Industry Players Must Keep Up With Technological Advancement: Mochtar Riady
Jakarta. The rapid development of information technology has caused unpredictable changes in business and left no room for those unable to keep up with the trend, which is why industry players must be sensitive to such changes, Lippo Group founder and chairman Mochtar Riady said.
"Technology keeps growing at an exponential rate. Who can determine the ones who are going to survive in the next five years? As businessmen, we must be sensitive to the rapid development," Mochtar said during a forum to discuss his autobiography, "Man of Ideas," at the University of Indonesia in Depok, West Java, on Tuesday (13/12).
He used smartphones as an example. China currently leads the smartphone market with brands such as Oppo and Huawei.
"The new players from China have shown their capacity to snatch up market share previously dominated by American and Korean industries," the author said. Beritasatu.com reported that Mochtar revealed that he had just welcomed the board of directors of Oppo a few days ago.
"I met the board members. Twenty of them are Indonesians and only a few are Chinese. Most of them are young people, but that did not prevent them from overtaking Samsung's market and having the best-selling phones," said Mochtar, who praised the achievement of Oppo, which currently has around 860 outlets across Indonesia.
He also revealed his plan to meet Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, to discuss telecommunications technology, particularly related to future state-of-the-art 5G mobile networks.
Mochtar's encouragement to keep up with the latest technology was part of the discussion of values contained in his book. "Man of Ideas" is not only a memoir, but also serves as lessons on facing the challenges in running a business.
University of Indonesia literature professor Riris Sarumpaet, who was also one of the speakers during the discussion, praised the book for the values it presents.
"This book is suitable as a guide to teach students. Reading this book as well as understanding and letting the content sink in would take a whole semester, because it contains so many valuable words of wisdom," Riris said.
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