I am headed to Shanghai today to attend the ICCA annual conference. Yesterday, my nieces, one of whom works in hotels and the other in a digital media agency, asked me what ICCA was and what the conference was about.

I told them that ICCA stood for International Congress & Convention Association and that the conference is for people who own, run and manage events, and they will be talking about how the industry is changing and how the Asia Factor (well, mainly China) is influencing that change – both are of course familiar with the theme of our recently-concluded WIT conference.

They then asked me what’s changing. We were on a short car ride and so I had to be brief – besides youths these days have the attention span of a miniaturized gnat.

So I said, in 3 minutes or less, events getting smaller, budgets getting tighter, people have less time, technology changing the way events are marketed and run, formats changing because people like them don’t like one-way monologues, audience mix changing because of new markets emerging, professional speakers having to up their game in the age of social media – nobody wants to pay to listen to canned talks they can view on YouTube.

They then got more interested in how much professional speakers are paid than anything else so the conversation meandered off into another direction and, at some point, I am sure food came into it. How food is more important to Asians than it is to Westerners and how when we survey WIT delegates, after the event, it is always the food that gets first mention.

One delegate from Canada said, “Beef rendang at lunch, who can top that?”

Anyway, I am running a few sessions at ICCA and tomorrow I will interview three entrepreneurs who’ve made it big in the meetings and exhibitions space and to see what lessons can be learnt from them – Ray Bloom, chairman, IMEX Group; Roger Tondeur, president, MCI and Reggie Agarwal, founder and CEO of CVent. (My first question will be to ask them why their names all start with R.)

Anyway, I am guessing the reason I was asked to run this panel is because I am myself an entrepreneur and WIT also runs the Start-Up Pitch. So firstly congratulations to Andrew Schorr, CEO, and the Grata team for winning this year’s competition. (Schorr receiving the award here from Rani Francois Marie-Saad, director of Abacus Ventures, which sponsored the Start-Up Pitch)

When I met Schorr in Guangzhou earlier this year, I knew this was something that had to be shared with the WIT audience. Grata is a China-based mobile-only concierge platform – it ticks all the boxes of what investors want today; social, local, mobile and solves the pain points of travellers in-destination.

Started by young Americans working in Beijing, Grata represents the mashing of the best of both worlds – Western innovation and Eastern agility and can-do-ness – the belief that anything is possible in the new world of Asia.

Entrepreneurs do believe that anything is possible. It is one of the things that make them either wacky or unemployable, and technology has lowered the barriers for anyone today to start a business at relatively low risk and scale – from bedroom to the world.

In fact, in the Sunday Times today, there’s a centrespread focused on Singapore youths who’ve increased their net worth by doing online start-ups, one of whom is Mohan Belani, co-founder of e27, an online platform for start-ups, and a collaborator with WIT.

Over the four years we’ve run the Start-Up competition, we’ve seen a maturing of models, a rise in confidence among start-ups and of course, greater access to funding and coaching. We have an increasing number of investors attending our conference each year.

The three other finalists were Trip38, a mobile-only trip assistant service, and BeMyGuest and Voyagin, both in the activities space.

During the WIT Bootcamp, we heard from many entrepreneurs and their stories were inspiring – Bonamy Grimes, one of the three co-founders of Skyscanner and how a vocational course in computing he took in school unleashed his geekdom and set him on the path to build a kingdom with Skyscanner. Carl Shepherd (below), co-founder of HomeAway, whose business acumen and financial skills, provided the perfect counterfoil to Brian Sharples’ vision and charisma.

Teams build businesses, not individuals – we learnt.

Entrepreneurs have to think unconventionally, we heard from a panel. Hard work alone does not necessarily cut it, you have to work smart, be nimble and dare to go against the norm.

Entrepreneurs are the hardest to be acquired, as Shepherd said, and he should know having bought 17 websites to form the world’s largest vacation rental marketplace. They are obsessed and fiercely independent individuals, he said.

The key is to run your organization like a team of entrepreneurs – back again to the point that it is teams that build businesses, not individuals.

Easier said than done, I suppose, but unless you have everyone aligned, committed and invested in the common goal, it is hard for any organization to make progress in a world that’s changing as fast as a miniaturized gnat loses attention.

And so in Shanghai, I look forward to continuing the conversation we started at WIT about entrepreneurs and how they are changing the conference and exhibition business, because there’s one thing that’s for certain – every industry needs disruptors and this one most of all.