Joyce Tay Zhi Yue
Contents
About Joyce
CCA: IT sub-comm at SMU Ventures.
Active member of SMU Extremist (SMUX). Participated in various overseas trekking expeditions. Scaling famous mountainous trails like the Hong Kong MacLehose Trail and Wuling Quadruple Mountains in Taiwan.
Logistics Director for AdRace 2013 (An overnight adventure race opened to the public)
Interest: I like nature, that is why i enjoyed trekking.
I also like jogging, cycling, reading, writing and meeting new people.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joycetz
Why TSM South Korea?
I have heard about TSM Korea since I was in year 2 and have wanted to join since then. No other TSM enticed me, not Europe, not America (I did not raise up my hand when Prof Ben did a poll in class on a TSM to America), only Korea did. Lol. Basically there are a lot of things about the Korean culture that attracted me. The most obvious ones are of course their fabulous kpop, food, fashion, heritage and oh-so-beautiful four season landscapes!
Delving deeper, I have many questions about how the young people in that country went into the journey of entrepreneurship. From what I know, Korea is generally still a patriarchal and conservative society; it must have been easier to join one of the conglomerates than to convince their parents to support their entrepreneurial decisions. Still, despite these, Korea has its fair bit of success stories especially in the aspect of technological innovations. It would really be great to be able to find out first-hand, how their company started, what was the vision they had in mind back then, and also the various challenges faced.
I also observed that Koreans are generally very hardworking people and they take great pride and integrity in their work, to the extent that a sloppy work done would be considered shameful. I noticed this during my 6 months stint at British American Tobacco (Singapore) before admitting into SMU (see pic below). There were many Koreans there, they were very nice and had great working attitudes (working till mid-night that kind). I have very good impressions of Koreans and would like to have the opportunity to interact and learn from them during the TSM trip.
Internship Opportunities
There are no ideal firms that I wish to join, but two companies came to my mind as I thought about this question. They are LG and Nexon. I used to really adore their products!
I still remember LG introduced many attractive and innovative phones, from the Chocolate phones to the Ice Cream phones, and then there was this really cool transparent phone. Back then, in terms of functionality, LG would not be able to compete with the big mobile players in the market. They seem to know that, and maybe that is why they made the sound decision of focusing their innovation efforts on the physical appearances of their phone. Thereby, they were then able to avoid direct competition with the big mobile players as their target audiences are the appearance conscious young crowd instead of the functionality conscious geek crowd. Though, their phones are not very impressive now, they are still a big player in home appliances so it would be a good experience to work there.
Nexon distributed many addictive massive multiplayer online role-playing games; Maple Story was one of them (though Wizet was the developer). When I was playing their games I used to wonder how did they conceptualize the entire game? What were the processes involved? There are so many aspects to think about, the characters, the story line, the setting, the ultimate goal, the progressive nature of everything (from levels to monsters to equipment etc), and most importantly how to make the game require effort but yet in a way that does not turn people off? Also how to successfully market it? Probably working there would answer some questions that I have.
Starting a business
I am interested in businesses that arises out of a need because i find it more purposeful.
Given the right resources (more of time and skills) and idea i hope to do my own business in future and i hope that the TSM experience would build onto the current knowledge that i have. Actually i have some business ideas that i have been thinking about but i feel that it lack concreteness and may be even unrealistic given the amount of resources (skill + time + money) that i have now. Probably prof, i can share it with you during the interview.
Past Experiences
SMU Ventures
I am interested in stuffs related to entrepreneurship and business ventures so i decided to join SMU ventures as a sub-comm member of the IT department. I hope to put the IT skills that i learn from SIS in SMU Ventures while at the same time to expose myself to whatever innovation and entrepreneurial experience that i can get from this platform.
Working at SC Consultancy
My mum have a very good friend who owns a small consultancy company providing consultancy and training services to companies in Singapore. During the holidays, i would helped to do some work there. Talking to my mum's friend helped me to understand a lot more about doing business in Singapore, attracting clients and staying profitable.
