“Regeneration 2.1 ~ Innovation • Talent • Market” ACCCIM 3rd SME Conference

15-3-2012 Kuala Lumpur

Good morning to all.

Welcome to the 3rd SME Conference organised by The Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia with the theme “Regeneration 2.1 – Innovation, Talent, Market”. This is the 3rd time ACCCIM organise such an event. The 1st Conference focused on Transformation; and on Family Business Succession in the 2nd Conference. This time our main theme is on Innovation, Talent and Marketing. ACCCIM is particularly pleased to have with us 2 outstanding Malaysian speakers who have successfully establishing their enterprises overseas. They are Mr. Pua Khein Seng, Chairman of Phison Electronics Corp. and Mr. Alvin Woon, Co-Founder of Plurk.com as well as Mr. Vincent Hsieh, COO of PC home, a well-known e-Commerce site from Taiwan to share with us their practical experience.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The global economic scenario is highly volatile in recent years. Downcast in Europe and America has inevitably impacted the overall economic development in many nations. To survive and develop in the rapidly changing and sternly competitive international market, an enterprise must constantly learn to adapt, change and innovate, or else it will be eliminated in the current of competition.

The ever-changing needs of consumers have brought on relentless competition. Unlike the past when value for money alone would suffice, consumers nowadays will look more to their purchasing experiences. In other words, businesses today will need to take care of customers’ emotional needs besides rational demands. Emotional or idealistic needs include branding, company image, service attitude of frontline staffs, shop decor and etc. All of such factors will affect the consumers’ purchasing experience with regard to the products or services. The widely spread usage of internet has enabled the public to express their views and to voice their complaints conveniently. When a company overlooks the emotional needs of a customer without any remedial action, the negative remarks on the company may spread and further distort through various social networks, causing irreparable damage to the company concerned.

The Malaysian SMEs generally missed a major group of consumers namely the internet community, in their active quest for new market outlets. The ACCCIM 2012 SMEs Survey reveals that most of the respondents do not participate actively in e-commerce, nor do they set up a website or involve themselves in social networking. We shall further discuss this issue in the later session. What I want to highlight here is, online shopping will become more common in line with the changing habit of purchase of the young generation. The types of products that we can purchase online will also increase and diversify. I believe all of us here will have a better understanding of the scenario after listening to what Mr Vincent Hsieh, the COO of PChome has to say. What I wish to stress here is that the SMEs must not overlook the huge potential of this market segment.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I believe the word “Innovation” is no stranger to most of the SMEs. But how to innovate? This is a big question to many people. Compared with larger enterprises, SMEs are facing various constraints, such as resource or budget limitations. So how could they innovate? Many people would perceive technological breakthroughs as innovation. In fact innovation is not confined to that. It is about forging the existing capability of the company with the foresight of future market trend. As what Erwin Schrödinger, the father of Quantum Mechanics said: “The task is not so much to see what one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.” Therefore as a leader of an enterprise, we cannot be at all times pre-occupied in day-to-day operations, but should keep our eyes open to the changes of surrounding environment, and ponder over the future development plan of our enterprise.

To innovate is not just for the sake of innovation. It must be for the sake of “something”. This “something” here I referred to is in fact the market demand. We always say that the business strategy needs to be flexible and customise to suit different markets and different people. In other words, we must formulate our relevant business strategies based on various consumer needs in order to win their heart and loyalty to our brand. Mr. Stanley Yen used to say “Always compete with the expectations of customers, and you must always win”.

For an enterprise to innovate, to improve their services and to open up new market, one key element that we cannot ignore is: the talent. Therefore the first and foremost challenge, of an enterprise is to identify the right talents – we cannot just source talents from outside but more importantly to nurture talents from within – we need to identify potential talents in the company, to train and to retain them. We can hold our ground in this highly competitive market if we can manage this aspect well. For a company to attract and retain talent, generous offer of remuneration is not enough. There must be an effective system in which potential talents are given opportunity to develop and excel. To coordinate and harmonise various talents from different departments within a company in a convincing way is yet another kind of knowledge we have to master.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Innovation is not the ultimate objective of an enterprise, but one of its milestones. For enterprises to achieve sustainable development, continuous innovation must be cultivated as a habit. Innovation is the soul of an enterprise, as talents are mobile, technologies can break through, resources are for sharing, and funds are always limited. Only the competitiveness generated out of innovation is unique, which could hardly be learnt or taken away by others. Innovation is therefore the core competitiveness of an enterprise.

I hope the participants will obtain some inspiration from our speakers and panelists today and formulate more forward looking development plan for your respective company, in line with the national economic development roadmap. May your enterprise be elevated and steered towards the road of success!

Thank you.