Ray Huang of Silicon Valley consultancy Exponent gives his first impressions of Hong Kong as well as discussing fostering innovation and retaining talent in Asia.   Following your recent move from Silicon Valley, what are your impressions of Hong Kong so far? What stands out the most about Hong Kong is its demographics and the ability to leverage resources. Compared to Silicon Valley, Hong Kong is relatively small, however, jam-packed with people. Despite the small territory, it is able to pull together the necessary talent, investment, and the target market to create spectacular products and compete on a global level. Hong Kong has been very successful in adding value in different industries including consumer electronics, medical devices, industrial engineering, and manufacturing technology as a whole.   Exponent has an international presence covering all corners of the world. What is the importance of Asia for the company at a global level? The original goal of Exponent creating a footprint in Asia was to support the manufacturing operations of our US-based clients, which was why offices in both Shanghai and Hong Kong make a lot of sense. But over the years we also developed a very strong local network and have been supporting companies in Asia, who understand that in order to sell and market great products into the US, they have to meet a very strict set of rules and standards with respect to their manufacturing and engineering practices. Exponent has been most successful in helping these clients to ensure good quality, safe and reliable product design and manufacturing practices are consistently applied regardless of the location. Looking at Hong Kong specifically, what we do here is different from other Asian markets. We are able to offer a wider range of services that cover consumer products from more perspectives. Not only are we able to provide product design consultation, but we can also advise our clients from legal aspects, such as mergers and acquisitions, product liability, technical due diligence, and intellectual property (IP) matters. Only in Hong Kong have we been able to develop this versatile set of capabilities to highlight not only good manufacturing practices for products being sold in the US or Europe but also offering legal advice for our clients to make sure things go smoothly logistically. With over 50 years of experience in engineering consulting, we understand the types of issues that commonly occur in the US and can apply this in a proactive way here in Asia.   Where do you see the highest demand for your services coming from? Firstly, we specialize in the physical analysis of products, which stems from our historic service of failure analysis. We use laboratory analytical techniques to look in detail into what happens to a product to understand why it failed, but at the fundamental sciences of engineering level. This is much more than turning knobs and pressing buttons to solve a problem on the manufacturing line to make it go away temporarily; we want to understand the physical mechanism behind the failure so that the fix can be applied permanently. Secondly, we advise our legal clients on product liability, which is a mature topic in the US lead by a very consumer protective culture. However, this is an idea that is still relatively new for companies in Asia. In addition to helping them make quality and reliable products, it is also important to educate them on the consequences of what happens when something does not function properly, and the ways to mitigate these risks.

The part of our services that has really taken off these past several years is the intellectual property and cybersecurity space, especially in the banking and healthcare section in Hong Kong.