Experience in Noc Beijing

...

When we signed up for the competition, we only had each other and some research knowledge about our idea, we believed in our idea but we were worried that we were not able to convince others about idea. First, to the other participants we were just a pair of young students with an ambition but no real experience. Second, we didn't have everything all planned out, we just thought that the idea would become something. On the first day of the hackathon, we were asked to pitch our idea to the participants to get people to join our team. Before the pitch, I was worried that nobody will join our team, but my partner told me that we must have faith in ourselves. True enough, two participants initiated to join our team, one of them had experience in the industry we are entering and the other was experienced in business planning and financial forecasting. This showed me the power of belief, we may not have everything in our hands but we believe and we will work hard for it.

We may not have won the competition, but throughout the competition we were furiously discussing about our idea and refining it. They gave us many insights and perspective from the real world. Previously, the idea that we had was built upon many assumptions that we had based the ideal world that we thought was real, but because of them our idea was questioned and it allowed us to refine our idea such that it became more realistic and probable. From this, I learnt a lot of things that I didn't know I didn't know about the industry that we are entering. This made me think that the world is much bigger than what we can imagine, there is no way an idea or solution is perfect and we must constantly strive for improvement.

In this competition, our idea may have been dragged down or questioned many times, but it was because of those criticisms we were able to refine and improve on our ideas, which i thought was very beneficial to us. What we gained out of the competition was not the prize money or trophy, but it was all the constructive discussions and suggestions that we had during the intense 48hours of the competition.

Internship at Daimler IT Innovation Lab

In the 8 months that I was in Daimler IT Innovation Lab, there were many things that I learnt. However, I like to talk about my greatest takeaway from the internship.

My greatest takeaway from the internship was how to think critically and challenge the status quo. Everyone knows that to innovate to be an entrepreneur, we have to challenge the status quo, be innovative, think of new solutions to existing problems. In the past, as I read up on articles and hear from professors in school, I knew that I have to be critical and challenge the status quo, but the problem is how, they have only thought me about the theories, but not the practical aspect. In Daimler IT Innovation Lab, I learnt them through practice, by using those skills as I do my job.

My role in the IT Innovation Lab was the ideator. My job scope is to research on potential non-automotive markets, suggest ideas to solve pain points of market, validate ideas and assist in the prototyping. My mentor was someone that was very into details and was very critical about every details as well. At intervals when i have to update my mentor about my research progress, there will always be a few standard things that he will be looking out for. First, he will question the purpose or objective of the information, what is it that i am trying to prove, what can I derive out of that information, what is my analysis. Second, he will question the source of my information, is it from a credible source, how did the report come up with those statistics, what was the research method to indicate how accurate are those data used. With his constant guidance and critical questioning, I learnt to be very critical with my own work and always ask why. Towards the end of my internship, I felt that I can produce convincing stories, backed by facts and credible sources.

In Daimler, the interns tend to have very limited opportunity to work on projects, many are tasked to do very routine jobs, such as room booking or making powerpoint slides for their supervisors. I appreciate my mentor for giving the autonomy to work on projects and be able to contribute to the team.

There was once where I was able to head a project on my own, and my mentor would only be giving some advice on our progress, most of the time I was building the idea with my own team. This gave me the opportunity to direct the project which I felt most suitable and my mentor gave me that autonomy to do so as long as I can convince him at every update session. After a few weeks of preparation, I was given the chance to present our idea to the CIO (Chief Innovation Officer) and it was well received by him, where he suggested that we pitch this idea to the relevant departments to bring the idea forward.

Given the opportunity to present to the CIO was a new experience and it was also an acknowledgement from by mentor about my progress thus far. After the presentation, I went back to reflect on my script to understand what were the contributing factors that resulted in the positive response, I realised that my argument had a clear logical flow and there were sufficient supporting facts and data that substantiated my argument. My mentor also highlighted to me that during my time in Daimler, my logic flow grew stronger and more concise, which probably allowed me to convince my audience.

From the meeting session with the consultant, I realised that we have been very focused on the planning phase, thinking about the whys and the what. But what we have always missed was the how and who. How are we going to execute our plan out? How are we going to take the first step forward to kick start our idea? Who do we approach to support our idea? Who can we actually meet up with that can help us? It is very difficult to just go knock on people’s door and ask for a partnership or give me a business opportunity. Although it is not impossible but that isn't the fastest way. Having a personal connection with relevant people will alway make things easier and when I looked at the idea that we are building, we are lacking quite a bit of connections to start off our idea.

Additionally, I read up on a book called The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Build Measure Learn. I learnt that when we think of the grand plan we must be conscious of the execution as well, as we working in the correct direction, and in order to find out we have gather feedback from the market as we improve on our idea. We should not be sitting in at home struggling to come up with the ‘grandest’ plan, based on many assumptions that we think are true. This will cost us a lot

...