Innovation ASEAN: A Silicon Valley Recipe for Success

On Tuesday, August 14th 2018, a seminar was held titled Innovation ASEAN: A Silicon Valley Recipe for Success. It was held at Pacific Place Mall and organized by Innovation ASEAN. The purpose of this seminar is to a sight about how companies at Silicon Valley able to produce and attract the most innovative companies in the world and of course with brilliant thoughts. The second is what are the recipes for a company to be able to work in ASEAN region.

The seminar was live and it broadcasted to Facebook with over 5.000 viewers. It was held from Jakarta, Penang and Manila. The first discussion was from Penang. The speakers were Rekha Pai-Kamath and Erin Keeley. Rekha Pai-Kamath is a Member Board of Directors at Fast Forward and Erin Keeley as Techwomen Mentor. The discussion talked about development in technology in the future. The future technologies that can be used by a lot people like farmers or painters. They also talked about young people have to be more exposed about technology. Technology needs to keep growing and critical thinking is very important. We need to keep learning and open about technology. For example, a few years ago we couldn't have a device that can be put inside our pocket and now we can.

The second discussion was from Jakarta. The speakers were Ruben Hatari, he is Head of Public Policy Facebook Indonesia and Shinto Nugroho as Chief Policy and Government Relations at GO-JEK. The discussion talked about Digital Privacy. Things like personal datas such as telephone number, address, email address are very important and must be protected by companies. Of course a lot of people say that if we put our personal datas on the internet, we should be prepared for this kind "data leakage". Even so, companies are highly required to protect the privacy of the users.

The third discussion was from Manila. The speaker was Carlo Calimon. He is a Director at StartUp Village. The discussion talked about what will be a challenge for new companies (startup). One of them is money. To build a business, we need fund. We can get the fund from ourselves (savings), parents or friends. It can also from government or investors. If our startup has a potential to grow, the government will give us fund so we can grow our company. Just like Carlo said "The money is out there". We just have to find the way, like finding friends who have the same idea with you, so you can form a team. Don't worry about other people who might steal your idea, because it's not guarantee they can be as good and as fast as their execution compare to us.

Personally, I'm really glad I can attend this seminar. It opens our mind, what things we need for being success in this digital era.