Executive Vice President and President, Solutions & Services Group (SSG), Lenovo
#CES2017 with Ken Wong and Nick Reynolds
Ken Wong, Lenovo's President of Asia Pacific, and Nick Reynolds, CMO for Asia Pacific, tell us why #CES2017 is the best way to start the year and their favourites for #LenovoCES 2017! Learn more here: https://www.lenovo.com
Transcript (10 segments)
K
Ken Wong0:04
January is always my most favorite month. I think for two things: one is it's my birthday month, second is I can come to CES, see partners, talk to my colleagues, learn something new about the industry. It has always been awesome. Of course there's always good food.
I
Interviewer0:23
I love CES because it's here in Vegas which is a great party town. At Lenovo we work hard but we also play hard. So it's the first working week for me of the new year and we also try and squeeze in a bit of fun.
K
Ken Wong0:42
I would choose one word: I think it's innovation. If you look at the background, we all have the most innovative product coming out from Lenovo. I think apart from the product, as I said earlier on, this is the great time to see business partners and customers. For me it's a great opportunity to learn from them so that I can go back and have a look at how can we innovate our business model. Innovation is not only about product, it should be about how we do business. That innovation is in our DNA as a company. We create products that are different not just to be different but so they're better. I think my phrase is different is better.
I'm most excited about gaming. I love gaming myself, console and now PC. The new Legion which is our sub-brand, we're going to make a big push on this year in Asia Pacific and really take it to Asus for that number one position in gaming in Asia Pacific.
I
Interviewer1:53
Now for me I will pick the X1 ThinkPad. I think there are two things: one is for the first time we come up with a different color, it's a silver color. Second one is we're going to come up with a product that is smaller but bigger. smaller in terms of form factor but bigger in terms of screen size because we use the thin bezel. It's perfect for me as I need to travel and work on a daily basis.
K
Ken Wong2:28
So you're gaming and you're X1, I work and you play. Sounds like a winning combination.
I think if you look at the life of everyone today, technology is becoming an inevitable part of everyone. You cannot go without technology, be it on the road, the office, or at home. I think customer centricity as a company, the ability to understand your customers so that we can come up with a great product to fulfill their needs, is going to be much more important than before. We really do listen to the voice of the customer and we do that formally through panels. We have thousands, about 10,000 customers just to learn about gaming. One of the insights we had was Xbox gamers are also bigger in PC gaming than PlayStation gamers. So we built a different thing than the competition and put an Xbox controller into our latest gaming machines, the Legion. You can have four people playing with Xbox controllers through your PC all simultaneously. That is different but it is better.
I
Interviewer3:57
You want to go first?
K
Ken Wong3:59
I can go first. I think different is better. First of all it's the slogan of our latest global campaign. To me I think this is one of the best that we have ever had for the company. I think for one reason: it's so genuine, it's so easy to understand. It is in our DNA. It cuts across all our product and business unit of Lenovo. Really it's in the DNA.
I
Interviewer4:30
Ken, if you think about it, 25 years ago ThinkPad born in Japan, legendary product, milspec, the commercial weapon of choice for computing. You think about Motorola who invented the modern smartphone. If you look across at our latest gaming or even our convertible yoga products, the convertible today is known as yoga and we invented that category. So innovation really is at the heart of our company and in our DNA. So different is better.