Always be goal-oriented

market, no talent and limited financing.

How do you maintain work/life balance? Sometime, I question the meaning of work/life balance. If we work eight hours a day and spend 30 years working, we better enjoy our work. Work has to be goal-oriented and has to be fun.

How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal lives? I don’t have any mentor per se in my entire career. However, I observe people that I work with, colleagues or customers, friends or family members and I pick up their strengths, philosophy and ideas that they have and made them part of mine.

What do you want to accomplish in the next five years? I have very specific goals for the next five years: Make Internet of Things a key success for Key ASIC, make Cloud Hospital pervasive globally and groom a team of young blood to continue making the torch brighter.

Most-admired leader? Why? The leaders that are popular with many books are not my most-admired leaders. Most of them are overly written by authors who are trying to sell books. The business leaders that I respect the most are those who put in their life and savings, weathered thunders and storms to make their business work, keep people employed and provide for their family.

How do you stay abreast of issues affecting your industry? I am connected to the industry influencers and I actively read, travel, meet a lot of people, and give talks in conferences. I work with leading research institutes in the world to have visibility of future technologies.

If you could have an hour with any thought leader in the world, who would it be and why? Donald Trump. He is in power and influencing the world now.

What was your biggest failure and how did you learn from it? I hardly fire employees. Giving incapable employees too many chances hurts the company.

What man-made innovation confounds you? Why? If we called it man-made innovation, a US$50,000 lady’s branded handbag confounds me ... cannot figure out why people pay so much for a US$20 cost item.

A must-read for every business owner/ manager is ...

In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman.