‘Have the courage to fail and the humility to succeed’ – ‘Inside Out’ author So-Young Kang

So-Young Kang was a speaker at YourStory’s TechSparks 2015 startup conference and showcase (see interview). She is author of Inside Out: Conversations about Leadership and Innovation in a New Global Economy. She is also a serial entrepreneur, as Founder and Catalyst at Awaken Group, a multi-disciplinary Transformation Design (TD) firm, and Co-founder and CEO of Gnowbe, a mobile learning app that builds learning journeys for professionals.

In this video chat, So-Young shares her views on innovator values, mobile micro-learning, her personal startup journeys, and her vision of connecting and inspiring young aspiring entrepreneurs. She is of Korean origin (and speaks fluent Korean), grew up in the US, and has worked extensively in Japan and Singapore.

While putting together research reports and white papers on innovation, she realised that innovators’

success comes not just from a methodology or framework, but inner values and philosophies. This accidental discovery led her to change tack and expand her research focus into a full book on the inside-out transformation of innovators – hence the title of the book, Inside Out.In keeping with the times, she has also launched a mobile app called Gnowbe. It leverages the micro-learning model to deliver educational content for aspiring leaders on topics as diverse as agile development to working with millennials.

The Young Professionals’ Group (YPG), a non-profit organisaiton she launched in 2000, now has a Delhi chapter. It is aimed at helping students achieve their professional dreams.

“I am inspired and energised by Indian entrepreneurship,” she said, during her first visit to India for TechSparks, where she spoke on a panel on ed-tech transformation. Success comes when you learn from your mistakes, she says. “Have the courage to fail and the humility to succeed,” So-Young advises the entrepreneurs in our audience.