HKTDC Transforms E-Day Celebrations in Light of COVID-19 Pandemic

By Apac CIO Outlook | Tuesday, August 11, 2020

FREMONT, CA: The challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic have driven startups to rise to the challenge with agility and creativity. This year's HKTDC Entrepreneur Day (E-Day), organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), transformed in terms of format and content, with a series of seminars broadcast live on 16 and 17 July giving startups valuable insights into finding a path forward during this difficult time.

The 2020 E-Day celebrations under the theme 'Revive, Redefine Invited a high-powered panel of speakers to speak at 19 online seminars, offering insights into areas such as entrepreneurship, regional opportunities and technological developments to equip startups for future challenges. Virtual business matching sessions were also arranged, connecting local startups with companies in Japan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States to help them continue to capture business opportunities amid the current economic adversity.

"The world is undergoing a Great Transformation, he said, with four 'bigs' playing a leading role - Big Tech, Big Media, Big State and Big Health. Technology is everywhere. Without technology, we wouldn't be working from home, we couldn't find new ways to address the crisis. We couldn't analyse all the data. Without AI (artificial intelligence), we couldn't have early warning systems," said globally renowned futurist Gerd Leonhard, CEO of The Futures Agency. He was speaking on the topic 'T-Chat: Futurising Your Business: Renaissance from the Age of Digitalisation' and the trends for entrepreneurship and opportunities for startups to thrive in the new normal.

He added that the state helps to figure out how to restart the economy and to support the people and that healthcare is becoming the number one issue. "We are going to have to put more money, more research into healthcare development and biotechnology," he said, "We all are addicted to the media now because we are at home. Big media is exploding. These four things together have huge opportunities." According to him, the result could be both heaven and hell, HellVen, depending on how it is handled.

Technologies are developing extremely fast, and the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating this further. The crisis and technological potential would drive extraordinarily rapid and very disruptive change, he said, with more progress over the next decade than the world had seen over the previous century.

Check Out: Top Enterprise Startups