The Third Danwei Plenary Session took place at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing on Tuesday January 13th. The topic was how to make money doing creative work, and the speakers were Dominic Johnson-Hill, of Plastered T-shirts， Richard Robinson of Kooky Panda and Chopschticks, and Kaiser Kuo, rock star, tech startup veteran and Group Director for Digital Strategy of Ogilvy China.
The discussion was moderated by Jeremy Goldkorn.
Highlights of the discussion include the role of “being at the right place at the right time” and making it in the industry, whether China is a hub for creative business, how to manage employees and making money.
The three speakers in turn discussed their backgrounds, including Johnson-Hill‘s investment of only a few ten-thousands of RMB into Plastered T-Shirts when he began, buying him his shop-front in Beijing’s Nanluogu Xiang (南罗鼓巷), and how in this first month less than two dozen T-Shirts were sold.
Kaiser Kuo‘s amusing anecdotes made the audience laugh, and his insistence that guanxi (关系) or using one’s connections, operates the same way everywhere else as it does in China, gave fodder for discussion and disagreement.
Robinson talked about settling down in China with a local wife, family support and inspiration. He also said that the piracy of ideas was something most creative companies face in China.
Enjoyably questions from the floor were diverse, asking the panelists about their experience of Chinese bureaucracy, managing staff in a creative environment, and what they attribute their success to. In Kuo’s case, it was a separation of interests and work; in Johnson-Hill’s, it was the opposite: amalgamating passion and vocation.
Thanks to James Wasserman for the photographs seen here, who turned up with his point-and-shoot just in time.