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"Day 1" spirit of entrepreneurship
McKinsey Greater China's chairman, Joe Ngai, recently delivered a thought-provoking speech on how to rejuvenate Hong Kong, which was a spur to the city and every enterprise.
In his speech, he questioned whether Hong Kong's past strengths and the mainland's favorable tax and other treatments were the driving force for us to move forward, or whether they have eroded our competitiveness. In recent years, the Government has made significant investments to encourage R&D and startups in new areas, how can we "scale up these efforts" and make them the core of our future? How can technology help local SMEs become micro-multinational corporations? "Can we imagine 20% of our GDP five years from now consisting of businesses and industries that don't exist today?"
How can Hong Kong gain a foothold in face of fierce global competition? Amazon, which celebrates its 30th birthday this July, may offer inspiration.
Its online shopping has changed the world with sales in the United States reaching US$554 billion this year, as estimated by JPMorgan Chase. This accounts for 42% of U.S. e-commerce.
How did the company grow from merely an online bookstore to a US$2 trillion giant with business expanding from e-commerce (last year's turnover increased by 5.4% compared to 2022) to include advertising (up 24.3% last year), providing services to third-party vendors (up 18%, which is services that help sellers in logistics, customs clearance, tax, marketing, and more). More importantly, its cloud computing Amazon Web Services (up 13%) has captured a 31% share of the global market of US$300 billion, according to data firm Synergy Research.
The letter that Jeff Bezos, the founder, wrote to shareholders at the company's third anniversary in 1997 may give us some ideas for the success.
In addition to the fact that 79% of the company's senior executives consider innovation as one of their top three priorities, Bezos has a unique decision-making philosophy, which is to focus on customer needs leading to long-term profitability, and the means of achieving the goal is data analysis:
• "We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers" - the word-of-mouth built by encouraging customer feedback, together with ever-improving recommendation algorithms, and more, is a powerful tool to increase customer loyalty in the era of online bookstores.
• "We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions." The company's emphasis on expanding its customer base has now become the motto of many e-commerce companies.
• "We will continue to measure our programmes and the effectiveness of our investments analytically, to jettison those that do not provide acceptable returns, and to step up our investment in those that work best. We will continue to learn from both our successes and our failures." Amazon has artificial intelligence (AI) engineers embedded in every business unit, every team, every region and every warehouse to ensure it can capture opportunities faster and more accurately.
But I think the most important success factor is to keep a fire burning in the heart. As early as 27 years ago, Bezos said in an open letter that he sees every day as the "Day 1" of entrepreneurship. Always be conscientious, dare not relax, and will not be complacent because of small achievements, or give up long-term goals in exchange for current interests. Let's stay positive, be entrepreneurial, and make it happen!
Dr. Winnie Tang
Adjunct Professor, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering; Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences; and Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong