Welcome to my homepage. Here is a short biography about myself. To know more about me, you can visit sites listed below. If you want to talk to me, please send an email to hyokon[dot]zhiang[at]innomove[dot]com. Thanks for visiting!
I am an entrepreneur, and, to be more specific, a professional innovator. What do I mean by that? I do innovation consulting, build new businesses myself, and teach others on innovation. I do these at Innomove, an innovation firm that I started in 2004 in Korea.
Before starting Innomove, I was a manager at Bain & Company. Leaving Bain, I was having the pinacle of my consulting career. Our team devised business models of the first online insurance in Korea, when there was hardly any success case in the global insurance industry. And I was a key manager for the largest client of Seoul Office for 2.5 years. So, people asked me why I was leaving. I had a simple reason. The traditional business strategy is about a business that already exists. It is about running, not creating. It is more analysis than flash of ideas. While I liked strategy, I loved innovation more.
Before Bain, I worked at A.T. Kearney, another consulting firm. In 2000, I worked in Europe on broadband projects twice, once in Poland and the other in Portugal. I was asked by my Swedish partner to move to Sweden to work with him, but the big Internet boom in Korea made me to come back to Korea. On the phone, a friend said to me "it is a revolution now!" Well, when I came back the bubble bursted as you know. I wonder how my life would have been different now if I had stayed in Europe. Another crossroad of my career.
I also worked at CJ, the largest food and media company in Korea, and at STAR-TV in Hong Kong.
I am an MBA from Kellogg School. I liked finance, graduating as the top finance student, and almost joined Enron (another what-if point). Looking back, I think I liked financial innovation, but not the finance industry lifestyle.
I went to Seoul National University, studying Economics. Once I dreamed of becoming an economist, but was discouraged partly to find that my classmates who wanted to become economists (who would become my collagues if I became an economist) were the people I found most boring. (Later on at Kellogg, I found that academics in the US had some cool people.) But I still like economic thinking.
I used to play guitar at a rock band which I formed with my highschool friends, and still listen to guitar-oriented rock music. I also like soft and classical music.
Innomove Lab creates new businesses. I am the CEO.
This is a short book that I am writing. Mass Niche is a new free market model (or an ecosystem) where the roles of large companies and small businesses are reversed. In the old mass production model, large companies designed and made the final product and dealt with final users, while small businesses provided materials and tools to the large companies. In the mass niche model, small businesses deal with final users.
I have lists here and update them when I remember or find something. My rankings are mostly about innovation and (rock) music.
Random thoughts on innovation, entrepreneurship and changes in the way we live.
If you are a Korean, or more correctly if you can read Korean, this is my blog written in Korean. This is not a Korean version of my English blog, although I may post the same writings (so far none).
This is my tumblog to write short notes. At first, I didn't know how much I would use it. But it became my primary tools for comment blogging, in place of Cocomment.
I am slow at commenting as well, often commenting after all the hot discussions have gone. But still faster than my own blogging. In fact, my commenting works like other people's blogging - short thoughts on current issues.
I don't use CoComment much recently. Instead, I use Tumblog (see above) more.
I update my professional profile here. If you want to see my entire career to date, this is the place.
I certainly feel more comfortable using LinkedIn than Facebook. However, I rarely do other things than occasionally inviting and accepting connection.
I have a Facebook account, but I have not been doing much other than sending and receiving friend requests. The "playing kids" feel of Facebook is just not for me. Cyworld has been popular for a long time (it started in 1999) in Korea, but I have not used it either. It feels like Facebook.
I occasionally use StumbleUpon to bookmark 'fun' (as opposed to work) pages.