10 March 2008 

The Thammasat Asia Moot Corp Competition 2008 officially kicked off yesterday on the evening of 10 March 2008, at the Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok. The launch of the Competition followed an engaging Forum held earlier in the afternoon highlighting this year’s theme: B2E’ntrepreneur – Innovations in Corporate Entrepreneurship. Headlining the Forum were three dynamic guest speakers at the forefront of entrepreneurship within their organizations: Dennis Melka, co-founder of Tune Ventures.com and director of the Tune Hotels brand, a recently-launched hotel subsidiary under Air Asia; Anthony Hobrow, Group CEO of Whittington Insurance, an international insurance investment and service business based in Singapore, and Mark Hemstedt, Managing Director, The Works Partnership, a training consultancy focused on corporate team transformation, coaching and leadership. Each speaker related his personal, on-going experiences with corporate entrepreneurship before opening the floor to questions from the audience, comprising graduate students and members of the regional business and academic communities.

Bill Randall, Director Thammasat Asia Moot Corp, prefaced the speakers by explaining that corporations are increasingly viewing entrepreneurship as a new approach to growth. As a result, today’s corporations are playing a significant role in nurturing start-ups, whether by acquisition or the creation of small venture capital divisions within the existing organization to source and fund new business ideas. He urged students and emerging entrepreneurs in the audience to consider how they might leverage big businesses to help them get their ventures off the ground. 

In this respect, each speaker offered a distinct approach based on his own experience. In Melka’s case, an established company is diversifying into numerous offshoot ventures, applying its proven low-cost strategy to different but strategically complementary sectors. Hobrow formulated a business proposition unique to the insurance industry at the time and sought new geographic markets, winning new clients while former competitors struggled with a saturated local market and eroded profit margins. Meanwhile, Hemstedt brings entrepreneurship from the outside in, training organizations to examine and re-work entrenched mindsets, and to avoid managing themselves into a terminal rut.

From this wealth of experience, the lessons to take home were many. Differentiate. Build a brand to create customer loyalty. Treat everyone with respect. Admit to your mistakes and fix them. Surround yourself with good people who share the same values and attitudes. Cost is your enemy. Do what you can to keep it low. Think of creative ways to finance the company. Where relevant, view ASEAN as one collective market rather than limiting your target to a single domestic economy. To be a real driver of change, paint a compelling picture and engage the right people to help realize it. Organizations should reward the entrepreneurial. Pay them well or lose them. Above all, if you don’t love what you’re doing, don’t do it. Every entrepreneur encounters setbacks and rejection – it’s the passion for your ideas and belief in your vision that will get you through inevitable difficulties. 

At 6 pm, a great turnout of students, judges, investors, honored guests, sponsors and spectators gathered to witness the official open of the Competition and the stirring 60-Second Elevator Pitch competition, sponsored by UBS. Attendees met and mingled with student participants at their booths against a backdrop of classical Thai music, and were treated to a special excerpt of a traditional dance epic, courtesy of Bangkok Bank. 

The evening’s hotly anticipated event began as 15 team representatives took the stage, and waited to be called in random order to pitch their ventures to three panel judges within 60 seconds. Most managed to keep just within the time limit, while a couple were cut off by the buzzer mid-sentence. One began her pitch by singing, earning huge applause. Some were hyper, some laid-back, but all gave their best efforts, to the enthusiastic reception of the audience and event organizers. Nevertheless, one pitch managed to stand out for its smooth delivery, dynamism, confidence and clarity – and the Monoxidize team, representing the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, was the judges’ chosen winner. The team will be awarded a cash prize of USD 500 at the event’s closing ceremony this coming Wednesday night. For team members facing rigorous competition in the next 48 hours, it will surely be a long time till then. The rest of us get to enjoy the show.