Happy New Year, everyone

It's been a long but fruitful year for Amy. Hope you also had a wonderful 2007.

Now everything is new in the coming 2008. Please do enjoy and have fun.

Here is my best wishes from California. (pic is the beautiful Santa Monica Beach in Los Angeles)

"Walking along the beach, breathe, relax and let your mind wander"

pics for the LA/NY trip

Remember the scene in Desperate
Housewives. It was shot here in
Universal Studio in LA.













Shooting in the corner of a street in LA















New York Time's new fancy building. shot after the meeting with Bill Keller, one of the most important news person in U.S.















Five Horrifying Women, Picaso's most inspiring arts work, gave me a different angle to enjoy the modern arts. (Shot in Museum of Modern Arts in Manhattan)

Link to our media trip to LA/NY

Finally our crazy-busy media trip finished, but it will stay in everyone's memory for a long time. I wrote the blog for the trip, which could be seen here

Media is a huge asset in U.S. After talking to creative Hollywood writers/producers and the critical media such as New York Time and Newsweek, I got a sense on how the media has shaped the American culture. People in media pursue independence, creativity and fairness in producing their works. A lot of them consider it as a life-long career and a hobby. We see how Disney changed people's view towards the world, and how New York Times generated daily topics on the table.

Also, the media industry changes very fast, while no one could predict the future, even including the executives in big media companies, which has made media industry a quite fun place to work in.

It's difficult to run a media organization in this stage, but there are still a lot of smart and hard-working people working on this. I am sure media will go back to the central stage very soon.

Visiting Hollywood

Amy is on the trip visiting Hollywood. It is very impressive to see how passionate people here work on their production. Intellectual Property rights should be well protected everywhere, including China.

Studios here are very amazing, such as Sony Entertainment and Walt Disney. With over one hundred year history, Hollywood is not only a brand, but also a resource of creativity. It is from the creativity that global audience gain. There are a lot of models that China could learn from, and there are a lot of things China could do to tell about Chinese culture to the world. Hopefully we will have our center of Chinese creative business later.

Winter is coming?

When everyone outside China is enthusiastic on the opportunities in China, some candid Chinese enterpreneurs said they are preparing for the winter's coming. Here are some quotes from the 6th China Enterpreneur Summit held in Beijing on December 8(in Chinese).

Ma Yun, the president of online B2B portal Alibaba.com, who just raised $1.5 billion from its IPO, said:

"The reason why Alibaba is preparing for a listing is to prepare for the winter. In 1999 and 2000, the Internet suddenly turned into winter when everyone was still talking on its exciting future; the same is happening now while something is going wrong with so many concept of web 2.0 or 3.0. So I want an IPO now to be ready for the winter".

Liu Chuanzhi, the president of Lenovo Group, whose private equity fund got over 8 times return in the past three years, said:

"We are doing a quick research on our industry investment now. We are not afraid of the coming winter, and we will do what we should do in the winter. The most important thing is what will happenin the winter and what we could improve to adjust the winter."


I don't really care when Wall Street Journal and Financial Times say winter, because it is always the media's job to give critical view. But if the "winter" comment is from two of the most respective and successful enterprenuers in China, I give a lot of credit on this. It is a good thing that they are still rational, and working on what they are due to do, instead of what they are imagined to do.

Li Ka-shing bought facebook?

Every move of Li Ka-shing is news. so did this one. Wall Street Journal reported that the Hong Kong billionaire has acquired 0.4 percent in facebook for $60 million, following a $240 million investment by Microsoft in October. Financial Times reported that Li is going to buy the shares through Li Ka Shing Foundation, his charity vehicle. FT commented "Buying a stake in Facebook through the foundation, rather than one of his companies – such as Hutchison Whampoa, Mr Li’s global conglomerate, or Tom Group, Hutch’s internet and media unit – suggests that for the time being he intends only to salt his Facebook shares away."

Li's Tom Online, a media company based in China, may benefit from this move in China's growing social-networking website. We see News Corp's Myspace already got a high-exposed market access to China, a threatening move for Tom Online. Now Tom Online's alliance with facebook will create a nose-to-nose competition in China. At least, facebook hasn't got a Chinese version.

But the point is only a few, if none, of the U.S. Internet companies could be very successful in China, including Google, Yahoo and Ebay. The user habit is very different, the reason for those foreign firms to get a local partner. Facebook will not be an exceptional. Alliance with Tom is a smart move, but still needs effort to beat thousands of "Chinese facebook" which already started years ago.

Product is the key

What's the most important criteria to be a CEO?
The answer given by Paul Otellini is "be a product person". His argument is that a good CEO has to be very familiar with the products from every perspective because product is the key to the company's success.

Talking about leadership, we always think about various factors, such as personality and communications skills. But the most important factor is the company's success. It's not rare to see some jerk CEO whose company is making a good profit.

Yesterday's big news Edward Zander, the CEO of Motorola, was forced to quit because of the company's worst-than-expected performance. Zander had been with Motorola for four years, while he saw the successful sale of smash-hit Razr cell phone. Now with the decreasing sale of Razr and no successors, the firm has been facing pressure from Wall Street investors.

So being a good leader may not be hard. Trying to be a good sales person first.