Don’t be afraid to fail: what I learned from five days in China

We caught up with Steve Woodford, our Chief Technology Officer, after he spent five days in China exploring tech opportunities and new ventures that can drive BGL Tech to 2025 and beyond.

As the world’s most populous nation and second largest economy, not a day goes by in China without its fair share of ground-breaking tech news. From reading the newspaper in the morning, which is enriched with tech stories, to spending the night in a robotic-run hotel, the appetite for technology, entrepreneurism and its future capabilities is inescapable.

We packed a lot in over five days, visiting three of China’s Tier 1 cities — Shanghai, Hangzhou and Beijing — gaining insights and learnings along the way. The key takeaways for me were the boldness of their strategic ambitions, the sheer scale of the market, the government support tech receives and the notion that failure is not something to fear.

The trip was facilitated seamlessly by Tällt Ventures, a business that helps insurance companies innovate through global market intelligence and proposition development. We had a great mix on the agenda, attending over 30 meetings, 21 of which were with start-ups ranging from early stage ventures to market-dominant unicorns.

We were fortunate enough to spend a day on the campus of global e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. Just to put it into perspective, Alibaba sells more in one day than Amazon does in a whole year. That was a mind-blowing fact for me that really brought home the scale of their operation.

Although the trip was naturally dominated by a business agenda, I did get to explore Beijing’s Forbidden City which was incredible.

Another first for me was spending the night in Alibaba’s FlyZoo Future Hotel, complete with facial recognition check-in, robot room service and ‘barbots’ that mix cocktails. Now as much as that sounds wonderful, the reality is a little different. It’s actually a lot of people running around trying to fix the tech that isn’t working! This really highlighted a key element of their winning mentality though. They know it’s not perfect yet, but it will be. They fail fast until they succeed, which is why they’re so advanced.

Back in 2015, the Chinese government launched Made in China 2025, a 10-year plan that seeks to make China dominant in global high-tech manufacturing. This support and financial backing from the government has helped its companies take the lead in key technology sectors. They’ve rapidly developed electric cars and other new energy vehicles, next-generation information technology and telecommunications, and advanced robotics and artificial intelligence. It’s no wonder they’re at the forefront of tech.

We identified a number of key opportunities as a result of the trip which will be taken forward by BGL, which is always exciting when you work in a tech role! Something that stuck with me personally was how everyone I encountered had no fear of failure. That is just their culture and it’s accepted as part and parcel of getting it right. I suspect that this is a substantial contributor to the success of their tech. They get to the right answer even if they’ve failed 30 times before getting there. This, along with the sheer boldness of their strategic ambitions, was a key takeaway for me and something I want to try and apply more to my own life, in business and personally.