If you were in my shoes…

This morning, story of Jun Beom-suk, M.D., a famous neurologist, caught my attention. Dr. Jun was casually hiking up the mountain when he fell and lost his consciousness. Next morning, what he found was the man who only could move his left toe from paralysis because he broke his neck. He was a medical expert and knew what stats talk about his chance of being recovered. Within just three days after long operation, he stepped up to take all the initiatives to recoup his remaining sense and capability of moving his body. After 9 months of long and blood-pumping efforts to rehab, he is now back in his office, leading up top neurologists at Seoul Nat’l Univ. What he learned from this experience was how vaguely he knew about his patients’ pain and how important to keep hope to get recovered even if there is only 5% of chance.

Sometimes, being in others’ shoes is the best way to learn. How often do we come across those people who speak up even if they have never been to and never gotten proper experience before. If you’d like to find a more productive support from the VC community, please, find a VC guy who has done a full cycle of getting companies to be started.

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If everyone is on the same page, what’s your edge?

How many news feeds do you consume daily basis? News can come from various forms such as news paper, prime TV news show, blog, email, or even trendy Twitter. Though, what we take as “major news” are quite similar to everyone in a sense that there is no (or little) barrier to information access if you live in the information age. People who are equipped with news delivering technology and connected to the Internet don’t see any discrepancy of news consumption compared to others. Also, there is a technology that has dramatically reduced time of getting words-out between news-able events to news production & delivery. That’s why people who live in a condensed city like New York or Seoul won’t have any problem to sync with most up-to-date news by noon.

Now, if everyone is on the same page in terms of news and if you’re in the market where you don’t add much value from what you know as news, what would you do? General news syndication and news release mainly caused by press release with a certain purpose wouldn’t count much to create your edge. Often times, those articles wouldn’t weigh as much as their headlines, either.

I respect those people who can analyze situation and give an editorial touch to factual events or hot issues. In order to do so, you have to have historical knowledge of certain events and also get access to so-called “insider” type information source. News achieving can be one tactic, but more importantly, having a more active face-to-face connection with people who know the matters most would be an answer. Great tools like Twitter, Google, iPhone, or Facebook often make you hiding behind the scene. You may justify yourself that you’re digging news from your online social network. However, you’d better pick up your phone and knock the door of people who can give what you want. People who have had great success in their personal or corporate lives were always very personal and getting to the access point to any mutual relationship, not sitting behind any vale.

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Cloud sourcing can be an answer?

KT (Korea Telecom) has recently announced that it would enact “Smart Work” policy. Using its ubiquitous network infrastructure, KT now lets its employees work on their own time schedules and at their most preferred locations.

Remote office concept is quite common for large multinational companies, but it’s still untested idea for most Asian countries. Corporate Asia still highly values in-house collaboration. Corporate hierarchy encourages lower ranking team members to interact with their boss face-to-face. We will see whether it’s going to be one time event or frontier-ish business decision of a mammoth Korean telecom company.

One area I’ve been quite fascinated lately is “cloud sourcing” application in the corporate world. Every major project can be disassembled to small tasks. What if a corporate finds a way to delegate non-core activities to more intelligent and skillful “micro contractors” at a fraction of costs to maintain full-time employees or part-timers in-house. What about those busy working professionals who get paid for their time commitments? In order to maximize their profit level, both efficient resource planning and time management is a key to success.

I look forward to seeing a connecting point between people who can provide labor and people who can provide so-called “micro jobs.” Don’t we spend almost half of life to do something that make your living anyways?

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Can you count your days?

If we live up to the age of 80, we have about 30,000 days (more precisely 29,220 days.) If we could work for 50 years, that counts about 18,000 days (more precisely 18,262.5 days.) No one really knows when he dies. So, how many days you can spend on something you highly value or love to do is still uncertain. Time is most valuable resource and it won’t come back. That’s why old wisdom always emphasize on importance of using time wisely and setting priority. Someone told me that priority can’t be plural (like priorities.) Priority has to be always one most important thing in your life. @ Jin-won, thanks for sharing great thought the other day!

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@ Mama’s – best sandwitch shop in Seoul

As a tech investor, I won’t look into any opportunity in retail. However, I personally adore those entrepreneurs who can differentiate their business establishment from already super-crowded restaurant and hospitality business by and large.

Mama’s is a local eatery specialized in organic sandwiches, salad, and “real” fruit squeezer. I’m writing a short note here at its City Hall branch behind of Seoul Finance Center. I would say that Mama’s has best sandwiches in entire Seoul. Never miss out its fruit squeezer because it tastes like heaven.

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