An innovative business is one which lives and breathes “outside the box”. It is not just good ideas, it is a combination of good ideas, motivated staff and an instinctive understanding of what your customer wants’ 2
Our company is based on this “outside the box “concept. Bridge Asia will consist of six members. Four of us are Director’s in the company with additional positions; my parents & I are part of the risk committee & two female employees in charge of reception, office management & execution. Our company format would include no advertising & marketing costs as we've been successful on recommendation basis, less need for full-time employee personnel as our major work is done outside the office, high focus on revenue streams based on results etc, to name a few. More than potential strong revenues & building business relationships with strong business people, it's the excitement of overcoming constant challenges in the process of connecting two sources & being part of balancing the business psychology between both sources to make successful closures.
Bridge Asia’s philosophy on business networking is the art of dealing with qualified sources & finding potential opportunities through an individual, business man or company and creating an environment for buyer/seller or two sides to deal within.
Our Motto "To create confident environments for two sides to deal within"
By law & with the help of our lawyers assistance, I've understood that the best legal format to provide "Business Networking Concierge" service is through establishing a consulting company as our companies work description (while registering the company) would refer to business networking in diversified fields, primarily in hospitality , tourism, trading, real estate, finance & green energy development sector's.
This assignment will elaborate primarily on our internal feasibility study feedback, our SWOT analysis is based on feedback from our existing clients, our focus & implementation goals with references to theories (from our course) that I feel can be implemented, our target accounting figures & costs, elaborations on various real time opportunities to represent & our criteria check on our company timelines & target accomplishment.
SWOT Analysis based on our research are as follows,
Strengths:
Networking is part of everyone's daily life but Bridge Asia is making a legal platform and offering business networking concierge services. In our everyday lives, we’ve played a role in recommending or referring a source to another based on a goodwill gesture. I’ve personally experienced getting recommended or vice versa on many occasions, & I believe we’re building a certain type of bond & faith that could potential lead to a successful partnership etc. I was lucky to have a friend that understood & had the same passion for connecting businesses or people, passion realized through his early work experience bachelor studies. Also, considering that this friend Kiran made some successful deal closures with my family in the past, we were able to understand the value of what we could create and offer to businesses & sources for a professional fee so our success in deal closures made us believe that launching Bridge Asia was productive & worth the risk.
“Competence building is strongly related to a firm’s past accomplishments. The notions of path dependency and cumulativeness have a strong foundation. Competence building centers’ in key areas to enhance a firm’s core capabilities…” 3Bridge Asia will be fully committed to providing business networking concierge services with a result's driven attitude as we determine ourselves to generating strong revenues after deal closures. This form of revenue stream gives good sense of loyalty towards as the deal provides clarity to both sides on our professional fee's % & allows the opportunity to be recommended to new potential clients. We eliminate the chances of being a victim of not being paid as our start-up company will deal with clients that we already know & opportunities that we're already working on. In most cases, we deal directly with the buyers & sellers, but also, business networking services allows us to work with more intermediaries & create confident environments for successful deal closures.
Less initial investment, Apart from the fixed costs & legal costs to start-up Bridge Asia in Thailand, our operating costs are going to be comparatively low & Bridge Asia represents opportunities with strong benefits only. For example, I mostly schedule meetings between both sides in selected restaurants, coffee shops & F&B outlets in hotels; hence I cover the costs & expenses during these meetings that I schedule. Traveling for example, Bangkok has Sky trains, Underground trains, airport link, close to unlimited number of bike taxi's & cab's to choose from so I use these various commuting options during peak hours & I use my car at night as I’m able to control fuel costs to a minimum & avoid peak-traffic stress. Deals can fall out due to reasons such as ego-clash, lack in being open & transparent etc to name a few, so the expenses involved in business networking is mostly towards creating confident environments & bearing costs such as F&B bills etc. When I intend to introduce 2 HNI's (High Networthy Individuals) to find common grounds on a particular opportunity, Business Networking concierge service stands out to be unique as we can advice, schedule & execute the meeting plans & having all the costs beard by the HNI's representing the potential opportunity, hence allowing me to create high-budget meeting setup's.
Already have a strong database of clients & companies (local & abroad) to kick-start our income streams. In order to start Bridge Asia, I need to ensure that the ball is already rolling so after extensive communications with selected sources & clients, I'm convinced that my partner's & team's networking value put together will generate a broad database of clients & businesses to kick-start Bridge Asia's revenue streams. When our networking value are combined, we have an average of seventy clients to represent as their business networking concierge that covers more than 20 core business sectors. Our internal feasibility study that also included getting feedback from sources & clients about our venture, gave us clarity that it’s complicated to initially deal with two unknown sides as we don’t have that loyalty factor & understanding to begin with.
Strong partnership, a common threat in the business industry is when the business partnership falls apart due to personal & non-personal reasons. Strong partnerships helps supports the consistency in business growth & good balance between the partner’s mindset, keeping this in mind, I decided to involve my parents as the Director’s & more as they are bound to bring strong knowledge & confidence, good networking value & strong loyalty factor to create Bridge Asia’s platform. It’s important to keep the business within the family as my soon-to-be partner suggested their active involvement. A minimum two years of credible balance sheets & growth percentages will allow us to expand overseas on a strong franchise platform.
In the following, I will be explaining the Weakness that have been identified,
Getting remunerated on results driven basis can be financially time consuming, this can risk loss to additional operating cost & investments in trading. Bridge Asia has a high potential in generating good balance sheets through an innovative service offered to business people which in turn allows us to be involved in a broad spectrum of business sectors. The excitement should pay off, in saying this, my experience thought me that working on opportunities involving big numbers in hospitality & energy development is more time consuming while working on opportunities relating to trading is less time consuming & fixed monthly income based on products import/export process. For example, I recently proposed a Greenfield resort development opportunity to my mother, a 52 Acre land parcel sitting on a private island that’s 15 minutes off Phuket’s mainland owned by Zinc Invision Hospitality Group, to potentially consider a minor-shareholder in this resort development as ZincInvision. My mother has considered to co-ordinate further with ZincInvision team & this process has been going on for three months now but the pay-off is good if the deal closes. In order to avoid continuous months of no income, I need to ensure that we’re balanced between opportunities that generate monthly or quarterly & long term revenue streams.
Less active contribution, as in, when we decided to make this venture fruitful, my soon-to-be partner & I were crystal clear about how I could be involved in the physical day-to-day responsibilities & the position I could hold, considering my full time job in AOT. Hence, after looking at productive options, I’ve decided to continue analyzing & bringing opportunities to the table, similar to time contributed for freelance work & also take up core responsibilities based on my time & strengths. I’ve also decided to invite my mother as a Director, Managing Director & Risk Committee member, & my father as a Director & Risk Committee member in Bridge Asia Thailand. At the time of deciding the investment budget, my parents already considered to be seed investors in Bridge Asia with no active role. Later, my mother agreed to play an active day-to-day role in Bridge Asia while my father agreed to play an active role in the risk committee only.
Now moving on to the Opportunities identified by me.
“Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty… all old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries… whose products are consumed not only at home but in every quarter of the globe. In place of old wants satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants… the intellectual creativity of individual nations become common property.”4
The above quote from a famous author serves to remind us that the innovation challenge isn’t new and organizations have always had to think about changing what they offer the world and the ways they create and deliver that offering if they are to survive and grow.
We will offer productive time & commitment to charity foundations owned by our clients. Very imp to give back .We live our lives knowing about many issues & threats occurring around the world, issues & threats that a handful of the world’s individuals & companies are contributing their time & investment to make this world a safer & better place. Based on Bridge Asia’s overall individual experience & also considering my parent’s continuous contribution towards funding charities, we’ve decided to contribute 10% of our yearly earning towards foundation’s or hand-up’s opportunities in Thailand while we already have our focus in place. My two clients, Kevin Beauvais , Co-Founder & CEO of ZincInvision Hospitality Group & Andrew Steel , CEO of Treedom Group , owns & operates successful & active foundations in Thailand, namely Operation Smile Thailand & Patt Foundation.Bridge Asia will designate our contributions to these foundations as the owners are my clients & I’ve already contributed Business Networking services by inviting clients or associates through my network for their charity events etc.
Recommendation’s driven oriented behavior (through personal & business network)
Till date, after considering our full time jobs, both Kiran & I contributed a lot of time (freelance) in acting as intermediaries to connect two sides & we worked on opportunities together and also separately. We were successful in finding new opportunities through our existing network because we did work for clients & eventually it was natural of them to talk about & refer us when opportunities came across them. Bridge Asia will have 0% tolerance for Advertising costs but we will be majorly focused on achieving brand awareness through our clients PR activities & other forms of networking events. Following this policy is also allowing us to be cost-effective during the start-up process. Recommendations are a valuable way of doing business.
Bridge Asia’s goal is to further expand with a sister company Bridge Asia Trading (Thailand) within two to three quarters from Bridge Asia’s launch. We’ve seen potential in distributing certain products to the hospitality & tourism industry. For example, my friend that owns “Anand Sweets”, Indian sweet producers & retailers, would like us to get involved in exporting their products to Thailand & I’ve considered handling the marketing, distributorship & targeting the hotel chains & retail malls etc. Another friend that’s part of Khoday’s Group, a major diversified Indian company that’s involved in alcohol production, tissue culture etc., has high interest in exporting their alcohol & hybrid banana saplings to Thailand. We’ve considered handling the marketing & distribution of these products after our analysis on the target approach.
It is very important to know the threats to every business opportunity. When we did our internal feasibility study, we understood that business networking concierge services aren't offered by companies in Thailand. In reality, our natural individual instinct has a business networking nature by referring & recommending in daily life but there isn't any consulting or any other company providing business networking concierge services through a legal or company platform. In order to outcome the fear of losing motivation & confidence during our start-up process, we've decided to initially concentrate on representing our existing clients as we already have a work structure in place with them, successful deal closures in the past with existing clients & we intend to approach new companies or businessman based on the opportunity requirements. Most importantly, there are selective opportunities to concentrate on thanks to our existing client database & their support.
Bridge Asia is part of an interactive platform & dealing with business people so there are high chances for miss-communications to occur during our work process. My Thai client, who's also my father's good friend, recently informed me that he was motivated to sell his 15 room boutique beachfront resort in Thailand & had quoted 4 Million USD along with 2% commission (Professional Fee) added for my service. I considered this opportunity & approached Mr.Kevin Beauvais (CEO & Co-Founder of ZincInvision Hospitality Group) as they're looking at beachfront properties for their 3 star brand 'Glow'. In less than 10 minutes, Mr.Kevin simply said that 4 Million USD is unrealistic & not viable for new owner to break-even in less than 6 years, considering this property has 15 rooms only and no space to grow. Hence, Kevin has offered to negotiate within 2 to 3 Million USD but the hotel owner didn't agree as he claimed to have made substantial investments with the legal permits, construction & other expenses. At this point, I'm looking at other potential Thai buyers in this region for this resort.
Our motivation in making Bridge Asia fruitful is high but that doesn't mean we intend to start-up up with big investments. We rather stick to our priorities that are to create confident environments for two sides to deal within. Few decisions to tackle heavy spending includes registering company with "unpaid" capital (we can contribute small amounts to the registered capital yearly which will eventually become "paid-up" capital. In this way, we don't have to maintain a paid-up registered capital from beginning), using my townhouse in Bangkok as the registered office location (I personally own a 3 floor town house & the current tenants are finishing their contract during this month itself. Using this property will save office rental costs & we would have a centrally located office), contributing one of my vehicles for Bridge Asia operations as we intend to use the car only during needed occasions such as picking up/dropping off clients etc.), maintaining policy of NO advertising costs & keeping our initial staff requirement to a minimal. Once we've achieved our decisions, it's very crucial that we maintain this low profile & maintain good consistency in our service & commitments. The risk committee will be responsible for overlooking our consistency in small scale operations as overspending can be destructive.
Our goal is for clients to accept us as business networking concierges & not consultants, freelancers or advisors. We need to overcome the fear of being looked down upon as we're offering a unique service. I personally want to provide service as a business networking concierge & not just a consultant or an adviser. As a business networking concierge, I'm able to work closely with other intermediaries (consultants, brokers, advisers, freelance agents) & maintain profit-sharing basis because we represent the opportunity & the deal closure of this opportunity. When I was a deal closure on a freelance basis, few clients always referred me to their network as an agent or broker but their impression changed in time as I managed to convince them about my involvement & my intentions to be known as a business networking concierge. I believe we will overcome this once Bridge Asia is operational for more than 2 years. With regards to IP issues, our lawyers already confirmed that our intentions in using “Bridge Asia” company name & logo was granted. We didn’t face any other complications so far with any IP rights issues. In reality, I’ve done our internal feasibility study, my lawyer has already confirmed our company name & logo is free from overlapping any law or IP issue, I’ve confirmed the investment shareholder pattern (Myself 49%, Kiran 49%, my Mother 1% & Father 1%) & also understood the roles & responsibilities. I believe we’re able to start company process & ready to launch Bridge Asia by January 2013.
Conclusion:
Take Bridge Asia new service idea, Business networking concierge services, I personally confirm that we have put a lot of thinking toward this venture as closing companies is more complicated then registering companies It also the fact that we convinced our parents to support us in creating our business foundation. I prefer to elaborate on real time events and scenarios with actual business people. I am very confident that bridge Asia will create an impression of new service idea, an impression that can’t be noticed on working on free lance basis. As I detailed myself into creating this new service idea I would like to make this dream come true.
References:
1,2,3,4 Tidd, Joe. , (2012) Managing Innovation, 4th Edition. John Wiley & Sons.
Richard Branson (1998) DTI Innovation Lecture.
Operation Smile Foundation Thailand.operationsmile.org
ZincInvision Hospitality Group, www.zinchospitality.com
Andy Bruce, (2007), Switched on to Innovation
Plant a Tree Foundation
Anand Sweets
Khoday International Group,
Treedom Group
Appendices:
Appendix 1 –Introduction
Information about how and why Product/service innovation is important.
Business venture idea
Appendix 2 – Opportunity for Innovation
SWOT analysis
the NSD process
The timeframe and milestones from start to launch
Intellectual property issues
Appendix 3 – Conclusion
by
xavierpereira (student)
