The Entrepreneurial Thinking program culminates with attractive business plans!

Continuing on the energetic start of the program, we embarked onto Day 3 by welcoming a DDP alumnus of both NUCB Business School and NEOMA Business School, Jocelyn Bouchet is Sales Director at Meleap, the startup behind HADO TechnoSports.

Using AR technology to add a new dimension to interactive play, HADO and the burgeoning field of TechnoSports are revolutionizing sports entertainment in more than 20 countries across the globe. From Jocelyn's experience in developing Meleap’s business through the expansion of HADO TechnoSports, he introduced the students to how a tech-based business can be launched from its concept to the market, highlighting the new applications of technology and how it could be adapted for creating new business models. Amongst the key takeaways of this session, Jocelyn stressed the importance of the following 3 pillars to monitor any tech-based start-up: “maintenance and reliability of product”, “patents, licenses and trademarks”, and “R&D and constant innovation”.

Prof. Louie Wong (of NUCB Business School) followed on the topic of technology and innovation with a lecture on how technology can be leveraged for innovation. And contrary to the popular belief, such innovations can be disruptive or non-disruptive. In the former’s case, a new market or business model will be created as a result of the disruptive innovation, providing agility and adaptability, while moving competition away from the mainstream players who may fall. On the other hand, with non-disruptive innovation, it is more about creating new markets where none existed before (Blue Ocean Strategy), expanding and complementing current business models.

This was illustrated by the case of Ping An hospital in China, which developed a healthcare app to overcome an issue that was hindering the healthcare industry in China: lack of top tier hospitals and doctors who end up being overloaded with patients as they strive to receive the best healthcare.
Ping An’s healthcare app disrupted the industry by making high quality healthcare accessible through tele-consultation at any time, working with a network of hospitals, and delivering medicines to home by co-op pharmacies. It was a case of non-disruptive innovation as all the technology was there already, and Ping An leveraged it to create a new market to solve an existing issue.

Day 4

On Day 4, our theme switched to behavioral insights and we welcomed Noriko Shindo, the Co-Founder of Ekolokal - a startup with a mission to empower individuals to make better choices for themselves, their local community, and the planet. With Noriko’s session on “Sustainable Lifestyle as a Business”, the session kicked off with the importance of context, perspectives and framing, that is equally important in business and management, particularly for enabling better communication with consumers that impacts the consumer decision making.

Introducing crucial facts and figures about environmental damages due to plastic, agriculture, livestock and fishing, she introduced the concept of nudge with Thaler’s definition, and how it can be leveraged for good and bad, and why it is important to deploy nudges in a transparent, non-misleading and comfortable (instead of confirm-shaming) manner where the ultimate behavior being encouraged improves the welfare of those being nudged. With Ekolokal’s underlying mission to empower individuals to make better and sustainable decisions, it deploys small nudges through its platform that connects with eco-friendly and local shops, the eco-shop along events that introduce people to this lifestyle, nudging people to make a leap, and through the upcoming EcoLab, a unique space that combine a café, zero waste shop, and a place for people to connect and try out new activities such as composting.

Following up on this session, Prof. Dan Qin (of NUCB Business School) conducted a lecture that guided students to appreciate the power of behavioral principles and experimental methods. Through a case on tax paying, the lecture covered the process of making conjectures of behavioral principles, designing experiments to test the hypotheses, and presenting experimental results. In its application and through an activity, the students took on the role of a tax collecting firm, writing letters to individuals who have not paid their due taxes.

Final Pitch

After starting the final day with a laugh thanks to the 3rd edition of “It’s Always Sunny in Nagoya" from aspiring travel vloggers Kishore and John, the participants donned the spirit of entrepreneurs, adapting the entrepreneurial thinking to create a new business and pitched them to the Angel Investors (Prof. Lim, Prof. Goi, Prof. Wong, and Prof. Qin). Each professor had 1 million USD in total, allocating and investing them on the 4 teams after carefully scrutinizing their business plans, that ranged from sustainable fast fashion, to a digital 2-sided platform for connecting potential students and universities, an AI personal assistant enabled trip planner, to a shared shipping container solution.