What are your thoughts on AI as actually being more destructive and causing pain than pushing things forward?

Richard: I think AI will endanger jobs but to be honest it will assist and make the jobs even better. It will help our world to become better.

Sally: In our line of work it's probably both. Key areas where we need to find efficiency is where AI will benefit.

What are the challenges that you are facing with corporate innovation and what are you doing to overcome them?

Richard: some of the challenges are that we get fixated on the next 'buzzword', the next thing that we can push forward and then you start to wonder how to do it yourself? Do you run an accelerator program? Do you invest? And the answer is that none of these will solve the problem. Getting everyone connected is more important and try to figure out what the win-win situation inside and outside the corporate company. There are a lot of barriers for people to overcome.

What are you seeing over at the peninsula group? its a much larger innovation in the corporate world.. how are you dealing with it?

Sally: We really explore our leadership team and how to incorporate it. We are a global company with many denominators and want to make sure that our leadership team is very visual along with our plan for corporate innovation. To handle this we launched a technology platform to handle our finances and marketing and sales. Its chaired by our CEO, who is extremely visible which is a really important factor. As we role out the adoption of this platform, we need to feel that our staff feel supported and enhance their working lives instead of implementing technology for the sake of technology. We make sure that there is still human contact.

Do you think that it needs to be implemented from the top down or bottom up in a corporate organization?

Chris: There are a lot of people that agree it should be top down but for us, in our organization its important that we speak the business language and not just in the digital language. Our organization is the Hong Kong airport with over 75,000 employees. so to be innovative and have the success we have to follow the business model.  We have to pose a very collaborative and cohesive mindset as we deal with airlines, government, employees, and security.

Furuzonfar: Richard mentioned you have to work with multiple entities, large corporations are not as mobile as smaller innovators. You need the right people to take care of the implementation of this corporate innovation.

An example of what not to do - A Real Estate company in Hong Kong employed a marketing expert to implement and handle this sort of innovation, however they focused primarily on the marketing strategy than actually driving change and innovation to the core business. Finding the right talent is crucial for implementing this type of innovation in the corporate world.

Do you find talent inside an organization or do you go outside of your organization to look for the right people?

Richard: I don't think its a matter of inside and outside an organization. There are a lot of problems in the world that corporate companies can solve and it truly comes down to individual talent. Smaller startups can definitely contribute and grow quickly, especially in Asia.

Chris: internal vs External is a very interesting concept and at the Hong Kong international airport. We are not an R and D company. We are not developing new technology but we are delivering a service and innovative, fast travel experience. We focus more on delivering the experience. We look for business partners and integrate, as the organization is huge. It's about the concept and partner with the technology companies to innovate externally and internally.

Sally: The research and development department look into what the business and people need. We constantly look outside of the hospitality industry to find innovative startups that can bring fresh ideas to the team and organization.

Innovation is centered around investment but it's very active and somewhere there is a balance while always keeping an eye on the human capital element. It had to matter to the core business for it to be implemented.

This has been an inspiring look from the Hong Kong corporate innovation standpoint from top Hong Kong businesses which can be useful for all corporate businesses to implement and consider.