Our host and MING Labs' Co-Founder Sebastian Mueller talks to Johannes Jaeger, a hackathon expert who builds bridges between startups and the corporate world. Johannes, originally from Germany has been living around Asia Pacific since 2006. He is the Co-founder of Hack Horizon – the world’s first TravelTech hackathon on a plane, to extend the innovation runway beyond the hackathon. Johannes then joined Agorize and is now co-building innovation programs with Fortune 500 firms around Asia Pacific. He helps them connect with the best startups and entrepreneurs globally.
Our host and MING Labs' Co-Founder Sebastian Mueller talks to Johannes Jaeger, a hackathon expert who builds bridges between startups and the corporate world. Johannes, originally from Germany has been living around Asia Pacific since 2006. He is the Co-founder of Hack Horizon – the world’s first TravelTech hackathon on a plane, to extend the innovation runway beyond the hackathon. Johannes then joined Agorize and is now co-building innovation programs with Fortune 500 firms around Asia Pacific. He helps them connect with the best startups and entrepreneurs globally.
Christine: 0:03
Welcome to Lost in Transformation. This is MING Labs podcasting from Singapore an international Business Hub, Innovation Center, and vibrant startup scene. Learn from digital thought leaders and designers about the innovation and transformation of businesses in an ever evolving digital world.
Christine: 0:26
Coming up is your host Sebastian Mueller Co-Founder and COO of MING Labs with our guest for today, Johannes Jaegar. Johannes, originally from Germany, has been living around the Asia Pacific since 2006. He is the co-founder of Hack Horizon, the world's first TravelTech hackathon on a plane to extend the Innovation runway beyond the hackathon. Johannes then joined Agorize, and it's no co-building innovation programs with Fortune 500 firms around the Asia Pacific. He helps them connect with the best startups and entrepreneurs globally. We hope you enjoy the conversation and look forward to your feedback.
Sebastian: 1:06
Hi Johannes! Thank you for taking the time. Aloha! How are you? Always a big pleasure to have you here.
Johannes: 1:12
Thank you for having me.
Sebastian: 1:13
Let's maybe just jump right in to also explore a bit of the different topics that we have for today. There's quite a lot that I want to talk with you about. And the first thing, which is maybe for the audience to get a better idea of what perspective you come from maybe we could start by talking a bit about what have you been doing in the past and now If you come to be interested in the whole space off corporate innovation.
Johannes: 1:41
Sure, Sure, a bit of background about myself. Origin German been around Asia for the last 13 years now. Initially here in Singapore, that I moved up to Hong Kong about seven years ago, then returned to Singapore in December last year. My whole sort of journey in this innovation space started actually about earlier than me being directly in it. It's not actually off by building robots for the government. Now, that sounds super, super odd, and totally disconnected. And I thought so at that time as well. But through that, basically, the best software developer and I, started a company together and we used hackathons. It means hiring people to accelerate part development. Yeah, and well, we drove the company into the wall. We made every mistake we could have made. We learned a lot, but we got really really good during Hackathons.
Johannes: 2:34
So at that time I was in Helsinki and they wanted to organize their first-ever hackathon, but the biggest one in Europe and I have never been to one or organized one myself. Okay, look, I've never organized one myself either, but I have participated in all of them. So let's do this together. No, it's one hell of a blast. We had about 800 people in Helsinki in November and then I came back to Hong Kong and one of the big universities of Hong Kong was like, well, we want to organize the biggest one in China. Well, I just did the same thing in Helsinki. So, we did that. That was also one hell of a blast, and I kept on organizing these for enterprises. So, for HSBC, for Deloitte and then a friend of mine and I, we met, we [...] in an acquaintance than a friend. And he was like: Johannes, I'm thinking of putting a hackathon on an airplane. Well, two things I'm really, really passionate about hackathons and aviation, but not just doing a hackathon for the sake of putting hackathon. But really to bring the whole ecosystem together, breaking the silos in, the travel space, because so segmented you have so many different parts. And we spent about a year and a half putting this together. And then likely enough, in May 2017 it happened.
Johannes: 3:45
We got 32 developers, engineers, designers, and business people from around the world coming to Hong Kong, taking a flight to London, and really building prototypes. Plus through this journey, interacting with the customer, interacting with the key decision-makers from the space to basically put forth eight compelling solutions in this space. Now we really spend a year and a half looking at just this. We never want to commercialize this. It was not for the money. It was just to prove to people that this is possible and that we can create an impact through hackathons. And at that time at the Rise in Hong Kong, Big Innovation Conference, I met this gentleman called Matthew Tullamore. Pretty fresh from France in Asia and he was like, well, we've been running hackathons and startup challenges and student challengers in France. And we have this really cool platform and we've been in Europe, we're in North America we're looking to open up Asia. I was like, well, say no more. So, we took a bit of time to really set this up. And yet then, in September 2017 I joined Agorize here, mean in Asia out of Hong Kong, first as the first tire, and now 2 and a half years later, we're 35 people across three countries Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan. And now we're sitting here.
Sebastian: 4:57
Fantastic. Still, doing hackathons in airplanes?
Johannes: 5:01
Not doing hackathons in airplanes anymore. A lot of people have tried it. It's very, very difficult. So this is why we parked it really high up there. We said, If we want to do anything as crazy as this, we have to ask Elon. But no, it is the one and only time and now it's really about delivering more value for a single customer, a lot of times. Back then, we have brought together aviation, airport, hotel accommodation, and so on, so forth together. Now we a lot of time work for one customer in a bespoke manner. That makes it a lot easier to deliver to a value that they need because everyone has their own things in mind when recommending something like this.
Sebastian: 5:38
Sounds fantastic. So, a venue where nobody can escape. Everybody has to be there and stay focused. All the decision-makers can't run away.
Johannes: 5:45
No one can run away and operation is great because nothing can go wrong. Oh, supposedly, right?
Sebastian: 5:51
If it goes wrong, it goes really wrong.
Johannes: 5:53
Yes, but out of our control.
Sebastian: 5:55
Okay. That's a super interesting background. Actually, I didn't know half that stuff. Thank you for sharing that. Tell me a bit more about Agorize. So, you said that originally started in France with a lot of hackathons and student challenges. So, what is the core focus? How is that come to be? And then what is kind of the mission there?
Johannes: 6:15
The core focus is really quite simple. It's about connecting innovators with enterprises and governments. And innovators could be students, it could be developers, it could be startups. And the whole methodologies around is everyone should just focus on what their best at. And for the other thing is instead of reinventing the fire, get the people that specialize in those areas. So for enterprise, this could be opening up some other problem statements that they have not been able to tackle internally and finding startups from anywhere in the world. We don't care who you are or where you're from. To tackle those props they leverage each other's expertise. This could be the distribution of the multinational and the expertise on the technological level from the startup. That's one big focus or really bridging the gap between enterprise and startups. We also run student challenges and hackathons. This is really more on generating some out-of-the-box ideas, but more so to spot the top talent that can hire for their firms.
Sebastian: 7:13
How long has Agorize been around now?
Johannes: 7:16
It's been on 8 years, so initially from Paris, as you said. Since then, we've ventured into Germany, into Canada, Hong Kong being the first spot for Asia and now since last year, also opening up Tokyo and Singapore.
Sebastian: 7:31
How big is that network by now? If you keep on running these challenges, it goes through student startups, etc. How many people you have in that network?
Johannes: 7:38
We have run close to 1000 programs at this point in time. I think our smallest program ever was about 30 participants. Our biggest was 200,000, so through this with a pulled-up network of about five million innovators. You have about 1,000,000 developers. You have 300,000 startups and about three million students. On top of that, we also run internal challenges with employees of a company. That's another 800 to 1,000,000 people, so altogether about 5 million innovators off the network that spread across the world. Like is not Asia centric, it's not Europe centric, not North America centric, it's quite balanced for all the different geographies.
Sebastian: 8:17
What I found very interesting is that actually, you're not like a normal professional services firm that just organizes these things, one-off gets the service fee. But you've actually been in getting investment like a technology company. Why is that?
Johannes: 8:33
In terms of from customer point of view?
Sebastian: 8:36
From an investment for investor perspective.
Johannes: 8:39
Why they invest in a company like Agorize?
Sebastian: 8:41
Yeah.
Johannes: 8:42
Well, they see open innovation, as what we do is called open innovation. It's suddenly that in Singapore is being pushed, as of quite recently, quite a lot by the government. But if you told someone in Hong Kong or in Singapore two years ago, the word open innovation like ... what is this? In Europe, it is quite a well-established term. In Asia is still super new. We've been doing this, we have been connected people forever. But calling it open innovation, putting a methodology to it is a super super new. And the reasons in Asia, especially so, it's saying that's booming quite a lot. People saying ... look, every country has its own expertise and we need to accelerate. We don't want to do things in a linear fashion where we hire people for an R & D lab and put them away in a corner for two years and they come up with one prototype and then it either works or fails.
Johannes: 9:28
Why don't we just leverage all this expertise? Instead of having one prototype, we have 50, a 100, a 150, 200 startups, all submitting their proposals, and it's just for us to then select which one has the best fit in what we're trying to do. It is really about accelerating this and this is something, I mean, a lot of our customers are Fortune 500 exclusively and we work a lot with Fortune 500 companies. And it's all about accelerating their pace of innovation, and this is something that's not a niche problem. It's something that's pretty much present across the whole spectrum of companies.
Sebastian: 9:59
Now let's go into the details on this. I'm sure, especially also about this field of corporate-startup engagement. We typically come from the perspective of building corporate ventures, but you basically connect corporations and startups around certain topics. Maybe it just to start off. First of all, what kind of problems are maybe suited for this kind of engagement? How do you run a challenge like that?
Johannes: 10:25
Yeah, to very, very important parts, right? The latter is easier to answer than the former. So, how do we run a challenge like this? How do you set something up to maximize the chances of success? In our line of the field, it's impossible to guarantee success. So, it's about four factors that really helped enhance the chances of having success. The first is knowing what success means. Is this are you looking for startups that you want to pilot? Are you looking at startups you want to invest in two? Are you just looked at a PR activity? Unfortunately, this takes quite a bit of time to really iron this out, because if we know that, then we can start working on something that, like reverse and hearing a program that maximizes to get into the school. So that's the first and really identifying what do they want to achieve. The second part that really impacts the success of a program is having concrete next steps.
Johannes: 11:15
So, you want to run a pilot? Okay, let's put some money on the table to commit to the best startups that we running a pilot off this in this value. If you don't do that and then you want to go backward and say, Oh, we have to stop startup, let's find someone internally that wants to buy this. Chances are extremely low. So really getting that buying from the decision-maker, from the get-go will make everyone's life a lot easier. A lot of challenges, the way they do, let's say, okay, look, we give you $20,000 for the best startup and potentially a pilot afterward. But those $20,000 got the corporate nothing in return, right? It's just money thrown out the window. But if you said OK, look, let's put $100,000 on the table for a pilot, that money's in a lot better spend and has already concrete next steps in place. So that's the second part. The third part is about time. If you say, Look, we give startups two or three weeks to apply, hardly anyone will apply.
Johannes: 12:09
You know, it takes really time to put a bespoke back together for the corporate from the startup. It takes time to activate the network and for people to know about this program. So, a lot of the time we recommend leaving it open for eight weeks, especially if it's global, maybe even 10 weeks. So, really giving sufficient time from the start-ups. And the 4th one is really about how brought/specific is the challenge. And especially if it's something that's internal. You need to make it a little easier. You translate a lot of that jargon that's used internally into something that external people actually use and are able to understand. So, I think those are some of the key factors for making it a success. Now, on the question off, what kind of challenges make sense to use for this kind of approach? I would say there's no clear this makes sense and this doesn't make sense.
Sebastian: 13:00
It can solve everything.
Johannes: 13:01
No, you can't solve everything by no means I mean. This is just one tool of many that can be used it by no means it's the only way to solve things. It doesn't even make sense most of the time to use, to do the open innovation approach. OK, let's talk about where it doesn't make sense to use such an approach. If you're looking to build a complex system that has, a whole set of subsystems and you're looking at everything from a single vendor, I think it doesn't make sense to you something like this. It then it move makes sense like, we have this mega system in place. We're looking at innovative social at these and these parts of the solution, I think then it makes sense. But if you asking one supplier to create this whole space, this whole solution which has so many different subsystems, then I think a traditional tender system, where someone built something bespoke for you, makes a lot more sense.
Sebastian: 13:49
So, you already mentioned a bit things that a corporation should have in place, and in order to be successful, certain prize money, next steps, having a bit of more understanding for what a startup can or cannot do. What are some of the other things that you often see? Corporates have misconceptions about, that you need to really educate them? How to do this successfully and then some of the commitment that is required from their side when you work with them on this kind of program?
Johannes: 14:21
I mean, you have a few kinds of different kinds of corporates, right? Some already have the innovation lab set up. It's all about further scaling their activities. I think those we can move aside, that would have an internal team of champions that is moving this along. The second part, which I think is to this question more of interests, where you build this up from scratch. I think one department, of course, you have this one champion attorney that's trying to really move the needle, but it's really, really important that you focus on small quick wins first. Don't go all crazy on something. The risk is way too high. And as I said in our line of work, it's not about, we can't guarantee success, is about maximizing the chances. So let's spend, say, $50,000 on something, showcase what's doable, and then let's grow someone into something that's a lot larger. We can't start by building something way too complicated, just because that is what they want to achieve in the next 2 - 3 years. So I think that's really important about managing their expectation, growing them into an engagement with a startup that really works with them.
Johannes: 15:21
I think the other thing that we face quite a bit is their procurement and legal team. I mean, if their procurement rules are saying that the start must have at least $10 million in revenue and must have been around for 10 years, it's impossible. Like most startups don't have that kind of track record that hasn't been around for 10 years, that's why they're called a startup.
Johannes: 15:41
So working with this kind of people to work around, those rules [...] enterprise that working on having like a green lane. Instead of having a 50-page legal document, is condensed into 5 or 6 pages. The startup doesn't have the resources to sue the enterprise. It doesn't. It will only be the enterprise, if at all, suing the startup, right. So a lot of the protection can be taken away. A lot of startups saying, Yeah, it's reasonable. We just to make sure there are no red flags. One big red flag for example is IP for many startups, that their IP gets protected. And there's also the same for our programs. We need to make sure that both sides have a win. The win is on a one-way street. I would say those are the biggest key factors that need to be focused on to make sure that kind of engagement can work.
Sebastian: 16:22
And from the startup side and what do they typically maybe have wrong about corporate, what they have to understand and commit in order to potentially be successful? That not only in the program but also afterward.
Johannes: 16:34
Of course, of course, I think one big thing is to look beyond the money, you know. Yes, we all look enterprises for be inclined. We get some cash from them and pay salary, pays for rent, but they have the expertise, they have data, they have insights, they have distribution, which money can't buy. So, really looking beyond and especially if you have an enterprise as an early customer. Okay, look, why don't we really sit down at a table? We understand a lot more about what are some of your problems that you're trying to solve, for us to really build something that makes sense where we have a good fit with your needs. So, and this again can only be done if they open up some of these things. This is where we say, Look, yes, commercials are important, but it's not the only thing. And we know what I mean. Those people that have access to the best data have access to the best decision-makers and insights, they're the ones on the way that win. So stepping beyond the cash, I think it's really, really important. And I think a lot of startups are starting to make this transition, but yes, first few days, like okay, how much money can we sign? You know, it's still a big focus for many founders.
Sebastian: 17:35
Thinking more strategically about other points of value that the relationship can create.
Johannes: 17:41
Of course.
Sebastian: 17:41
And you already mentioned that corporates, of course, quite risk-averse. Especially then when legal comes in, maybe also for some things. And when the actual department is concerned where some changes are to be made or IT oftentimes has to, of course, be quite, risk-averse. And they would most often say, Well, this company has been around for, what, a year? How do we know in 3 years from now, if we now change our processes still gonna be around the border? What are your answers if you get these kinds of doubts?
Johannes: 18:14
Yeah, I mean, again, this is to do with growing them into something. And this is also the same thing about the engagement of the startup. You don't meet a startup and tomorrow rule out their systems across your entire organization. It's about, Okay, many enterprises already have a sandbox in a place where that kind of small scale run a pilot. If you're running, let's say we're running a program in Macau with a big casino operator. Okay, once they've graduated from the stamp books and it works in your test environment, let's test in one building and then grow them from there. This again will for you to make sure that that's really a good match with the startup. And that way your risk as the enterprise is also decreased because stop running everywhere. And if you go together with the startup is likely that they will still be around. It's very likely that they will still be around when they then are more integrated into your system and when the risk on paper looks a lot higher.
Sebastian: 19:05
In the beginning, there's such a challenge that the communication interface between the startup and the corporate, are supposed to mainly the problem statement than whatever they get around that. What is a good problem statement?
Johannes: 19:19
It depends on how you define good, which comes to what are you trying to achieve. If you're just trying to get a lot of numbers, a good problem statement is a very open problem statement, because the broader it is, the easier it this for startups to see themselves solving this. If your challenge is really your own, Okay, I want to find a very good fit around a specific problem. Now you may say, OK, let's make it as niche as possible. I want to steer away from this and say, Look, yes, we want to make it quite niche, but not too niche to a point, where would scare away people from outside the sector.
Johannes: 19:56
I'll give you a good example. For example, at Paris airport, they're looking at how can we improve the in-airport experience? Now, traditionally you look at, okay, what are there the prop techs, some of the travel tech firms, because the airport is property and travel, that are in this space. And if you wrote it really, really niche-like, those are the only startups that would understand what's happening. Where's if you keep it a little broader and we look, okay, what are some of the other spaces where experience has been very heavily invested into? Banking. And with the insights and the data from the airport, maybe some of the startups that have traditionally only seen themselves as serving banks can now also look at the airport space.
Johannes: 20:32
So it's this balance between keeping it too broad or specific. If it's too specific, you're really, really limiting yourself, and people will only deliver what you're expecting them to deliver. Where's if you keeping it a little broader, Oh, actually, this we never thought of. And some people really go to a point where saying Okay, I want this button and that function behind that button. No, it's not about that. It's about what problem are you trying to solve? The "how" should be left to the people that you're trying to work together with. Don't tell them what kind of technology you want to have been used or all this functionality. Keep that away. Keep it, Okay, What's the pain point you have? And let's have people do the thinking for you, which is why you're using this kind of approach. Otherwise, use your IT people or use a traditional IT vendor to build this out for you.
Sebastian: 21:14
Do you typically see issues with enterprises not be willing to share enough information or data to make it specific enough for startups?
Johannes: 21:23
And I think this is a two-part answer. Yes, they're not willing to, and I think it's right that they're not willing to, because they know they sit on a gold mine that could potentially be quite valuable. For the startups as well, if let's say we open up a kind of Agorize challenge and you open up all of this data, the majority will get lost in all this data. They needed a more structured approach. The beginning the way we do, look to submit your Executive Summary on how your tackle this particular problem and let us know what kind of data you'd like to have from the enterprise to make this work.
Johannes: 21:55
And then we open up the data for maybe the top 15 or 20 startups. And that's why the corporates also may say is okay, this is 15 - 20 startups, I can sign NDA's and I know who this data is going to. It's not like a self serves kind of a model. Just for those where it's really more of tech starting, a lot of them don't yet have a culture of sharing the data, making it accessible, only getting started with it. Some other customers, have already APIs with anonymous data and everything is quite easy for them to open that up for people to play around with.
Johannes: 22:23
And then it's a completely different question, Yeah, okay, just play around, see what you can find, but it's anonymous data, you know. There's only so much value in that, and for that as well be, so can I use that to test that first and then for the proper to see what kind of value you as a startup can provide through analytics or whatever, else will give you the actual data, but only at a smaller volume. Don't open up to everyone. You don't want to give your data to you don't know who. This could also be the competitor, right? That adds up to the challenge. And then they would have access to all of his data, uncool. And this is sort of the value of Agorize. We put ourselves into the shoes of both sides and we make sure that it makes sense and benefits both the innovators and the corporate equally.
Sebastian: 23:03
So, could you maybe share some success and some failure cases of your past examples that you have set over 1000 challenges? You must have had some quite interesting programs, within that?
Johannes: 23:18
Yeah, likely, I mean, fortunately, a few as well good successes. I mean, in Asia we are quite proud about 95% of customers came back within the first 12 months. But more concretely about numbers, that's a very good example, which many of the people of the audience would have heard of this well before is a program called L'Oreal Brand Storm. And when L'Oreal says is quite a simple thing. Look, if you want to work in L'Oreal, we don't accept cvs. Every year they have a different topic, and this year there is: how can we reduce the amount of plastic in our cosmetics? In the previous years was here is the unused product. How would she launch or market this in your home market?
Johannes: 23:54
And it's really cool because I mean a lot of their customers are in their early twenties and these are the ones they also going to hire. So, they had about 40,000 - 50,000 students all submitting their ideas through the platforms. Okay, this is how you should sell your product in my market. And the top 70 - 100 students every year they hire for their grad program. So, it's really, really cool. They have all those ideas from the students. So, they turning hiring from a pure call center to also something that they get insights from actually creates value for the company.
Johannes: 24:22
That's on the student's side. On a startup side, that's quite a bit of luck, between me running my program and startup being commercialized within the enterprise. But more concretely and this is a cool thing where we don't just work with innovation lab, but we also work with CVC's - Corporate Venture Capital. We were with the guys behind Absolut vodka. We ran a program with them in China, around the We Chat platform that they have and want to commercialize. We help them find about 100, maybe a little more start-ups in China specializing in that. And they signed a commercial agreement with the best startup and made an investment in another start-up. I think that's a concrete good outcome, and now we just relaunched the second edition of this program. So the cool thing is that the enterprise able, see how we're able to create a lot more value for them beyond the social media and advertising like that's a side benefit. If that's the core value trying to achieve, it's talking about innovation theater, and I think that's other people that would be a lot better.
Sebastian: 25:18
So, talking about startup challenges, I think what you mentioned earlier was Hackathons. So, oftentimes especially now, we hear you know, people getting a bit tired of Hackathons. Hackathons not producing concrete results, but I think you see Hackathon is actually a bit differently rather than actually creating concrete ideas. What is in your mind is the real value of a Hackathon?
Johannes: 25:42
Maybe for the audience who knows, like maybe some of you are new to what a Hackathon is. Traditionally, the definition is a Hackathon is an event where people come together, oftentimes developers, over a 12 or 24 hour time period to build something. And traditionally the model has been like, Let's change the world in 24 hours. Let's built the next $1,000,000,000 company in 24 hours. And that's an institutional view of looking at it, as you currently said. And I have myself organized or participated in about 50 - 75, and if not even 100 Hackathons, I've stopped counting and I don't think that works.
Johannes: 26:17
There are hundreds of thousands of people joining Hackathons, and you have a handful of companies that have come out of it. So, it's more luck than anything to do with the methodology. So, the way we see let's say, Okay, look, you have this Hackathon, why not we utilize this as a means to assess talent to hire. So, like I already mentioned with L'Oreal and their Brand Storm, that's more of a business version of it, because we're looking at marketing plans, we're looking at business plans. You can turn it into a tech program. Let's build a prototype around a certain problem to assess people's ability of building stuff, like the tech capabilities, which I think is fundamental, but at the same time, it's what kind of ideas do they have?
Johannes: 26:56
Do they understand my space? Do their work well in teams? It's turning something that used to be a 15 or 30-minute interview into a 2 or 3-month journey with the participant. They get to know each other very well. They "spray and pray", a kind of approach from the participants, cause it's quite a bit of time to have to invest into it. And at the same time, they understand, learn more about one another, because the student may say, OK, actually, I don't want to work in this kind of company. I don't want to be doing this kind of job on a day-to-day basis, because that's oftentimes the kind of challenge they push, that really reflects what they may be working on within the company. Or I could work the other way around. That was really cool, you know, they showcase to us. They really care about our ideas and many of the ideas that end up being developed for these challenges, they work on as a part of their graduate program to implement off in the company.
Johannes: 27:41
So this is the beauty of using this kind of model. Can be either more business or more tech. And the other thing that we do differently is moving away from this 24-hour format. I have already mentioned 3 months. So, the way it works is basically a lot of times we have about 8 weeks online, where they form teams and work on that proposal. And through the platform actually, we helped them build the team because a lot of times business students know other business students and tech people know the other tech people. So, through the platform, it helps to build the team and function. That helps build diversified teams. Then they work on the proposal. Sometimes they have never met each other beyond on the platform. Then we do a vetting. Let's say we select the top 20 or 30 teams then we then assign to a mentor, before even they come to the often Hackathon.
Johannes: 28:25
So, they come then to the often Hackathon. We can still do a 12 or 24-hour format, but they already have their ideas. They already have this validated by their mentor, is all about turning this from paper into reality. And that way the mentors and everyone, only spend their time on the teams that are really serious. Because for a traditional Hackathon, you have like half the people leave because they didn't find a team. That other third left because they couldn't find a project to work on. And the other half was just there for free foods, so you have a big, big drop-off. And people would only join if they're available during that one weekend. It's geographically constrained to Singapore.
Johannes: 28:59
Like if I run a traditional Hackathon here in Singapore, people from across the border wouldn't come, even those just 45 minutes, an hour. Whereas for this ok, look this is okay look, you're one of the top 20 teams already. A lot of times you fly people in from around the world for the final Hackathon. And then you have 12 for 24 hours to build it. Sometimes, if you look at it on a more global scale, we could even host the whole Hackathon online and just do a demo day offline. And then say OK, this is what we've built over the last two months online. And here's the outcome for them to decide oftentimes who are the top ones that they want to hire for their graduate program, for the intern program, or whatever else.
Sebastian: 29:37
So for this, you would then be working with the HR departments?
Johannes: 29:40
So, it's typically HR plus a business unit that's sponsoring this. That's because again you don't want to have kind of random wasting students' times or your own time. You have already done this call of happening. Let's partner with the business unit, see what kind of problem statements they have. And then get those ideas back into the business. But you have to be realistic as well, right? All these ideas are gonna be super blue sky. A lot more work will have to be done, but it's not for nothing. And this is also where a lot of the universities are very interested in this model because traditionally they have been using Harvard business cases and they're great and not saying anything bad about them, you know. But now we're offering an alternative saying, Look, this is company ABC, they have these problems today. You can use this as part of your syllabus.
Johannes: 30:23
Your students will still get the grade the same way as they yesterday, but today also will offer them a job, an internship, or global exposure opportunity on top of that. So, we're working with a lot of the top universities across the world that are now using Agorize challenges as part of the syllabus. And this is where it becomes very, very interesting and it becomes a whole ecosystem coming together. And not just Agorize trying to build everything, but the universities also see value in this, because they get to showcase their students on a global platform. Let's say, OK, it's the NUS students, from the National University of Singapore versus Hongkong's HKU students. How do our student's benchmark? That's because is very interesting from an administrative point of view for the universities.
Sebastian: 31:01
So, you can also help with all of these relationships, with the sourcing, finding the Talent.
Johannes: 31:06
We actually have on the ground, we call them Community Managers, that are partnering with all the universities, with all the incubators, the accelerators, the co-working spaces. So, you have a few communities that we're looking at. If it's students, it's more of the universities, the student clubs, the societies. If it's startup programs you worked with, its accelerator's, co-working spaces, incubators, conferences the times, that we work together with because it's all about creating this win-win situation. For the universities is very clear, they want to push their students out there in a market, have them these experiences, these learning opportunities.
Johannes: 32:52
Even for accelerators and co-working spaces, I mean. If I host a startup and they now win a deal with let's say Singapore Airlines, then they have to hire more people. That's more revenue for me as a co-working space. Or if an accelerator acquires a startup. Again, so it's all about making these win-win opportunities. And ourselves, I mean, there are 8 billion people in this world. It is impossible for us to have access to everyone. So, of course, we have our existing network of startups, but we are able to grow this lot faster through these connectors. Then also bring their network to the table and for the startups and students, it's often free anyways. So, it's all about creating these win, win, or even win-win-win now within the ecosystem.
Sebastian: 32:52
Out of our clients, often more traditional companies and machine building, agriculture, mining, often B to B industries often have challenges in attracting more digital talent, when it comes to designers, to developers. Really raising their profile to be an attractive employer for these kinds of people. Do you feel that with this kind of approach, you're actually giving companies like that also a chance to kind of change their perception among that crowd?
Johannes: 32:52
Yeah, absolutely. And it's not just about perception also in terms of diversity. So, diversity and volume of applications that they can receive. Many employers as you correctly saying, sooner or later, if they are more of a traditional block kind of a customer, will receive the same profile of applications. But through us we are able to plug this into a global community, we are gender agnostic, religion agnostic, background agnostic. We don't care who you are or where you're from. And by doing that, by really opening it up to these people, we have some very interesting things. You know, for the L'Oreal example I know pretty well, typically for a traditional business rule, If you're not studying business in university, you wouldn't even make it past the CV filter. But for some people that join our programs, they studied completely different things.
Johannes: 33:43
But this program doesn't care about that. The program cares about do you have great ideas, do great concepts? Okay, let's evaluate you based on this and, you have a 2.0 GPA, but we don't mind. It's stepping beyond that. We are just looking at can these people deliver, do they have good ideas for us to work together. This is where it comes very interesting for the companies to really open up their eyes oftentimes to all the talent that usually they wouldn't have been able to track, that wouldn't have made it through the filter, because of the traditional way of looking at talent.
Sebastian: 34:11
Yeah, that's a very interesting view as well. What do companies have to do or also be prepared to invest in terms of time and so forced to actually make something like this successful?
Johannes: 34:23
Timing-wise is really, I have already talked about the external phase, right? So the external phase is about 3 months. Then we talk about a 2 month or 6 to 8 weeks application phase, then we're talking about a 3 or 4-week mentoring phase, so we get the top teams to move into this mentoring phase. And then, from there we set the top to come offline. That's a 3-month external piece, and prior to that, we take about 4 to 6 weeks to prepare everything. By preparing everything I'm talking about putting together an interesting brief that people actually understand. It's to put together the incentives like what's in it for the people. Make sure that's concrete next steps. It's to put together a timeline and so on so forth. So it's about end to end, 4 to 4 and 1/2 months from "hello" to hear the top talents or top startups for you to hire or potentially work together with.
Sebastian: 35:13
What are some of the pitfalls that corporates have to watch out for? What mistakes have you seen there?
Johannes: 35:18
So, basically everything I said, but turning around, right? So, on one and making super, super technical and problem statements that are paragraphs in length. No one will read that. I think a beautiful thing to do if you want to fail is wanted to own all the IP. I think it's a guaranteed one that you can put in there. Not committing to any next steps and all potentially, there's gonna be pilot opportunities. In many markets and especially in Singapore, we are aware that we are a country of 5 million people here. We don't have the best of everything. Let's open it up. You know, Let's look at an APAC. Let's look at globally some of the best people. Yes, certainly Singapore excels in certain areas, but it doesn't excel in everything and this is something where some companies have to be a little more open as well to venture beyond what they're typically comfortable with.
Johannes: 36:06
And indeed, I think the last one is really, in the beginning, and the opening of the funnel you would want to put the barriers as low as possible, you know. So you're asking someone to submit a 50 page dedicated deck and prototype and no one will do it. You know, you wanna keep those barriers low. Look, give us your executive summary, your proposal. And then as we move you along the pipe and as you know that you're one of the tops and top off the top, as your chance getting higher to win, people are more willing to invest more time to put something more bespoke for you. But if you do that in the very beginning, you know, you are not gonna get very many people into the pipe.
Sebastian: 36:42
When we talk about barriers, how do you actually deal with, for example, language barriers? When we're looking at Southeast Asia, all of the different countries, languages, cultures? How does that work?
Johannes: 36:52
Absolutely, it's both a challenge and opportunity, I would say. And especially in Southeast Asia, it's quite apparent. I mean, we run programs and pretty much every major economy in the region, and especially if you're talking about Indonesia, Vietnam, English is very tough. If you force English, you're really limiting yourself to the top 1%. This is more a problem for student programs than for startup programs. For startup programs is a little easier to force English, but you have to localize. And this is where becomes very interesting, because some problems that may be facing country B may already be solved in country A. But if you had this language bear, you wouldn't ever attract this kind of talent.
Johannes: 37:32
So this something as in Agorize I'm working on quite a lot as well. Both on the platform perspective, making everything local again, further lower the barriers. But the challenge is that some of the enterprise customers that together with, may not be able to work together with people that don't speak fluent English. So, this is something we have to also look at, does it make sense. If you are looking at a Singapore RHQ original headquarter that has offices in the regions, you may don't need someone understands English. But if you're looking to only hire people that speak native English, because they only have a Singapore office, Okay, we would put that filter there. Otherwise, you probably wasting your time and efforts with people that otherwise you wouldn't be able to work with. That's on the higher perspective.
Sebastian: 38:15
Makes sense. I would like to also look a bit at entrepreneurship because that something that we've been talking about quite a bit. Where a lot of our clients, obviously not only looking to build things in an innovation lab or maybe work with startups but actually bring this kind of innovation culture, new ways of thinking into the company, do on larger-scale programs, where people internally can really participate. You also actually help a lot in organizing these sorts of programs. How does that typically work?
Johannes: 38:49
So, a lot of people don't know that we run this kind of program, because it happens behind the scene. It happens behind very thick firewalls, only accessible to employees. But especially in Asia, it's quite a rising trend, where employers are looking to engage their employees, because they're the ones on the ground every day, interacting with the product and the customer on a daily basis. They know what the problems are. They know what the opportunities are. So how come I get those insights to the boardroom, where the decisions are made about the product. And you have very interesting dynamics happening, wherein the traditional kind of set up somewhere that may be a fresh graduate intern, anything he says, will be discounted by 80%.
Johannes: 39:28
But again, by removing the layer of who people are and just looking at what kind of ideas they have, you could have some very junior people on paper having some very interesting ideas because they have been not for that long in the organization. They don't yet know all the rules, and if you don't know the rules, you can't break the rules. So this is what we see it where you have some really phenomenal ideas oftentimes from the employees. And for employees is great as well, because they suddenly see, I'm not just here to execute, but people care about what I think. And it's a cool way of gamifying the whole experience is, well again because it's online. It's not too time intensive for them. We all know they have their day jobs, they have to take care of. But on the side, because over 2 month period, when they apply, they find some people to work together with. To work on an idea that either they themselves, later on, can take forward to potentially turn into a business with the company, or because some companies are not set up in that kind of a way where they don't have all the expertise. Maybe a Central Innovation Lab team can then take over this idea to pilot something and roll it out.
Sebastian: 40:28
So what is typically the structure that really works for these kinds of programs?
Johannes: 40:32
It depends on this kind of stage they are at, but it's a little different outside to many of our external programs because these are employees and we want to really invest in the talent. So, oftentimes we start off with some workshops because for them is super new like what's entrepreneurship, what's a startup, what's design thinking, what's lean business model canvas? So, to get them some of that methodology, so they're not completely lost. And then again, so these workshops that would work in line with the program structure. So, let's say the first deliverables, that's the executive summary.
Johannes: 41:07
So, we may create a workshop on validating your idea, ensure that's not just a cool business idea, but people would actually be we're willing to pay for it or that is technologically feasible. So, you have somewhere around that to help them create those deliverables and then they create the deliverable. This is to be done a larger scale. So, let's say you have 500 or even 1000 employees that are submitting these ideas, and then we let's say select the top 10 - 15 teams. With them, we can then sit down and do more bespoke workshops. This could be helping them in terms of prototyping. This could be helping them going out to the market and do even more research.
Johannes: 41:44
It's really about guiding them because, as I mentioned to them also, this is new. If we just drop them in the middle of Sahara with a lot of money, they're gonna die. We're here to provide that compass to them, to have to get back to land. So, again they go through this funnel, and the further they get, the more resources they get. And then some of our customers, end up getting to leave their day jobs to full-time work on this venture. Other customers, unfortunately, don't have this liberty or they're not set up to work in this way. Then they have an internal, a central internal team, or the agency to help them do than work on this project further and see whether or not this can get commercialized.
Johannes: 42:19
But, a lot of times is not just about the outcome that they're looking at, OK, some potential great business ideas, but really about instilling that culture of innovation and culture of not just doing what you're told to do, but thinking on their feet to try new things. To be more aware of what are some other technologies are being used out there beyond the walls of their company, where some of our enterprise customers really see the value of running internal programs in the long run.
Sebastian: 42:45
And you run those also for companies that are set up across different countries, different regions all at the same time. What are some other challenges and opportunities within that?
Johannes: 42:56
So I mean, because we use an online platform where all of this happens, the information, the collaboration. We can even distribute the webinars online. Some of the things are really quite fundamental, where, for me is an external, quite almost funny, where you have situations where let's say you have the regional headquarters in Singapore and naturally, the organizing committee may also be based here. And they may also want to organize the final event here. And then the people in Malaysia and Indonesia saying, why is it always in Singapore? And for me, it's like, Okay, this is really, really fundamental. But to them it's okay, How can they also be really inclusive? And this is why, for example, for the workshops, we oftentimes push to have it online, so that everyone does really fewer barriers and that everyone benefits from these things equally.
Johannes: 43:43
The other thing is saying Okay, let's gamify if I the process and have two people decide where the final event will be held. The country with the most applications will have the final event in their country. So it's kind of quite fundamental things oftentimes that you're talking about. Of course, the language may also be a challenge, but it's not so much a challenge that we have come across yet, because it's always been everyone is English speaking. The whole program is English, but I see going forward if we're talking about more very localized players, that this may change.
Johannes: 44:12
So, this will be something that we have to experiment with because you don't want to just have silos of projects. You know you don't have the Malay people only with other Malays and the people in Thailand only from Thailand's. How can we make those cross-border connections? And this is something where, as a region is super exciting because you have very, very good business people in Singapore, you have very good developers in Indonesia and Vietnam, and you're very good designers elsewhere. Let's leverage on this expertise to really form these teams together and not just have a team of businesspeople and they both great tech, but is it really feasible? And the team of tech people that build great tech, but does anyone actually want to pay for it? This is a challenge I can foresee coming, but I think tremendous opportunities in this space if you can crack this. But since we're only dealing in English, it's not been an issue for now.
Sebastian: 44:58
How long are these programs take typically?
Johannes: 45:01
So they're a little shorter. And the reason why they can be a little short is, that as the enterprise, they already own the network, right? They know all the employees. They have their emails, that have their notice boards and whatever else, so you can actually shorten the initial application phase a bit. Maybe down to 6 weeks, but the rest will all stay the same. So, you're still talking about a 3-month external engagement and then a 1 month setup period. So it's also 3 to 4 months from end to end.
Sebastian: 45:28
And once they move along the different phases, obviously you need people to then evaluate and make the decision on who gets to move forward. What kind of setup have you found effective there on who should be like sitting on the judging committee? How many people should be involved in that kind of activity?
Johannes: 45:46
I think it's 2 questions. One of the questions of "who" and the other questions of "how many". Now the "who" question is quite easy to answer. We want to make sure that we build buy-in as the program evolves. Now, what do you mean by that? If I run a program for you and I have 1000 startups supplying, I as Agorize run the whole thing for you and I come to you, say, Sebastian, Here's the one startup I have selected for you. Your first question will be like, Why this startup and why not those ones? We want to avoid that because that way you ensure basically that you have no next step.
Johannes: 46:19
So, we get the decision-makers involved quite early on because you want to start transferring the ownership of the relationship from Agorize to the customer. So, by the time of the Demo Day, we do basically have the whole registry with the startup. So, if you're talking about titles, if it's a startup program is your head of innovation. It's your business sponsor and maybe a tech or data person if you're opening in some of those insights. If you're talking about the HR program, it's obvious you're hiring manager, maybe some from the HR team and the business that's sponsoring the problem statement. Sometimes, we bring in externals as well, because they may not have all the expertise in-house.
Johannes: 46:59
So, recently we brought on board a VC to look at this from a commercial perspective, which is something that's worth investing in. We brought onboard someone more from an industry perspective, not just from a company perspective. Where's the whole industry moving? So just a compliment on the insights. But, I think at the very most should be 50/50, 50 internal, 50 external. But what we see, a lot of times they were talking about 75 to 100% internal, because the end of the day the enterprise wants to be the customer. They want to be the ones absorbing this talent, and they kind of know pretty well what they want, what they need. And then account number 4 - 5 people on a panel. We don't want to make it crazy. One person kind of may be biased, but have a diversity of opinions to then form a decision on who are the best people are best startups to move through the panel.
Sebastian: 47:49
One of the motivations that you mentioned for running internal programs is this whole topic of a mindset shift, getting people engaged in innovation, changing the culture. How do you see programs really contributing to that? And then how many times do you actually have to run such a program in order to really see some results out of that?
Johannes: 48:12
It's a question of how many programs can you run and how many programs must you run? I've seen that some of them run like 20 of them at the same time and then 4 times per year.
Sebastian: 48:23
That sounds insane.
Johannes: 48:25
Sounds insane. This is a kind of feedback from the people as well. They say we have so much happened. And I got my day job and they want me to do all these things and not just do these things, but do them 4 times per year. We do all these things, but nothing ever comes out of it. So, why on earth are we doing it? It is a waste of our time. Always see some nice photos on LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever else is the preferred mode of communicating these things. So, you can't expect one program to solve all your problems culture-wise.
Johannes: 48:57
I mean, as I mentioned it early on, open innovation or running an entrepreneurship challenge is just one tool of many. The complement of those workshops already makes it a more well-rounded tool. Those are other things that you could be doing as well. But by no means what do you make it a one-off. If you do something for the first time ever, people always naturally be skeptical. Will this be worth my time, what is the outcome that you create, something small, get some quick wins to show, Okay, look, here are some of the prototypes that came up here. Some of the things that we are now commercializing. This is actually quite cool, you know is worth my time and I have to see some of the things that I'm working on be showcased at this level and be benefiting the organization.
Johannes: 49:36
And the next time around people will say let's join more. So, for many of our enterprise customers is an ongoing thing to do once every year. It's not too tiring. So, the way it works is, let's say we running a program for 4 months. We then select the top 3 projects and pilot each project for 2 months. So that's 6 months of piloting, because 3 times 2 and then 3 months of projects, that's 9 months and another 2 - 3 months to prepare for the next run.
Johannes: 50:02
So, this is something the employees, a lot of them look forward to. That's something that can help showcase them on an oftentimes regional, even global platform, where they put it together with on a summit or some major conference. So, I think this can be ongoing. I mean, a lot of times they beyond the culture, they also get some of the cool ideas that they can implement that really create value. But it also creates a lot more, I don't know what's a good word for it, but people feel that they're being more valued at work beyond just someone executed, but really their insights. So, I guess in the long run this will also help with retention, Employee satisfaction, and many other benefits, which are traditional HR is looking to look at.
Sebastian: 50:42
And in terms of real business outcome, when somebody is running such a program for the first time, what should the expectations there be?
Johannes: 50:50
I think. I mean with business outcomes, you mean like things being implemented?
Sebastian: 50:55
Correct.
Johannes: 50:56
Often times and of course, you can't compare Apple to Apple. But the kind of ideas that gonna be generated may still be quite a blue sky. They're gonna be less blue sky than a student because they understand some of the limitations in the enterprise. They understand what is possible, what is not possible, but it's still oftentimes only a team or 3 - 4 or 5 people. They're gonna be, you could almost call the first-time founders right, for many of them. They've never had anything like this before. I think doing it purely internally, the chances are extremely low, that you can see something from an idea all the way into commercialization. I think once that idea has been limiting, like validated internally, up to a certain limit, oftentimes that makes a lot of sense to bring an external partner in to help to make that jump. Or help them take them through the journey to complement some of the skills that they internally don't have.
Johannes: 51:47
Many of the companies are not company builders. They here to run hospitals, they here to run airlines, they here to sell, whatever. They don't have the expertise to help them. They don't have the infrastructure to help them. So, there's I think, where it makes sense if you're really looking at tangible business outcomes to bring someone on board and to realize again, Okay, what are we good at? What do we like? Let's bring people in. So, this is typically for us the Demo Day. Once the board, the business unit, and the head of innovation agree on the things that potentially create enough impact for the company. Let's bring someone on board that could help us turn this idea, or maybe even prototype into a product that we can then further test that develops to see whether commercial roll it is feasible.
Sebastian: 52:29
What are some of the mistakes that you've seen corporates make on the internal innovation side?
Johannes: 52:35
I think one mistake, which is quite possible, is if you don't have this mindset of "we can't do everything" and then pushing the employees too hard into doing it themselves without giving them the resource and the time allocation that's needed. I mean, if you're looking and this is again to my earlier point, we need quick wins. All right, let's have this on top of our head. We want to create quick wins and we have this team of employees, these are now won this internal challenge. So, how are they going to go about turning that idea and true something that's pilotable?
Johannes: 53:10
If they don't have the resources, like maybe a cool team, they can build them themselves. Let's say they have the skills that make those assumptions, that's a big assumption that we making, but let's make the assumption. But they still have their day jobs, that they are getting measured on, you know, the sales targets, your customer satisfaction. How much code do you push to or whatever else? You need to give them, if they have the skills in the team, give them the time allocation. So, I think it's those two things that are really, really critical. To either give them the resource and if you're not giving them a resource, that they already have, give them flexibility, take them out, give them allocations.
Johannes: 53:44
Look 40 - 50% of your time, can we work on this? And I think this is another question of how much time is enough time? If it's 5% it's 0%. It's more of alike, yes, you're doing this, but it's not going to really impact your job and that will not be sustainable in the long run. I think this is the balance again. It needs to be worked out. Some companies are more flexible, OK, we could take you out, you can keep working on it. Some are really tight or if it's a very specialized person and that's about okay, How can we empower this person through external capabilities to do their job and spend very minimal time on this? Still, keep that side project at first on track.
Sebastian: 54:23
Keep the balance.
Johannes: 54:24
Keep the balance. Absolutely.
Sebastian: 54:26
All right. I'd like to talk a bit about the startup ecosystem in Southeast Asia. Since you run a lot of startup challengers, you have this big platform where you have a lot of different connections. I would love to get a bit of your view on that, because usually, we're reading a lot from the VC's point of view, from the government's point of view. Maybe let's start with easy ones for the use you lived both, in Hong Kong and Singapore, if you had to compare these two in terms of the startup ecosystem, what would you say?
Johannes: 54:56
I should record this answer because I get this question every other day. And you really can't compare the two markets. It's very two different setups. Both are access markets to other regions. Singapore itself often it's just not a market itself, except if you look at the B2B strategy, is oftentimes you do through Singapore, Southeast Asia. Through Hong Kong, you explore China. That's on a high level. On a lower level, I think you can dissect it in multiple ways. From a talent kind of perspective, from what I've seen here in Singapore, people are a lot more open to working for startups. People are beyond working for a big logo, a big name.
Johannes: 55:38
Whereas in Hong Kong, it's still about where do you work, then what do you do? So, I think that's really, really important, because of a company, if the startup doesn't get good talent, where they're gonna go? Company is the company, the startup is the startup, because of the people they're made up of. So in Hong Kong, if you tell someone, not always it's changing, they started later than Singapore did, so it's naturally a little bit behind. But if you told your parents that you're working at a startup, it's like what happened to you? What happened to the university?
Sebastian: 56:07
Where did you go wrong?
Johannes: 56:08
It's not a natural 1st choice. Whereas in Singapore here, I can see it for Agoriz, the kind of applications we received. No, we're not a traditional start-up by any means, but we get a lot more quantity and quality of applications here for our jobs than we do in Hong Kong. I think the other thing that's really read different about the ecosystems, it's in Singapore we have one government that defines the strategy for all the different agencies, and they all run the same direction. And all the agencies are hyper-connected. There are no silos whatsoever, which can be either really good or really bad. Meaning., if you're doing some really cool work on the left side of Singapore, the right side of Singapore would also know of this. Or vice versa. If you're not doing something too well, they will know as well.
Johannes: 56:53
Hong Kong, I think, a lot of times a little more silos, where you have your hardware bubble, you have your software bubble. There's not too much interaction with them. And I think the Singapore government has done a really good job in really bringing them all together, because a lot of the agencies, let's say under the big innovation agency here Enterprise Singapore, look at everything. Whereas the older model it's more like, we have this one agency and they look at this kind of startups, this kind of agency to look at that kind of startups. Or let's say we have the manufacturing agency, they look at the traditional kind of manufacturing enterprises and they look at manufacturing startups.
Johannes: 57:29
But here they really have one agency to look over everything. I think that makes the whole ecosystem for the name of that. And I think the last part, which is really interesting, is that Singapore is just on paper a lot cheaper. Like both, in terms of hiring people, in terms of lifestyle, in terms of rent, which for startups is a big factor. Like, if it's expensive to hire, then we can hire less good people, right? The one thing I think that's still quite challenging for many startups, especially once they scale, is visas. I think that's one of the biggest barriers. Of course, the government is working and making it more accessible, especially with tech talent, that they want to bring in. But this is one thing from foreigners we hear a lot saying okay, visas are very difficult. In Hong Kong, the question is a lot easier to answer. They have a lot easier process. The bar is not as high to get their visa. These are just some of the differences between the ecosystem.
Sebastian: 58:20
Yeah, it's definitely the first time that I've heard Singapore mentioned as a cost advantage.
Johannes: 58:26
Yes, I think if you asked, if you to talk about this in public and you're too loud and say that Singapore is cheap, they look at you and say, what's up with this guy? Where is the living? But it's all that's the benchmark you comparing this to. And if you comparing with Hong Kong, today Singapore, it's still quite a bit cheaper than Hong Kong. As a startup founder, that's a fantastic thing, Of course, if you compare it to Indonesia it's very expensive or anyone else in the region. But at least comparing it to another financial powerhouse, an economic powerhouse, Hong Kong, I think cost-wise, it's very good.
Sebastian: 58:57
So let's talk about this region of Southeast Asia. Since you run a lot of programs in this region, where do you see really the hotbeds of innovation? Where do you see a lot of interesting startups applying to your programs?
Johannes: 59:11
I think Indonesia is a phenomenal market just waiting to explode. One of the big barriers they have is language to come out. There are a lot of very hard problems to be solved, just because of the geographical and size of Indonesia, naturally. Vietnam has some fantastic development talent. In all of our programs, we see really, really good applications coming from there. Again, language is an issue. Those two markets personally are very, very high on my map in terms of potential yet just markets waiting to explode, waiting to come out. And the cool thing is that in those markets, none of the infrastructures is there. The infrastructure and the systems, and the law are just starting to get built. And you can very easily move from that kind of setup to a setup that is more established already.
Johannes: 59:59
I think that's the challenge for many of the Singapore startups. If you're starting in Singapore, it's already as good as it gets, infrastructure-wise, law-wise. If you're moving to Indonesia, you have to rebuild many other things to make it work there. But going from Indonesia or come from Malaysia to Singapore, I think that's considerably easier than the other way around. Of course, if you're comparing it into, if you're looking to go into Europe and North America, you're looking at pretty much the same benchmark. At least in the region, I think that's something which may be quite an advantage for some of these really hard markets, cause once they cracked their own market, the other markets would be considerably easier to tap into.
Sebastian: 1:0:33
When we talk about the corporate innovation activity, where do you see more of that?
Johannes: 1:0:38
I think the Singapore government has really done a phenomenal job at anchoring a lot of them here in Singapore. Of course, some of the LLE's, Large Local enterprises of the respective countries have them in their own countries. So, for example, Maybank, they're sitting up in KL. Air Asia sits up in KL because it's where their headquarter sets, but at least from a multinational perspective, a lot of them are based here in Singapore. And I think it's also fair to say that racial-wise a lot of the lot more local companies here are engaged in working with start-ups than elsewhere in the world, because of the kind of space the government is trying to set up. They're trying to have the money, the startups, the enterprises with the problems, the talent, all sitting in the same place make it a super-connector.
Johannes: 1:1:23
But this is something that still being developed. It's not a finished product yet, and the government is just doing the switch or launch this open innovation network, where they again look into further connect enterprises with startups. Bring these enterprises from abroad with startups from the region or the other way around to really become that superconductor in the region, because they as well are acknowledging that we can't just connect Singapore to Singapore. We also wanna connect Singapore to abroad or abroad to Singapore.
Sebastian: 1:1:52
So, if you look at this whole space of open innovation, where are we there in the hype cycle in the maturity cycle? Do companies really use it productively? Is it still early? What does it look like?
Johannes: 1:2:05
I would say it's early, but at danger, and the reason why I say that danger is that because it is something still very, very new. And if we have players in the market as a group of entities that don't properly put together these programs, is gonna spoil the market for everyone. Because let's say, I sell something to you which is called this open innovation thing. And it was not structured properly and you had no outcomes. The only outcome was marketing. The next partner comes to you, says open innovations, Oh, no, no, no. We have tried this. It doesn't work.
Johannes: 1:2:40
So I think that's really, really important to make sure that we can deliver quick results. A lot of the enterprises say will try it once and if it doesn't work, then they will never try it again. But in Asia, this is in general, it's still something really, really early. So, something really new. A lot of companies only starting to open up to work together with external innovators. Of course, open innovation as a model cannot stay static. They have to keep evolving, like the Hackathons as well. First, it was these offline things. Now is this hybrid of online to offline. Open innovation as well will have to evolve. It is something quite new, so the early players will have an advantage. The big players can experiment with their various customers to basically keep creating more and more value and evolve into something that's relevant for the years to come.
Sebastian: 1:3:23
Talk about evolution, what's next for Agorize? What are you excited about?
Johannes: 1:3:27
I think one super exciting thing and I already briefly talked about this early on, i's really localizing into some of them are the market. By other markets I mean, so we already localized in obviously France, cause it's a French company, in Germany. So we do French, German, Spanish, English, Mandarin and Japanese, and Portuguese I believe, yeah Portuguese as well. So, you can see a lot of those companies are still based on what, they speak in the West, especially, I mean, Indonesia is like what? The world's 4th 5th most populated country? We can't not, and we have proven that with English already we have tremendous success. Now imagine doing that with some of the local languages.
Johannes: 1:4:08
In China, the same thing. We recently launched our WeChat integration. That's made massive changes for us to suddenly attract a lot more because it's like 1,000,000,000 people over, so really tapping into those local systems, making it local for other people, not just people with an international background which is what we started with. So, that's really, really exciting. I think also now that we have people at the biggest scale here in Asia to build up more of those partnerships at a local level as well, because yes, previously we worked together with a lot of the big governments, a lot of the major accelerators. But now we can also go just pure volume of partners, some of the more local ones, which from a not being based in the region, was a lot harder to do it because we just choose how we spend our resource. That's also really, really exciting because a lot of the innovators are now gonna be able to benefit from those programs that we're running for free, from their point of view.
Sebastian: 1:4:57
That's fantastic. I think we've covered quite a lot of ground here, from corporate-startup engagements to using Hackathons for hiring to internal programs and then mindset shifts. I mean fascinating insights. Thank you very much for sharing so openly. And yeah, let's talk again soon.
Johannes: 0:00
Thank you for having me.
Christine: 1:5:13
Thank you for listening to this episode of Lost In Transformation with our host Sebastian from MING Labs. If you enjoy our podcast, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a review on iTunes. Join us next time for another episode of our podcast.