It is an honour to have Mr. Kirk James be our guest speaker in the seminar in business management course hosted by IBMBA. It is the first time we have Mr. Kirk here, sharing about how to turn the trend into an opportunity. Over 50 students in the classroom benefit from the idea of Gogoro’s real-life example.

To start the sharing, Mr. Kirk has a conversation with students by asking about their view of Gogoro, trends, and what they expected from the talk. After that, Mr. Kirk introduces what is trends. In order to build a concrete image, Mr. Kirk separated trends into different parts and combined them with Gogoro’s real-life example. Trends are not only trends to follow, from long-term strategy to rapid services, all can be operated by analysing the trends.

Market forces change the trends, there are always up and downs in every aspect. The changes in the market form the micro-trends, which the managers should discover for business opportunities. Analysing trends is not only paperwork, Mr. Kirk shows the results with Gogoro’s data as an example to confirm its possibility.

The trends bring up what customers needs and want, after explaining how to discover the trend, Mr. Kirk uses Gogoro's real-life example to share how to meet customers’ expectations. Building a Gogoro technology platform helps to change the trend into an opportunity. Satisfying the customers and also having a 360 platform, product and service ecosystem. Having business opportunities more than a scooter company can have

Mr. Kirk introduces his mindset of understanding the customers. There are four trends that inform the user profiles: Be ahead, Be free, Be right, and Be well. The four trend leads customers to have different purchasing intention and how a company can approach them. Besides, a tool for catching opportunities is introduced. Gogoro elevated user experience and tailored design to catch new generation mobility for women. Mr. Kirk demonstrated how to get insight and discuss that, students are able to have a deep understanding of turning customers’ trends into opportunities.

Manufacturing and social responsibility are other concerns. The trends of the two aspects can also be studied and re-create the working process or even materials. To share with clearer image, Mr. Kirk shares Gogoro’s ideas and works. For example, paint-free polypropylenes and new manufacturing processes. Which can satisfy the tailored design trends from the customers’ aspect, also innovation trends on the manufacturing and eco-friendly aspect.

Students concert about eco and carbon production when manufacturing the Gogoro. Mr. Kirk is impressed and shares that it is something Gogoro always focuses on. Gogoro hire a third-side institute to have a report on it, the report will be released in the near future.

On the manufacturing side, it is more than a normal brand. However, the usage there is much lower than the normal brand. As time moves, pollution and energy usage are much more eco. Although still using electricity, Gogoro is able to convert electricity more efficiently. As the result, it is very much less carbon produced with Gogoro compared to other scooters.

During the Q&A session, students actively interact with Mr. Kirk. Students are asking different questions to have some insight and feedback from Mr. Kirk. Here are some questions asked by students:

Will the new ecosystem be the entry barrier or competitive advantage?

It is a good question. Most of the time we will treat it as a competitive advantage. There are some more strong eco-system companies in the market. But we integrate it into different levels, there are around 10 companies using Gogoro’s system. Like Android in the scooter market.

Gogoro is still dependent on some supplies, will it still be in line with Gogoro if the supplier is not green enough?

The visibility of the supplier company matter, we work with companies in Japan and Korea. Those companies have clear reports on CSR and manufacturer detail, also confirmed by some NGOs’ supervisions. Therefore, we are also trying our best to ensure the supply in line with our vision.

Background

Interesting question. I am from a design background. Mostly electronic brands and new brand launches. Also, have a design studio making video game art design. I join Gogoro in the early stage, and the main visual design is by my team.

In the last session of the sharing, Mr. Kirk encourages students to ask more. Students actively interact and ask for more, from how to manage to what to manage. From today’s lecture, Mr. Kirk provided very insightful ideas that students cannot learn from textbooks..

Guest Lecture - Turning the Trend into an Opportunity - Gogoro