6^th Annual Edition

Keynote Session by Alvin Lee

Motivational Speaker, Author and Inventor

In his inimitably refreshing Singaporean style Alvin Lee, principal founder of Beautiful Minds, a corporate training organization, shared how he created history by turning a family project to one that won international awards.

First build castles in the air, and then build castles everywhere. If someone asks you to stop building castles in the air, just ignore them. I would like to tell you the story of my life and how we turned a family project into a product that achieved international awards.

I am sure all of us are driven by the need to continually support our families. But I also feel that it is not enough to provide financial support; it is important to give your family your time. One of the ways in which I achieved this is by building sandcastles with my children on the beach. But we found that there weren't enough toys or tools available to build sandcastles. Faced with multiple rejections from toy stores across the globe, I started an experiment aimed at spending quality time together with my children and decided to build the toys we needed.

These experiments evolved over the course of many years and reached a stage where I felt it was ready for mass production. This again wasn't an easy step as not many toy manufacturers were convinced about the market for such a sandcastle-building toy. Without accepting no for an answer, I persevered to find a company that was ready to give this model a try. This lead to the production of a toy set that went on to achieve the highest accolades at the New York Toy Fair by bagging the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio in 1997 which is said to be the Oscars of the US toy industry.

There are many lessons that I draw out of my interactions with multitudes of people during this journey and don't miss a chance to pass on the learnings. I am not convinced by the popular notions of innovation and believe that ad hoc incremental changes are not innovative if they do not have a holistic impact. I would like to emphasize on the importance of seeing differently, feeling differently, doing differently, and thinking differently. I feel it is not enough to just think out-of-the box; one also needs to take a step further and do things that are way beyond any box.

While it is true that this never-say-die attitude is just the way of life in Singapore, a country that has to make do with minimal natural resources, it is not too difficult to cultivate it either. I refuse to bear grudges against those that rejected me for I feel that those are the people who really put the 'rage' in 'encourage' for me. I used the force of their rejections to propel me further in my pursuit. Moreover, the first rule in my book Castles Can Fly is never to take any rejection personally as most are based on the lack of synergy in vision. And the second rule suggests that if at all the rejection was due to personal reasons, then one needs to go back to the first rule. I always like to look forward and never once thought that the world owes anyone a living.