#89- Founder of Trip.Com on The Most Existential Challenge Of Our Time - James Liang

What this episode covers

Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with James Liang. James Liang is the co-founder and executive chairman of Trip.com Group, the online travel company he helped launch in 1999 as Ctrip and built into one of the world's largest travel platforms, listed on Nasdaq and operating in more than forty countries. A gifted student who entered Fudan University at fifteen before taking a master's in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he served as Trip.com's chief executive from 2000 to 2006, and then made an unusual move: he stepped back at the height of the company's success to pursue a PhD in economics at Stanford.That second career reshaped him into one of Asia's most prominent voices on demography and innovation. Now a research professor of economics at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management and a co-founder of the Yuwa Population Research Institute, Liang has published in journals including Nature and The Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has written widely on population, education, and entrepreneurship. His books include The Demographics of Innovation and, most recently, Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI.This conversation matters because Liang makes the case that population and youth are the true drivers of the innovation race — that ageing societies risk surrendering their dynamism and, ultimately, their control over AI. Few can argue that thesis from the vantage point of a founder, an economist, and a demographer at onceTIMESTAMPS:0:00 Trailer0:53 Introduction1:29 Why Travel Beat China's Infrastructure Gap3:41 Surviving The Gladiator Economy6:01 Service As The Real Moat10:35 Go Global, Don't Diversify13:36 Why He Quit At The Top For A PhD16:54 Why Only A Founder Could Save It21:15 Working From Home Before COVID25:57 The Innovationism Formula29:31 Why Ageing Kills Innovation32:41 The Exam System That Broke Fertility35:49 Spend Five Per Cent On The Young44:46 What Singapore Keeps Getting Wrong50:16 The Forgotten Case For A Big Family53:56 Why Big Countries Win The Innovation Race56:55 US vs China: Competition Or War?1:00:34 Singapore's One Missing Variable1:03:06 Why AI Makes Innovationism Urgent1:10:36 ClosingThis is the 89th episode Of The Front Row PodcastA huge thank you to our amazing Front Row Friends for supporting and advancing the podcast: @marinama2728@deborahchoi1455@annkowong@yewchoutan5876Full transcripts of episodes can be found here: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/Feel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: [email protected] access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

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