07/30/2019 Seminar on Asian Entrepreneurship and Business
Lecture Topic: The Involvement of the New Business Models
Class taken by Dr. To-hai Liou
Dr. To-hai Liou talked about the rise of Asian companies in the course of Seminar on Asian Etrepreneurship and Business at the Global Governance Summer School on July 30, 2019. Dr. Liou emphasized that a new business models are constantly evolving, aimed at fostering innovation and disruption from within companies and institutions as well as through building supporting ecosystems aligned to geographic clusters. Asian companies have proven themselves to successfully develop innovation in their business models over last few years. Dr. Liou cited the report released by Fortune in July 2019 that China overtakes the U.S. in global business ranking. According to the report, Chinese companies account for 129, including 10 Taiwan companies, of the world’s largest corporations by revenue, surpassing the U.S. with 121.
Dr. Liou pointed out that although U.S. is leading in terms of number of Unicorns, startup company valued at over US$1 billion, China created as many Unicorns as the U.S. in 2017. China has moved to lightning speed to position and equip its rapidly developing knowledge economy to embrace and master a new world order that thrives on merit first, accessing education from trusted global leaders, whilst committing infrastructure and capital resource on a scale that few economies can compete with. The financial-technology boom that turned China into the world’s biggest market for electronic payments is now changing how banks interact with companies that drive most of the nation’s economic growth.
In Southeast Asia, the fast-growing internet economy is forecasted to triple in size to reach US$240 billion 2025 from roughly US$ 72 billion in 2018. Dr. Liou highlighted the business competition between Indonesia’s ride hailing company Go-Jek and Singapore’s Grab for domination in Southeast Asian market has indicated the rise of a proxy war involving bigger international rivals. While Grab is backed by China’s largest ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing, Toyota Motor, and Honda Motor, Go-Jek is supported by investment from Mitsubishi Motor, Google, Tencent Holding, and JD.com. The investments have pushed both Grab and Go-Jek to become Decacorn, a company valued at over US$10 billion. In sum, Dr. Liou concluded good business operations, strong potential, market opportunities in the region, and ultimately exit opportunity for investors to make money are required for companies reach Unicorn or even Decacorn stage.
