Futures Group

Late last year, Futures Group did a video presentation – “Rise of the Rest”. So we reckon that if the Future lies here in Asia, wouldn’t it be interesting to learn and understand how Enterprises in Asia, especially those in China, India and even Indonesia, are evolving? How different are these Enterprises today as compared to 10-20 years ago and what they will look like moving forward?

Hence in May this year, we embarked on the first leg of our Future of Enterprise project focusing on Chinese Enterprise, and here’s the slides on some of the trends observed.

Note: This is a synthesis of ideas from more than 100 people (Including business leaders, academia, entrepreneurs, bloggers, etc. in both Singapore and China) interviewed over the past 3 -4 months.

Chinese enterprises have long enjoyed a low-cost structure, and after decades of being labeled “Factory of the World”, the Chinese understood that apart from manufacturing and/ or producing copies/ imitations, they would have to innovate in order to differentiate themselves from the competition. In addition, we also learnt that it is not always about product innovation, but the ability to adapt foreign ideas or create new hybrids to fit local context as well as the ability to monetize it (Example of Facebook Vs QQ). Another key observation is the need to understand State Policies – We learnt how state policies can affect and even create new industries in China (example of One Child Policy and its impact on education, healthcare and internet industry as well as removal of licensing requirement which led to the boom in Shenzhen’s cottage phone industry).

As China prepares herself to be a dominant force in the global economy, what are the opportunities and threats faced by Singapore and our enterprises? Well, something to mull over while we continue phase II of our project – India. Here We Come!