things in athletes where we believe this is normal. This is what athletes have to do, otherwise they will not become a gold medal winner. And so we do appreciate that. My experience is that many Chinese want to be exact that, they want to be that athletes that wins that gold medal at the end of the games. And so all of these things that we feel is okay for athletes or for a football player or whatever, anyone who's really famous, he achieved that. A tennis player we see like, yeah, he suffered. He went hard to get towards one goal. He was very agile. He changed constantly. He tested, he measured everything. And so the whole concept makes sense for an athlete, but it doesn't make sense very often in Europe or in North America when we put that on employees or business leaders or because then we talk more about this life, work, balance, and we need to keep everything in balance and so my experience is that this is a global thing that you need to be healthy, otherwise you can't succeed. But somehow it's that dedication that I saw in China in the past 30 years, that resilience plus hard work, and this combined with two things, which I would say passion and also dreams. And so one is about the insight, and the other one is where they want to go to, and this is what athletes do. And so they have a big dream, they're very passionate, they love it, they're good. And if they're talented, of course they have an advantage. But it's not just about talent. And I think that's where I made the comparison, and then I split that up in this philosophy and exploration.

Rich Robinson: 30:04

Terrific. Yeah, wonderful. That's a great way to frame it. It really helps. And business is the ultimate sport, and certainly, make no question, just like China really racked up the gold medals this past Olympics. And they'll do probably the best they've ever done with the Winter Olympics coming up in Beijing in a few months. They're definitely looking for the gold medal for business around the world, right? Or that gold idol from Indiana Jones at the end of the cave, right? That's what everybody sort of, that prize, and that's sort of the topic of the book, is that, even if they don't, "Oh, we're not really going to be competing in China, but China's going to come and compete with you, and they're going to do it in a way that's really quick, a lot faster than the pace that you're used to." And if you really want to be in these games with them around the world, then you know, here what you should be aware of, and here's how you can actually learn from it, right? And you're right that people don't want to learn. And that's actually one of the parts of my book is that, I grew up in Boston, and there's the New England Patriots with Tom Brady, winning all these Super Bowls and it became the team, the hate. But, it's okay if you don't like New England Patriots, right? But during their dynasty, there was still a lot that you could learn from them, and I think maybe some people were not necessarily open-minded to that. But there's still lessons to be learned and I think China has a lot of lessons, both good and bad, around speed. There's some things you may not want to emulate or unable to emulate, but I think it's all of those multi- variant reasons for speed.

Pascal Coppens: 31:27

Yeah, and I totally agree. And I think speed, just like, I said before, it's not just about speed, it's about acceleration. And that means how do you accelerate. And to me that's the speed of trust is one of the things we said before. So if you don't need to sign NDAs, it goes faster. If you don't need to spend time on accountants because things will be okay, then that just speeds up things. So the speed of trust really makes a difference, but it's also about the speed of decision. And that's something I learned in China. They're very daring and they decide to start something or stop some. And even when they stop, it's unfortunate because they're write it off. So you've made that investment, or in time or money, whatever. But this decision is taken pretty fast. If I compare that with Belgium, for example, or Holland, is even worse in the Netherlands, they discuss forever before they really start doing anything because they want everybody's buy-in. And that is often a challenge, and it helps once you get the buy-in to go fast. But you lose that time before the decision is taken. And so which one is faster is sometimes a hard thing to see. But in my view, a fast decision is becoming more and more important in times of change, which we now experience every single day. And that's the other thing, the speed of change. So daring to change. For me, that is really where it goes. It's daring to go faster but also daring to say, "Okay, this doesn't work. Let's do something else." And for me, typically the example was always like, I mean, every day you saw a new restaurants popping up in China, in Shanghai, where I was living, but sometimes you arrived there and it was gone and there was a shop that was open two months earlier or a year earlier that was. I've never had that in Belgium. When business is reasonably okay, they just keep going. If they're not making lots of money, that's fine. If they make a living, they keep going. And in China, it's like, "Ah, that wasn't what I expected, so we should close down this restaurant and start a wellness center or something like that." And so this is that speed of change that I really experienced in China. And then, there's a speed of execution as well. The speed of execution, so I think these are the four things that I've

learned: 33:38

the decision, the change, the execution, and the trust. And execution is all about parallel and collaboration. And I mean, working together towards — that's velocity, actually.

Rich Robinson: 33:49

Wonderful. Yeah. And that question that you fielded: does speed? And the fact is that oftentimes it doesn't in the beginning, right? And like that's, I saw Elon Musk being interviewed, and he said, "Prototyping was fun. Manufacturing is excruciating. And being cashflow positive is hell is horrific." Right? But he was talking about how in the early days, there was all small variations in the Teslas as they were ramping up the factory. There's just no other way around it. That's the only way that you could actually do it at that speed and scale. And probably a lot of established European or Japanese or even other American automobile manufacturers wouldn't allow that. They wouldn't be comfortable with that, right? But I think maybe speed is not necessarily about quality in the beginning. It's really about innovation. And then you could slow it down, like you said, you decelerate so that you can actually be like,"Okay, now we go slow and steady." We got to that point of innovation.

Pascal Coppens: 34:47

I think in the West we got a little bit too obsessed with perfection, and that's because if you think about Apple for example, it always works. It's perfect. And so people got used to products and services that just work out of the box. And that's the bar that has been set in the west very often many places. And so manufacturers or innovators, if they don't reach that, they don't feel they can actually bring something to market. And that's different in China because there's so many markets. There's markets that want this iPhone 13, and there's this markets that basically just can't afford a hundred dollars max or $50 smartphone, and so there you can do a lot of testing. And so China has an easier way of just scaling up. And for me, it's also about starting looking at the big market in general and not looking at early adopters. Because when you talk about Tesla, you're looking at people who really expect a lot and then, you have to give them a lot. And so you have to iterate to get there, but you don't want to release it before it actually works perfectly. But if you look at the bigger scale market like China or any big developing country from today, then there's a lot of opportunity and you can iterate. And I think it's easier to improve your quality than actually once you've got a great brand to then scale to the middle-level or low-level market. So that's the opposite way of going.

Rich Robinson: 36:12

Yeah. Well said. So I had the managing director of Xiaomi for Indonesia on the pod. And he joined the organization when they were fifth in Indonesia, and now they're number one. And now Xiaomi is also number one around the world. And their approach has been really different from Apple, where they get much smaller batches and much faster launches. And they get their users involved and they're basically iterating their way to innovation and success, but it's a much bumpier, much messier road along the way. But now, they're not nearly as profitable as Apple, but I think Apple's feeling a lot of external pressure now with App Store and others, other things. And I think Xiaomi can emulate some of the success that Apple's had with apps but they have this gigantic reach now.

Pascal Coppens: 36:56

This week. And this is about Apple versus Xiaomi. I have a colleague who is actually expert in customer centricity and customer experience. Steven Von Belleghem, did the Apple part and I did the Xiaomi part. So it was kind of like a battle. And so, who's the best? It was very interesting to do this battle. We did this for a number of companies, Alibaba versus Amazon and so on. And we ended up asking ourselves the question at the end. What I mean, Apple is about brand, about recognition, and it's about the emotional connection that you have with this company and the service and customer service But for Xiaomi, it's a lot about choice, availability, about connectivity, about the IOT, and so the question we were asking ourselves at the end is like, "If the world continues to move like it is, maybe all these electronic devices are going to become fashion devices where you just buy them. Today, and then maybe you just change an element and so it becomes like wearing clothes rather than just buying one phone every year." And that's where I thought maybe Xiaomi has a better opportunity. So the real time of smartphones or IOTs smart devices may be coming just like Shein is doing realtime fashion. And so that was our conclusion that if that would happen, then Xiaomi would be probably better positioned than Apple. But if not, then Apple still has a long way to go before Xiaomi can beat them on profit.

Rich Robinson: 38:18

Yes indeed. But certainly beating them in volume and that's a place to start, so, wow. Terrific. I love it. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that, and I'll definitely have to check that video out. Thank you so much for your time, Pascal. It's been really thought-provoking and that's what you do, and I really appreciate it. I'll put all your connections out there into the socials. What's the website to access you at?

Pascal Coppens: 38:38

Just my name, pascalcoppens.com. It's quite easy.

Rich Robinson: 38:42

Excellent.

Pascal Coppens: 38:42

Thanks a lot.

Rich Robinson: 38:43

Spelled like your name that's in the podcast. Thank you very much.