That’s the question I have gotten asked quite a bit recently, and I hope this writing can help anyone who is trying to find their way in Copenhagen and enjoy the city! How to get around The public transport is fantastic. If you are here only for a short period of time, get a city pass. But if you are here for longer (1 week and above), get a rejsekort at a 7-11 or other places. If you like bikes, use Donkey Republic. Before renting, also check if your accommodation (if you are in a hotel) provides bikes. It’s often […]

..is one of the question I got the most recently. It has almost been 1.5 years since I moved to Denmark. It has been a ride and a lot of learning, especially on why Copenhagen is so good. #1 in EIU’s Global Liveability Ranking 2022#1 in EIU’s Safe Cities Index 2021#1 in Monocle’s Quality of Life Survey 2021 and 2022#1 in EasyPark’s Smart City Mobility Index 2022 for mobility innovation of cities with population between 600k-3m people#8 in Mercer’s Quality of Living Ranking 2019#3 in Deutsche Bank’s Liveability Survey 2019#4 in highest personal income taxes in the world It boils […]

Featured image with Deutsche Bank Innovation Labs Engagement Lead, Martina Koehler In the Summer of 2020, my INSEAD friend, Tingting, and I joined the Summer Start-Up Tour (SSUP) by digital@INSEAD and investigated on how corporates and start-ups collaborate. This article covers the corporate side, and the previous one covered the start-up side. We interviewed firms across France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and Austria, and we ask them a few key questions: Why do you need start-up innovation? How do you access start-up innovation? What kind of start-up do you work with? What are the key challenges and learnings? The […]

Featured image is with solarisBank team, Baha Jamous & AT Schneider In the Summer of 2020, my INSEAD friend, Tingting, and I joined the Summer Start-Up Tour (SSUP) by digital@INSEAD and investigated on how corporates and start-ups collaborate. This article covers the learning from the start-up side, and the next one will cover the corporate side. We interviewed firms that served the financial services industry across France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and Austria, and we ask them a few key questions: How do you sell to financial services firms? What is the difference between selling to financial services firms […]

The newest social media for the coolest kids on the block, clubhouse! It’s amazing how fast the social network has grown in just a short time. From my 2 weeks in Clubhouse, these are the general kinds of room you see in the app. The “serious” room These are the rooms with more serious topics, it could range from career talks, mental health support, LGBTQ+ situation in different countries, or even politics discussion. For example, yesterday I enjoyed listening to a conversation on LGBTG+ rights in Japan. In general, I think these rooms can be further divided to 2 different […]

“Chris, please don’t be like our previous consultants. They just took all the team’s ideas and presented it to management without crediting the team” One of my previous clients Those words struck a chord. One of the middle managers that I met in my consulting work said that to me the first time we met, and I found it hard to respond. In that specific engagement, I noticed the frustration that the team had with consultants. They felt that the consultants do not provide value and are vampires that sucks blood from the organization. What’s the result of this? They […]

Hier steht die Übersetzung auf Deutsch des ersten Teil dieses Artikels Wenn wir Innovation verstehen möchten, müssen wir in das 19. Jahrhundert zurückgehen. Innovation entsteht aus dem Aufstreben von Wissenschaft und Industrie. Sie bedeutet technische Erfindungen. Dann in der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts ändert sich die Bedeutung zu “eine neue Technologie auf den Markt bringen”. In letzter Zeit ändert sie zu “etwas Anderes und/oder Neues”. Aus dem Jahr 1997 stammt Clayton Christensens bekanntestes Geschäftsbuch aller Zeiten. Es trägt den Titel “The Innovator’s Dilemma”. In dem Buch geht es um den inhärenten Konflikt zwischen den Erfordernissen der Bestandskunden und den Erfordernissen […]

Based on research & interview with Lars Roessler, Venture and Accelerator Partner at BSH Home Appliances Group BSH Introduction Established in 1967, BSH is a leading home appliance provider in Europe with 11 brands and more than 58,000 employees. In 2019 alone, BSH reached 13.2 billion EUR turnover. BSH produces the entire range of modern home appliances at 40 factories worldwide. The product portfolio ranges from cookers, ovens and extractor hoods, dishwashers, washers and dryers, fridges and freezers to small appliances such as vacuum cleaners, coffee machines or food processors. How does such a massive corporate innovate? BSH’s innovations focus […]

What is innovation? To best understand innovation in the present age, we need to go back in time to the nineteenth century. At the time, the term “innovation” began taking root alongside science and industry, where its meaning was synonymous with ‘technical invention’. Then, in the mid-1900s, the common understanding evolved to “bringing a new technology to market”. More recently, it further transformed to include “anything new and/or good”. In 1997, Clayton Christensen wrote one of the most influential business books of all times, “The Innovator’s Dilemma”. The book covered the inherent conflict of catering to current customers’ needs, while […]

In the next 3 years, being a nomadic professional will be much harder than before. The principles (mobility, professionalism, and social sensitivity) will be harder to uphold. Read up on why and what might be the potential antidote.

This week marks the 3rd week I’ve been following INSEAD’s classes online less than a kilometre away from INSEAD’s Europe campus, and so far the experience has been better than I thought it would be. What I miss the most in online classes are mini interactions that happen in hallways, in the bar, in the restaurant, or anywhere in the city. Last month, a trip to the supermarket or a restaurant will involve me bumping to 3-4 INSEADers along the way. Now, a trip to the restaurant is around 8 steps and surprise! I’m the chef, waiter, and guest. “Bienvenue […]

The learnings from how INSEAD communicated with students in COVID-19 situation is to create effective communication between organisation and people, 4 criteria needs to be fulfilled, and a clear communication channel is required.

It’s the last day of 2019, and a great time to reflect on what happened this year. This year went by in a flash with some key events. At the middle of February, I got staffed to a blockchain project in Malaysia as part of the functional team. It was a great opportunity to work with emerging technology in a real use case. In parallel, I also submitted my MBA application to INSEAD (Read about it here : Why MBA & Application Preparation). Then I received the admission announcement at the middle of the year, finished the project in around […]

This part 2 is written onboard EK355 from Singapore to Dubai, on my way to France. So excited to start my journey with the school! This post will focus specifically on the INSEAD application process, and the preparation that I did. P.S: Please feel free to contact me if you are interested to know more or if you have specific questions that I have yet to address here. Here’s the link to my personal website, but you can also contact me through LinkedIn or Instagram. You can find part 1 here. It will cover my career journey and why I […]

Writing this on board of GA821 from Kuala Lumpur to Jakarta. I’m filled with both sadness and excitement. I’m sad that I left the family I made in KL, but excited to go back to school soon. This writing is also intended to help me sort out my thoughts and hopefully help you in one way or another. In this post, I’m focusing on the career journey and why I opted to do an MBA at INSEAD. In the next post, I’ll share specifically on the INSEAD application process and preparation advices. P.S: Please feel free to contact me if […]

Marking my 2 years in Accenture, I’d like to share what I have learned so far in my career in Accenture. I started off as a Management Consultant in Indonesia’s Finance & Enterprise Value practice. Then I moved to the Indonesia’s Resources industry-focused practice, and now I’m in Malaysia’s Resources CFO & Enterprise Value practice. So far, I’m delighted to say that although I’ve seen and heard horrible experiences of people working in Accenture, those did not happen to me. On the contrary, Accenture Indonesia has been a place where I see less politics than what other Indonesian companies currently […]

The hardest part of New Year Resolutions is actually reviewing them and seeing how I fared. You can find my 2018 New Year Resolutions here. For the first one, 2018 is the year where I’m more honest with myself and I opened up to more people than the past 10 years combined. In addition, I became more vocal about causes that I care about, and I stopped caring too much about what other people thinks. The second one is easy to review due to the quantitative nature, in 2018 I read: 6 CFA Level 3 books – Slightly cheating, but […]

Within the past 3 months, I have been working with Accenture’s Innovation Hub in Singapore to focus on developing new demo asset business case, and facilitate client workshops. The Innovation Hub is a physical space where we host client workshops, and showcase demos on how Digital can transform businesses. But keep in mind, that we are not R&D focused. We’re focused on building a business case that caters to business needs. You won’t find a technology that’s just ‘cool’ in our hub. You’ll see stuff that has business value first and foremost. Last week, I had the great chance to […]

This post is a reflection and thoughts on diversity and inclusion. Something that you will definitely find as a value in any multinational companies across all sectors! From Microsoft, Accenture, McKinsey, Amazon, etc, all of them are making commitment in being inclusive, and they have dedicated teams and employee volunteers to support the effort. In Accenture, we have the I&D Team, we have Pride Allies, Women Mentoring Program, mental wellness, disability, etc. There are efforts to be inclusive all over the organization. It’s amazing when I can hear on a day-to-day basis that someone is coming a bit late/going back […]

In this final part of the narrative, I will focus on the external factor, the supporting media in which you communicate with. The media formats that we typically use includes: Paper to write on Handouts (slides, graphs, data, etc) Slide decks The general value of supporting media is to reinforce/clarify the message you want your audience to get. To review whether you should use the media or not, ask yourselves: Is my media distracting my audience’s attention away from me? – Don’t let your media be the main actor. Can the media help me illustrate my point? – Don’t use […]

The next part of the installment is your body language. Body language can convey just as much, or might be even more telling than your spoken message. Easy example, imagine someone who is saying to the audience, “I’m not nervous to stand before all of you here”, but his legs are stiff as board, his fingers fidgeting, his gaze looks upwards, and he’s sweating profusely. Yeah, fat chance you’re gonna believe he’s not nervous. Fact is, a lot of these body languages are hard to control. That’s because the way your body and face reacts are mostly based on reflex. […]

This article is part 2 of 4 on engaging communication. The first component that I’ll cover is the storytelling. It’s how you pack your message, in such a way that it invokes the feelings that you want from your audience. This is not a new concept, Nancy Duarte of Harvard Business Review already did a piece on the topic in 2012, but it’s amazing how people treat storytelling as if it’s rocket science, it’s not. In essence, the issue with most presenters are that people see the presentation with only a single point of view, theirs. I’m not saying that […]

This article is the introduction and will be part of a 4 article series on engaging communication. Have you ever compared the interactions you have on weekends or night out with friends with the interactions you have with clients/coworkers? For me, the discussions, the interaction, the communication with friends are much more engaging. I believe the same goes for you, or everyone really. When I look at people’s eyes during the weekdays, I often see dead fish eyes, unenthusiastic and bored. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can start improving our communication skills, our quality of interactions throughout […]

Recently, I took up an interest in photography. It was spurred by the fascination of capturing moments and the ability to print it. I used to take pictures, but only with my phone. When I printed some of them last year, I was both happy and sad. Happy to see a lot of great results, but sad to see blurs, bad exposures, and grainy results. In the end, I procured a mirrorless camera that’s easy to use, that’s not expensive, and that has a lot of lens selection for the future. I ended up choosing the Sony A6000 + Kit […]

According to the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Marketing is the management process for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably[1]. Historically, the consideration for marketing includes 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion), and the instituted added another 3, which are People, Process, and Physical evidence. With the advance of internet and telecommunication, marketing activities are getting more easily measurable. The term “Performance Marketing” refers to marketing and advertising programs where advertisers & marketing companies are paid when a specific action is completed; such as a sales, lead, or click[2]. An example of this is Google Ads, when Company A advertises with […]

Gretchen Rubin is an author mainly focusing on the human psychology, with multiple bestsellers such as The Four Tendencies, Better Than Before, and The Happiness Project. On this occassion, I just finished reading The Happiness Project. I dare say this is the book that propelled Gretchen to fame as an author. First released in 2009, it has been reprinted multiple times, and spent 2 years on the bestseller list. The book started off sharing who Gretchen is, The Happiness Project started when Gretchen was still working in the field of law, for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. “What do […]

Skip this paragraph if you want to read directly about Wiki Koffie, this paragraph is gonna be back story. Today I had the chance to spend a day in Bandung! Through my whole life, this is the first time I actually have gotten the time to pick what I wanted to do and travel by myself in Bandung, and I have to say it’s liberating. Originally I intended to go to Jalan Sriwijaya (Thank you Monocle for the recommendation) for the dress shoes, but apparently, they close on Sundays. So because they’re closed, I picked to go to Braga Street, […]

Moving into 2018, I reflect back on what happened in the previous year. 2017 was a thrilling roller coaster! A lot of things happened, both good and bad. The good, I started a new role in Accenture as a Management Consultant, elected to be a committee member for YEC (Young Enterpreneur Club), elected to be the vice chair for economy and trade for INTI, passed the CFA Level 2 exam, had a brief stint in TaniFund to lead the investment process, and I even went traveling to a lot of places (Sapporo, Tokyo, Balikpapan, Cilacap, Surabaya, San Francisco, Malaysia, Singapore, […]

Abstract Traditionally, we budget expenses by looking at actual expenses in the previous period, then add/subtract a percentage to it depending on the forecast. Zero Based Budgeting(ZBB) challenges this notion and requires us to start clean and justify planned expenses. This leads to expenses that align with our strategy and allow us to develop a cost saving culture. ZBB can be done not only for businesses, but also for individuals. The Typical Way to Budget Usually, when we budget expenses, we look at the previous period’s actual expenses, and add/subtract a certain percentage of it for the next year. For […]

I just finished reading Presence, by Amy Cuddy, 2012 TED Talk Speaker. In this book, she plays with the concept of presence, bringing your whole self into the room, how your body language influences your own mind, and the social experiment around it. “Presence emerges when we feel personally powerful, which allows us to be acutely attuned to our most sincere selves. … When we feel present, our speech, facial expressions, postures, and movements align. They synchronize and focus. .. It’s what makes us compelling.” It’s a concept that we have definitely feel in our lives. The time when we […]

In 9 August 2017, YEC held a CEO talk with the CEO of Domino Pizza Indonesia, Patrick McMichael. Graduated from Santa Barbara City College in 1990, Patrick McMichael specializes in franchise consulting, strategic planning and new business development. With over than 25 years of experience under his belt with international Domina Pizza Enterprise, he’s now the CEO of Domino Pizza Indonesia. 97% of Domino Pizzas are franchise owned, and in the US alone, Domino’s has nearly 800 independent franchise owners. In a day, Domino’s delivers more than 1 million pizzas, with more than 260,000 employees worldwide. They had 93 consecutive […]

This post is a part of Bite Sized Wisdom series. Nowadays, there are a lot of organization that promotes enterpreneurship to rural areas. They aim to encourage people to start businesses, to grow the economy, and making an impact to the community. There are banks with incubation programs, government bodies with enterpreneurship training program, but the impact still leaves much to be desired. With more than 250 million people in Indonesia, with all the resources that exist here, Indonesia should be able to grow much much more than this. One big matter that was identified was the continuity. Programs that […]

This post is a part of Bite Sized Wisdom series. Young generation(Gen Y, Gen Z, Millenials, Xennials) have tastes that is clearly very different from their predecessors. Long gone are the days where people look for the cheapest alternative. Price is now just one spectrum from which you can see a product/service. Instead of striving for cost leadership, it’s better to strive for differentiation. What value do you offer other than price, that makes you a good choice for clients? For example, 30k IDR (~2.5 USD) for toasted bread sounds ridiculous if you look at the cost of goods sold […]

This post is a part of Bite Sized Wisdom series. Having a low Non-Performing Loan(NPL) is critical to a lender, and in effort to speed up growth of a lending business, some banks/financing companies increasingly willing to lend to riskier profiles (corporate/personal). They are pressured by shareholders, by the market, and also by the government to channel funds, to grow the economy, and to support the country. But how does a lender suppress their Non Performing Loan? One way is to have a great credit scoring metrics for corporate clients, starting from (obviously) a guarantee (in the form of long […]

This post is a part of Bite Sized Wisdom series. In a family business, having too many family members in the same company, working with each other can be disastrous. For example, if your family owns a factory, then the first kid handles marketing, the second handles finance, and the third handles operations. There’s a sizeable risk on conflict between family members on how the business should be run. Potential solutions to this problem is to institute just 1 person in the family as the chief of the business, and the others handles other business / acts as advisors. Or […]

This post is a part of Bite Sized Wisdom series. Although there are a lot of definitions of startups, startup in the end is Micro Small Medium Enterprise (MSME). It’s typically said that startups disrupt the environment, startups are technology-focused companies, startups are the harbringer of destruction to the old business empires. There are a lot of ways people try to define startups, and there are disagreements on this. People in the tech startup community generally doesn’t like it when startup is defined as MSME. Because startup is a disruptor, and can be enabled to grow very quickly. For example, […]

In July 25th 2017, YEC held a talk with Bong Chandra, with the title “From student enterpreneur, to motivator and Property Developer” Born in 1987 to a modest family, Bong Chandra started his enterpreneurship journey as early as high school. After trying out several businesses, he became a motivator in 2008, and property developer at 2009. He’s awarded the “Youngest Motivator in Asia” in 2010, and Trinity Group is developing a number of apartments around Alam Sutera and Serpong, such as The Smith, Brooklyn, Springwood Residence, and Yukata Suites. Today, he’s the CEO of Trinity Property Group, and aims for […]

  Very long overdue, 2 months ago, YEC held a Good Corporate Governance(GCG) talks (coincidentally at my birthday!) with Drs Thomas Sugijata, MM, CA. A Master Consultant of the Jakarta Consulting Group, Drs Thomas Sugijata is an expert in good corporate governance and audit. This article serves as a summary and key points of the session. Before being a master consultant in JCG in 2011, Drs Thomas Sugijata already had 32 years of experience in the government under his belt, especially in the customs and excise department. The last position he held there is the director general of customs and […]

Portfolios of the Poor : How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day  is a book from 2010, by Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, and Orlanda Ruthven. This article is intended to summarize my key takeaways from the book, and a reflection of opportunities available in Indonesia. “Not having enough money is bad enough. Not being able to manage whatever money you have is worse.” This sentence sums up the core point this book is trying to deliver to us. In this book, the authors assess how the poor manages their money in several countries (Bangladesh, India, South Africa), how […]

In our effort to accumulate wealth, one of the things that we have to do is to invest our money. Money kept under your bed or even on a basic savings account in a bank will decrease in value thanks to inflation, which is one of the core reason why we should invest. I’m writing this article to help you assess and compare investment opportunities that you are thinking of. Before reading this piece, I hope you already have an understanding on why you should invest and the concept of diversification. This article is purely from investment value perspective, and […]

Yesterday marks the first day the Young Enterpreneur Club book club is officially in action by having a discussion on the book by Clayton Christensen, Competing Against Luck. This book is released in 2016. Rated 4.6/5 in Audible, 4.32/5 in Goodreads, and 4.5/5 in Amazon, review-wise, this book is a strong “must read” for anyone. The book revolves around the idea of “Jobs to be done” theory. This theory states that customer hires our products and/or services to do a specific job for them, and the better we capture what job customers hire us to do, the better we can […]

Agriculture. It’s a field of investment that I see my pals underestimate. I’m writing this article to share with you why you should invest in agriculture, and specifically how you can invest in it (for Indonesia). There are several reasons that agriculture is a good sector to be in, which are: Indonesia, in it’s core is an agricultural country For Indonesians, since primary school, it has been iterated to us time and time again that Indonesia is an agricultural country (negara agraris). And this is still true, as 14% of Indonesia’s GDP is made out of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries […]

In 1957, Leon Festinger published his theory of cognitive dissonance, which states that a powerful motive to maintain cognitive consistency can give rise to irrational and sometimes maladaptive behavior. According to him, we hold a lot of views and opinions about everything, and when we see something that rejects our views and opinions, we feel unpleasant, and are motivated to reduce or eliminate it in order to feel pleasant again. According to Festinger’s theory, when there is a dissonance, something must change to eliminate it, and can happen in 3 ways: 1. The individual changes one or more of their […]

Who doesn’t know Rolex? Employing between 5,000–10,000 people (According to their LinkedIn profile) , with a total revenue of about 4.7 billion USD in 2016, Rolex is the biggest independent watch brand in the world. Rolex also owns Tudor. Being a behemoth, it is safe to say that out of all luxury watch brands, Rolex is counterfeited the most, which I think also helped more and more people to be familiar with the brand. All too often, Rolex is either overestimated or underestimated. Overestimated when, for example, someone doesn’t know anything about the watch industry. In this case, it’s common for […]

On a catch-up session with my good friend, Sandro Rayhansyah last week, we touched upon the topic of the unfocused mind. Here, we are not talking about Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which is another problem altogether. We talked about how adults and youngsters now often finds it hard to focus on something for an extended period of time due to technology. When you’re driving, do you sometimes take a quick glance on your phone for notifications and messages? When you had a 2 hours meeting, do you often see someone checking their phone, or glancing towards their phone that they put […]

Last year, when I was going out with a friend of mine in Bangkok, we stumbled upon an area in Siam Paragon where they sell a lot of luxury watches. It was great to see a number of them at the same place, and we visited a couple few just to look around the collection. After a few stores, my friend asked me “Hey Chris, why do you like watches? What’s the difference between all those expensive watches?” and I realized that a lot of my peers who are born in the digital era doesn’t know the history of watches, […]

A few months back, on a mentoring session with the Human Resources Director in Microsoft Indonesia, she shared a great tip in how we can manage our public branding and our personal social life by compartmentalizing our social media. For me, this relates to social media policies that companies usually have ( Here’s 5 terrific examples of companies doing this ). For simplicity purposes, social media policy means guideline that directs us in what we can or cannot post in our social media. In the internet, there floats an image of a Japanese proverb, that says “The Japanese say you […]

2 months ago, when I was in a gas station, a motorcycle crashed into an angkot (minibus) and the lady motorcycle driver got thrown off around 3 meters to the side from the impact and the minibus’ front bumper fell. The surprise caused me to let my phone slip my hand, fell to the ground, and lo, the gorilla glass cracked half the screen. Thankfully, the phone still worked, the touch was still responsive, it’s just a bit ugly to look at. (From what I saw when I left the scene, the lady driver was okay, a bit shaken, probably […]