ASIA FOCUS : The Asian context of building teams

ASIA FOCUS : The Asian context of building teams.

INNOVASIA

Asian entrepreneurs place a premium on managerial candidates' personal qualities. Trustworthiness, intellectual curiosity and passion carry the day over qualifications such as the right university degree.

More than ever before, recruiting and retaining management talent is critically important to any organisation's success. It is even tougher for young, entrepreneurial companies to manage. Some questions that arise in this context:

- Is there an Asia-specific set of challenges linked to building entrepreneurial teams?

- What do Asian entrepreneurs define as the right management talent?

- Do family and personal contacts play a significant role in the way Asian entrepreneurs build management teams?

- or Asian entrepreneurs, building, managing and retaining a talent base is a complex exercise. Entrepreneurial firms start small and, as research has shown, many stay small with five employees or fewer even 10 years on. In such a scenario it is easier for the entrepreneur to manage most aspects of the firm.

However, as we have documented in previous articles, an emerging hallmark of Asian entrepreneurship is to put in place at the very outset mechanisms that enable aggressive growth:

- Asian ventures tend to raise funds for early growth from family and friends.

- They typically internationalise their business at a very early stage, tapping into regional as well as overseas networks to maintain low costs, along with access to cutting-edge R&D capabilities.

- They actively build critical external relationships with universities, research hubs and multinational vendors, not only to reach more customers, but also to leverage the partnerships for learning and competence building.

Clearly, rapid growth, geographical expansion and sustaining a technology-based edge means ventures that used to be managed virtually single-handedly begin to require a trusted group of senior managers, not only for daily operations but also to maintain the founders' vision and philosophy.

They need a centralised structure, while also retaining their original responsiveness and mentality of a small company, where everyone understands the strategy and is moving in the same direction.

In addition, good team chemistry is critical in the current low-inflation and low-cost business environment, where R&D, innovation, localisation, intellectual property creation and speed to market, rather than cost and price points, are the key differentiators.

Bangkok Post
Sunday January 14, 2007