#ThinkPH The Next Big Idea: Platform thinking

Everyone is talking about innovation, but no one tells you exactly how to do it.

Technology is the disrupter and the enabler, but how can you and your business harness it?

Join us as we introduce platform thinking in the Philippines.

Platform thinking radically changes the way we build businesses in the digital age. Platforms allow multiple participants to connect, interact, create and exchange value. In the era of “sharing,” every person’s property can be of value to your business. Platform thinking creates that share-ability and the value of earned media.

Learn how you can use platform thinking to scale your business. Our keynote speaker is Sangeet Paul Choudary, founder & CEO of Platform Thinking Labs, author and co-chair of MIT Platform Strategy Groups. Sangeet deconstructs exactly how network effects work for our audience. Our other innovative guests include Maria Ressa of Rappler, Laurence Cua of Uber, Nix Nolledo of Xurpas, Ken Lingan of Google, Minette Navarrete of Kickstart Ventures, Earl Valencia of Ideaspace and Russell Shepherd of Reach. Read more about them below.

The Speakers (in alphabetical order)

MARINA AZCARATE

Head of Global Marketing at Firechat

Marina leads the global marketing for Open Garden, a pioneer in peer-to-peer mesh networking technology. Open Garden is the creator of FireChat, the first mobile messaging app that works even if there is no Internet access or cellular phone coverage. Marina has been living in India since 2007. She has worked across Asia as a television producer for Babel Press and for branding agency Wieden+Kennedy. She is interested in visual culture, emerging forms of digital storytelling, the new economics of content and how those shape public debate.

SANGEET PAUL CHOUDARY

Founder and CEO, Platform Thinking Labs

Sangeet Choudary is a widely published industry analyst, C-level advisor, educator at leading universities, and CEO of Platform Thinking Labs, best known for his work on platform business models and multi-sided network effects. He is also the co-chair of the MIT Platform Strategy Group at MIT Media Labs, Boston, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at INSEAD Business School, a Global Fellow at the Centre for Global Enterprise in New York, an industry advisor to the Platform Data Initiative at Stanford Business School, a speaker at the G20 Summit 2014 in Brisbane and an advisor at 500Startups in Silicon Valley. Sangeet has been featured on leading publications like the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Wired and Thinkers Magazine and has been invited to lecture at leading US universities including the Harvard Business School, MIT Media Labs and Carnegie Mellon University.

LAURENCE CUA

General Manager, Uber Manila

Laurence is the General Manager for Uber Manila. Previously, he was responsible for the Prepaid business for T-Mobile in the United States. Prior to that, he was in charge of trade marketing for the hair, oral care and deodorants categories for Unilever Philippines. He holds an MBA degree from the Kellogg School of Management and a Management Engineering degree from Ateneo de Manila. He is passionate about anything technology and does 3D printing in his spare time.

KENNETH LINGAN

Google Philippines Country Manager

Ken Lingan joins Google Philippines from Unilever where he was Vice-President for Deodorants, Southeast Asia and ANZ, based out of Singapore. Ken’s 16 year experience in marketing and brand development includes a stint as Marketing Director for Unilever Home and Personal Care in the Gulf Region. He was also the Regional Brand Director for Rexona in the Asia Region. Ken graduated from Ateneo de Manila University with a degree in Management Engineering.

ANNA IRMINA “MINETTE” B. NAVARRETE

Co-founder and President, Kickstart Ventures, Inc.

Minette Navarrete joined Globe Telecom Inc. in July 2006 to start Business Development in what was then a pure-play mobile operator. In 2012, Minette led her team to found Kickstart Ventures, Inc. (www.kickstart.ph) and spin it out as a wholly-owned Globe subsidiary. Kickstart is an investment firm that funds digital startups, providing capital, incubation and mentoring, and market access. Kickstart is the Philippines’ most active early-stage venture capital firm, investing at seed-stage to Series “A” and beyond; its portfolio has some of the country’s best-performing startups; its mentorship program is highly coveted. Kickstart portfolio companies have attracted funding from some of the world’s most respected tech investors: Y Combinator and 500 Startups from Silicon Valley; Omidyar Network from New York; IMJ Investment Partners from Japan; and Wavemaker from Los Angeles and Singapore. Minette is concurrently Vice-Chairman of Yondu, Globe’s wholly-owned content and technology solutions provider, which they acquired as Entertainment Gateway Group (EGG) in 2008. Before joining Globe, she was Managing Director of online game publishing startup, Level Up! She previously served as Levi Strauss & Company’s Country Manager for the Philippines and Guam; and President & CEO of Shangri-La Plaza Corporation.

NIX NOLLEDO

CEO of Xurpas, Inc

Nix is a digital entrepreneur with businesses in mobile applications, web marketing and e-commerce. He’s the CEO of Xurpas, Inc., a large mobile content provider which develops mobile marketing programs and applications for several telecommunications firms in the Philippines as well as other emerging markets. He is also the co-founder of pinoyexchange.com, one of the country’s largest online communities. Xurpas set a new record upon listing its shares at the Philippine Stock Exchange following its successful P1.37-billion maiden public offering. Xurpas now holds the record as the first IPO to open at its ceiling price (uptick of 50 percent from IPO price) on listing day. It is also among the IPOs with the lowest value turnover on listing day as most investors refused to sell even with a 50 percent windfall. He is a founding director of the Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP) and the Digital Commerce Association of the Philippines (DCOM). He is a board member of Rappler and a member of the Philippine chapter of Enterpreneurs’ Organization (EO). Nix graduated with a business degree from the Ateneo de Manila University and was selected as one of the top 50 entrepreneurs in the Philippines by Entrepreneur Magazine.

MARIA RESSA

CEO, Rappler.com

Maria A. Ressa has been a journalist in Asia for nearly 30 years and is the author of Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia. She is one of the founders of independent production company, Probe Productions, before reporting for and heading CNN’s Southeast Asia operations for nearly 2 decades (bureau chief in Manila then Jakarta). For 6 years, she was ABSCBN’s Senior Vice President for News & Current Affairs, handling news operations across multiple platforms. She is Rappler’s CEO and Executive Editor.

RUSSELL SHEPHERD

Co-founder and CTO, Reach & Rappler Data Scientist

Russell Shepherd combines methods from statistics, economics, social network analysis and natural language processing for a wide variety of applications of big data ranging from international counterterrorism to social media marketing. He is the co-author of The Strength of Tweet Ties: How Twitter Helped Frame the Egyptian Protests and Mining Twitter Data From the Arab Spring. Previous clients include the United States Department of Defense and the Carter Center.

EARL VALENCIA

Head of Corporate Development/Innovations, Smart Communications

Earl Valencia moved back from the headquarters of Cisco System’s Emerging Technologies Group in Silicon Valley in December 2011 and soon co-founded IdeaSpace Foundation, a start-up incubator and accelerator funded by the First Pacific Group, in March 2012 with the aim of creating economic development through science and technology. He leveraged his experience with helping start-ups in the Bay Area and work as a Senior Engineer at Raytheon, bringing that experience to help build the Philippine start-up ecosystem with a vision of finding the next $1 Billion science and technology company founded in the country. He has also worked in the investing side at Investor Growth Capital in Menlo Park and H&Q Asia Pacific in Manila. IdeaSpace, now a Department of Science and Technology accredited foundation, has touched over 150,000 lives in less than 3 years. In 2014 alone, the foundation sponsored or participated in over 80 events all over the Philippine to advocate for technology and entrepreneurship. In the 3rd batch for call for applications, IdeaSpace received 1028 team submissions from every region in the Philippines including entries from 15 countries. Earl has a BS in Electrical Engineering, Summa Cum Laude, from Boston University, a Masters in Systems Engineering from Cornell, an Executive Leadership Program from the Harvard Kennedy School and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business with certificates in Public and Global Management. In 2012, he was named a Manila 40 under 40 by DevEx awarding leaders under 40 focused on impact and economic development in the Philippines. In 2014, he was honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum based in Geneva, Switzerland.

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“We are not merely in the business of building products and services anymore, we are in the business of enabling interactions” – Sangeet Paul Choudary