Nu Advisory had a wonderful chance to support Kinuko Masaki in her one day stay in VN this Nov. BizWomen Mag had a privilege to organize an exclusive interview which was also the very first exposure of Kinu to the press.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS HAS HERDS OF BIRDS THAT SING
Kinu outstanding profile with explanations for local to easy to understand her high achievements.
After 20 years of study, research and teaching and speech giving, she co founded her start up 2 years now in San Francisco. With the revolution mission of the hearing industry, their tiny, pretty yet powerful “SmartEar” has 3 hi-tech platforms in one product: own built device, software and AI platforms.
While she was excitingly sharing numerous of “self records” that may not well interested by readers of BizWoman Mag, such as she used to be the only female at AI of MIT, the first and only student of the dean professor, CEO of the “real men industry and company” we we more interested in all time fashion women’s matter: family. With her allowance to talk and “investigate” her super family, we were much more amazed and surprised that we could have expected.
The whole Japanese family emigrated to USA when Kinu was 6, the “PhD family” has the “rocket platform” in the form of the extraordinary woman, a 1940 born, doctorate in one of the rare and strange fields of the time: Russian History. Her sister who is 1y younger than herself followed her footsteps in top USA schools. The father, the man that was not a result of an “arrangement marriage” which was quite a fashion of the time, is an honored PhD in electronic computer science.
INNOVATION IS TO HELP PROBLEMS SOLVED
With the background of biomedical, stem cell and other hi tech deep understanding, she contributed in the help for hearing disable people, both born with the diseases or occurred via accident or due to old-age. Unfortunately for those groups of people, their right to learn is dismissed as a disadvantage of hearing, an effective way of communication. One of the main sources of the curable problem which remains unsolved is that the hearing aid devices make them shy to others for their disabilities, topping up to their “existing painful” of being disabled. Such problems can be easily solved with an up-to-date hearing device that is as cool as wearing good glasses make one seem more beautiful or intelligence. A future for hearing device may follow a good track of the eyeglass industry.
The human side of the product and solutions open up a new market or a brand new industry, maybe not precisely named, rather than the available sub industry of “fashionable ear phones”. Yet the Revolution of the Ears market has the potential size as big as 1b children in preventing loosing hearing ability as an effect of too loud music. Its main function is to help connect people thru devices in a “more people” way. We won’t tap the screen, the information in the form of voice simply just pours into our ears. Moving in HCM for an example, would be safer, for we won’t need to stop by to check the screen. The messages will be delivered into our ears, instead, no matter what languages we use: Eng, CN, VN. The device heads to a “hands off” future, existence of touch, swipe, type,… would be historical. We would be therefore more human as we would be talking to each other rather than texting ourselves.
FROM FRIGHTENING TO LOVING
It is so strangely normal that most women are scared of the machines as if they are monsters. Kinu shares this feeling and the fact that women are just the minority in tech schools, and that we are born equal. “Our brains are exactly the same, so let’s give up prejudice on gender. We should learn how to use our brains instead, it has so far consumed only 5-10% given capacity”.
Be brave, be determined and let the learning opportunity meet up with you. Kinu revealed how excited it was when she could leave her beloved world of the labs and machines to do the business: meeting, exchanging ideas with real people! Immediately she is recharged. She feels this is the real world, real life: the research results are just another step to be in-used by human. The life of endurable 20 glorious straight years of “man vs machine” (research- study- lecture giving) is turning to the stage of “man vs lives” (gathering- exchanging- explaining- listening- applying) which is more human and of course more challenging.
THE GATE TO WALK THRU
We happily shared the “joyce of working with real men” to her, and our last question was, “How biz woman who are not born technically friendly (i.e. not have tech background) to catch up, cope with, take ownership and take lead by technolgy advancement and with efficiency??”
| Tech is not a trend, it’s a must. It is just like an open gate. |
It seemed not a good question as she did not find any problem to be solved. Biz women will have to use the hi-technologies and innovations to take off their biz to a new level. “Tech is not a trend, it’s a must. It is just like an open gate. I’ve been thru that gate from the other side (tech) to this side (biz). All you have to do is to walk reversely. Just let the tech open the gate. There you off to the new brighter world.”
Nguyen Thuy Hoang Yen
(*) Nu Advisory: self introduction
(**) Profile: http://bit.ly/2gMuum2
(***) Source: http://bit.ly/2fT018l
