Asian Can also be the Pioneer for Innovation

The title above is the statement underlined by Serkan Toto, a Japan-based Techcrunch contributors, on his keynote presentation at SparxUp Awards Conference 2011. We all know that most of Asian startups tend to clone US startups. However, cloning is not bad since there are some successful clone acquired or funded for millions of dollars. Moreover, cloning is not monopolized by Asian startups only. European startups, or even the US startups also do the same thing.

In fact, Asian startups can also be innovative, especially in the technology industry. Serkan has identified seven things that made Asia a pioneer for innovation. Here is the list:

1. Mobile Web — first developed in 1999 by NTT DoCoMo. Can you imagine what modern mobile phone will be without this innovation?
2. Online Gaming — first developed in Korea for the first time in 1996 with Nexon’s The Kingdom of the Winds as the first MMORPG game.
3. Virtual Goods — the concept of buying digital items such as Facebook Credits today was actually founded in Korea in 1999 by Cyworld, a company that focuses on social media.
4. E-Publishing —Amazon Kindle is not the first one! It was Sony that first launched special tablet called PRS 500 to read digital book formats in 2006.
5. Broadband — It is more about infrastructure. No doubt that Korea, Japan, and Hongkong are leading the scene since 1998.  South Korea booked the record with its 94% broadband penetration in 2000.
6. QR Codes — In fact, it has been used in Japan since 1994. QR Code was used for the first time by Denso Wave, a subsidiary company of Toyota.
7. Mobile Social Gaming —After Online Games emerged in South Korea, mobile social gaming started gaining popularity in Japan through DeNA. Now, DeNA has received $1.3 billion for social based games

It is true that the pioneers for innovation mentioned above is around Japan and Korea. But it proves well that innovation isn’t exclusive only from US/Europe. In fact, innovations from Asia have change today’s internet. Can you imagine if one or two innovation mentioned above did not exist?

There are many problem should be faced to make creative climate in Asia becomes as good as it is in the US/Europe. From some factors mentioned above, Serkan said that we have to choose only one factor. According to him, the lack of qualified startup should be the main focus. It means that in order to increase the quality of the product and startup competition, we should increase first the number of qualified startups.

In general, Indonesian condition is not that different. It might be too high to expect the innovation pioneer in such immediate time. However, with the trend of creative industry which now becomes a part of Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy, I hope that the continuity of creativity will promote the uniqueness of Indonesia to people around the world. Hopefully if there’s any Indonesian who is famous for his/her innovation can be internationally recognized as pioneer.

The most important thing for now is how to improve technology startup qualities continuously. Based on SparxUp in last two years, there is a decreasing number or startups competing at this event but the quality is increasing. Hopefully the number will keep increasing in accordance with the maturity of startup technology in Indonesia.

If you want to read the complete keynote from Serkan Toto at SparxUp Conference, kindly find the slide here: