So here we are at the WITovation Entrepreneur Bootcamp at the HQ of the Singapore Tourism Board here in Singapore.
The day got off to a great start with an inspirational presentation from Morten Lund. More about that session from Siew Hoon so look out for her post.
But now the session is Innovation Exchange. Here we go and our players are:
Andrew McGlinchey, Head of Product Management, Southeast Asia, Google South East Asia
Brett Henry, Vice-President, Marketing and Vice-President, India, Abacus International
Timothy Hughes, Vice President Commercial, Orbitz Worldwide and HotelClub & Blogger, BOOT – The Business of Online Travel
Timothy O’ Neil-Dunne, CTO, Lute Technologies
Ross Veitch, Chief Product Officer, Wego
Fritz Demopoulos – CEO Qunar.com
Kevin May, Editor, Tnoozis our moderator.
Siew Hoon introduced the panel saying that one of the reasons she started WIT was to hang out with hot dudes – I’ll let those of you who were there be the judge of that! (I know what I think)
A late addition – Andrew from Google was not present so Fritz Demopoulos, CEO of Qunar.com was a late stand-in.
Kevin started off by suggesting that the term ‘Innovation’ is a difficult thing to define. He then asked the panelists to suggest what innovation might mean in the travel arena.
Tim (OND) said it was “taking good ideas and being able to execute them.” He added that it’s “easy for people to conceptualize (ideas in the travel industry) but incredibly difficult to execute”
Brett was then asked the same question and his take was that “the area that is most interesting is the network – “taking ‘western’ models (the best of) and making them work in the ‘local’ context.”
Fritz said “we package what everyone else has said – we took a Meta Search concept and threw it into China – sounds simple but it was brutally hard.” He added that “it’s about asking the simple questions and switching them a little – for example, who can we buy our travel with – it’s about asking different questions”
Ross was then asked the same question and he built on the previous panelists thought and said that it’s about “taking ideas that originally appeared elsewhere and adapting them for the travel industry – looking at what’s going on in Media or social for example and thinking about how they could be relevant for travel”
Tim (Hughes) was asked if he considered Orbitz to be innovative. “It’s a hard question to answer”, he said, but added “innovation is about getting great ideas implemented. (There’s a theme developing here isn’t there – no shortage of ideas but maybe a lack of will or way to get them implemented)
Tim added that it’s getting more complicated and therefore there is STILL the scope to innovate.
Kevin then asked Tim OND what the chap from Google would have said. Tim said he hated them and said that they (Google) never give anything. Google do good things but they’re not great Tim added. (I’m not with you on that one, Tim – sorry!)
It’s fun to talk about Google when they’re not here, Kevin added… do these people all hate Apple too I wonder?
Kevin asked Brett if it was the business or the consumers that drive innovation. He just replied that he was in it for the fun and the money.
Hrush (from ClearTrip) from the audience promoted some hot discussion asking why, as an industry, Travel does not offer free API access. “How do we expect the industry to innovate in the future when this is the case?” another member of the audience added.
It was then suggested that we should be more concerned about the upcoming digital generation and understand how they want to book their hotels and their flights. Great – someone mentioned the customers needs and desires at last.
Tim (Hughes) brought us back to reality by reminding us that not all disruptive ideas are great ideas. He then suggested that keyboards, portals (like Yahoo) and email are way out of date now – “why do we still have these?” he asked quite passionately and sincerely.
As we draw to the end, Kevin has asked the panelists for examples of things they think are good ideas. Tim (Hughes) suggested that the process of identifying what your ‘likes’ might be from other people’s ‘likes’ who like things that you like could be the way forward. (Did that make sense?) Ross added that Trip Advisor’s Facebook application – Trip Friends – was a good example of this.
Brett added that his favorite company at the moment is Chudu24. It’s about going really deep into the local market he said.
So there we go. My take on the session is that there is no shortage of ideas but successful implementation in a fast changing and increasingly complicated sector is the real challenge.
Featured image credit (business & idea): Ockra/iStock
