Soon we could be the far West to China’s global centre, Daniel Seal, unBound CEO

By @SimonCocking. We caught up with Daniel Seal again in London last week at unBound London, where the latest leg of the innovation insights took place. He was only just back from the previous event in China. We last met up with Daniel in May at the Singapore unBound event, so we were interested to see how the rest of 2016 had been.

We believe in curated audiences, to create high quality event experiences. Daniel Seal, Founder & CEO, unBound Media

Talking with Daniel about Asia, fresh from his trip to China, and also in relation to the rise of new technologies and business opportunities witnessed at numerous previous unBound’s in Singapore, it was clear that he had been impressed by his most recent to China. The growing rise of China in terms of innovation and industrial creativity is a massive phenomenon, and one that can not be ignored. Daniel explained in more detail “China doesn’t need the West. In many ways it is time that we began to realise that we are the ‘Far West’, rather than China being the ‘Far East’. We are welcome there, but China will continue to grow and develop whether we have a strategy to deal with it or not!”

The unBound event itself was very much geared around discussing this new paradigm in terms of the rise of Asian influence, with a great panel specifically geared around looking at this topic, including the insightful Wempy Dyocta who we recently featured.

We asked Daniel how 2016 had been for the unBound team. “It’s been a great year, we are now working in 30 countries globally, working with brands and startups, advising them on how to successfully innovate. We see ourselves as an event as a bridge between Davos and Burning Man, however in each country that we operate there are big differences and so we aim to make what we offer as relevant as possible for each market. We also have a dedicated team in each country to make sure we get this right”.

The event in London was well attended, and as the day progressed the audience in each talk filled up and were clearly interested in what the speakers had to say. A common theme across many of the talks was the challenge of large organisations dealing with embracing and managing change and innovation without being blindsided by new, fast moving technologies and startups able to build better solutions faster.

This rate of acceleration of development will probably only continue to increase and it does mean that the complementary advice service that the unBound organisation looks to offer could well become the main driver of future work for them. It will be interesting to see how 2017 plays out, and the various events planned in Singapore, London, Miami and Guangzhou across the year could offer some interesting insights.

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