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Spectacular Benefits from Owning Intellectual Space
By Irving Rein, Philip Kotler, Michael Alan Hamlin, and Martin Stoller
August 23,2004
It's not uncommon for individuals
with strong personal brands to establish such strong ownership over
an "intellectual space" that the differential in rewards
boarders on the spectacular. For instance, in High Visibility
we note that Harvard Business School's Michael E. Porter has been
known for decades as the authority on the issue of strategic competitive
advantage. As a result, he is said to be paid as much as US$250,000
for a one-day presentation in Japan. A typical tour around other
Asian venues will generate fees for one-day presentations in the
range of US$120,000 - US$150,000. While he would earn more as a
co-star on a sit-com like Friends - whose four stars earned
millions of dollars per episode - he's certainly at the top of his
game, and has been for decades.
We are beginning to see the emergence
of celebrity consultants in Asia as well. However, there are a number
of reasons why Asia has been fairly slow to generate business gurus.
Here are some of them. First, many of Asia's most talented business
people, academics, and authors leave the region for developed economies.
This is because developed economies have substantial resources to
devote to research, which Asian organizations and institutions often
can't match. And, there is greater appreciation for insight and
experience in terms of equating these soft assets with monetary
value. It is difficult to convince many executives in Asia that
they should pay for something that doesn't have physical dimensions.
At least if it's an object, you can throw it against the wall if
it doesn't work. An unworkable idea isn't much good for even that.
Of course, the reason that celebrity consultants get celebrity remuneration
is because their ideas often make fundamental strategic differences
in how a company competes. Reluctance to accept that notion restricts
opportunity for Asian companies as well as its would-be gurus.
As the dynamics of Asian business
evolve from simple contract manufacturing and restricted competition
internally, however, managers are beginning to understand that when
quality, efficiency, and productivity are easily benchmarked, competitiveness
must be derived elsewhere. That elsewhere frequently has to do with
harnessing employees' minds and hearts, and that is precisely where
business consultants and trainers excel.
One of Asia's most prominent - and
financially successful - celebrity consultants is Ron Kaufman. Kaufman
wasn't born in Asia. He's an American, who first excelled in, well,
international Frisbee competitions. Then for many years he organized
tours of the former Soviet Union. But for the last decade or so
this seemingly unlikely business consultant has been designing and
conducting customer service seminars for companies in the airline,
IT, finance, manufacturing, medical, and other sectors. His big
break came in 1990, when Singapore Airlines (SIA) hired him to help
create and launch its internationally respected Service Quality
Centre. The Centre is at the core of SIA's competitive strategy
because executives see everything else the airline offers as pretty
much what everyone else can offer: the same planes, the same routes,
comparable food.
Kaufman has leveraged his success
with SIA every opportunity he gets, and it has generated both significant
opportunities and rewards. He receives professional fees for his
presentations that rival those of U.S.-based consultants and business
gurus, and is among the very first in Asia to attain that level
of credibility. But how about Asians born in Asia, and not just
imported residents? Consider the case of entrepreneur Joey Gurango,
a former Microsoft executive who is recreating himself as an entrepreneurship
guru. Gurango set up a company called Match Data Systems (MDS) in
the 1980s in Seattle. MDS provided software applications and modules
for other software vendors.
One of those companies was a firm
called Great Plains. MDS became so important to Great Plains that
it eventually bought the company, earning Gurango his drop dead
money, but keeping him on to manage the firm. Previous to the sale,
Gurango had found that there was a lot of competition for programmers
in Seattle, and had moved most of the R&D function to his hometown,
Manila, Philippines, making him one of the first software development
investors in the country. Gurango, who had previously labored in
relative obscurity, and his new employer quickly became a big story:
the Philippines was producing original software for a global firm.
The story would get bigger in 2001 when Microsoft - also a former
MDS client - purchased Great Plains. Gurango spent a couple of more
years managing the transition, leaving in early 2003 to found software
developer WEBWORKS OS and pursue a career as a software development
and business process guru.
Having recognized the value of high visibility from his time with
Great Plains and Microsoft, Gurango immediately hired a public relations
firm that would be responsible for maintaining his profile now that
he had left the always-visible Microsoft. He also negotiated a joint
venture agreement with a firm specializing in event management to
promote him as a speaker.
As a result, Gurango is well on his
ways to doing some important things. First, he's developing a personal
brand that distinguishes him from other speakers, so that he owns
his intellectual space. Second, through his presentations he is
establishing a network that will informally market him as a speaker,
as well as potentially provide new opportunities related to his
own areas of expertise in software development and building organizations.
Third, he is attaching a value to his brand, and it is a premium
brand. Like Gurango, other consultants, medical practitioners, accountants,
and even religious figures are beginning to leverage professional
personal brand building tools to launch careers in which they market
their intellect and experiential knowledge.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing
director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on
Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian
Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001), and he is currently
at work on High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Asian Professionals
into Celebrities. Write him at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
Copyright © 2004 Michael Alan Hamlin. All Rights
Reserved.
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