[General] Read First

Here is why I started this blog.

Being a research & investment professional who is really good at what he does, I understand how information and data can be created / manipulated according to different purposes / use cases / audience by playing around with methodology / definition / scope. In financial accounting, it is called “adjustment”. In product management, it is called “stakeholder management”. In marketing, it is called “messaging / segmentation”. In politics, it is called “propaganda”.

I place substantial emphasis on obtaining first-hand data and information. I am heavily involved in surveys and interviews when it comes to research and product management. I take every piece of information from second-hand sources with a grain of salt. The majority is usually wrong as a result of misinformation and propaganda, and that information is mostly structured for the sake of interest of someone(s). What most people believe in is not factual in most cases. If most people claim that “that region / that country / that ethnicity / that social class / that minority group is XXX”, chances are that quite the opposite is true.

The reason why the majority is easily misled is due to inherent human nature of laziness, which brings about a) laziness to find out fact; b) extrapolation / generalization / labeling. People imagine country A and country B in the same region are similar; people imagine city A and city B in the same country are similar; people imagine person A and person B in the same city are similar.

Another commonly-observed behavior among human being is drawing illogical links between 2 irrelevant subjects or phenomena. People rarely ask “why?” and “so what?”. Simply because phenomenon A and phenomenon B both exist, does not mean they are in any way associated with each other. This eventually leads to a) people assuming there are so-called “developed / advanced countries” and “less-developed / less-advanced countries” and a ton of myths surrounding this; b) people making up and upholding “social norms / expectations / values”.

My hypothesis in life is “most people’s understanding of a particular subject is usually false”, and I want to spend my life validating this hypothesis. It sounds fun for me.

This explains my obsession with living and working in “emerging / frontier” countries. I observe how cities are designed, how streets and buildings look like, how local people think and live, how local communities function, which local universities are prestigious, which local companies (especially local tech companies) are successful, etc. I want to see everything for myself and disprove whatever I have heard about these countries.

Countries I have lived in / visited after 18 — Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Canada, United States, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Nepal, India, Kenya, Rwanda (as of 2024/08/16)

Last but not least, if you appreciate this kind of pragmatic approach to things and would like me to collect first-hand data and unearth insight for your [digital product development & management / research & analysis / investment due diligence] projects in ANY “emerging / frontier” market worldwide, please move on to here for further information or reach out to me at gustav(dot)pan(at)outlook(dot)com.