transmitCHINA.TALKS 2011 speaker:
// David Ben Kay - Chairman, Yuanfen~Flow
Over the 40 years since China first got in David’s blood, both he and China have experienced sea changes. David has been consistently focused on China since a night class in Chinese in 1971 while in high school in Denver, Colorado, and throughout his formal academic training at Brown University (AB, 1976), UC Berkeley, the Stanford Center in Taipei (1977-1980), Thunderbird School of International Management (MBA 1981) and then UCLA Law School (JD, 1986). David has been in Beijing for the past 22 years and was in Hongkong for the three years immediately prior to that. During his 15 years as a corporate lawyer, David assisted over 250 companies in setting up businesses in China and managed issues from a wide range of industries: aviation, automotive, energy, consumer products, finance, pharmaceuticals, high technology, media and communications. Among David’s largest and most interesting clients was Microsoft and in 2003, he had that rare opportunity for a lawyer in private practice to go “in-house” into a company he had known so well from the outside, having helped Microsoft set up its China operations in the early 90s and continuing to act as their outside counsel. From 2003 to 2005 David was Microsoft China’s General Counsel, heading up the Law and Corporate Affairs Group. In addition to managing all of Microsoft’s commercial and IPR related work, he was also in charge of the company’s government relations as well as their corporate social responsibility efforts in China. In 2005, David took on a position Steve Ballmer created called the “Piracy Czar” (aka General Manager, Genuine Software Initiative). David was Microsoft’s spokesman and “evangelist” for innovation and IPR protection and played a role in the Chinese government’s policy decision to encourage innovation. David left Microsoft in 2008 to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions. He converted his loft in Beijing’s 798 Art District into a new media art gallery: Yuanfen. With this additional experience as owner, manager, curator and “gallerist,” David has converged his experiences and skills to further evolve the Yuanfen platform into Yuanfen~Flow, a business incubator focused on launching globally minded companies in China. David believes that great entrepreneurs and great artists share a lot in common: they are driven to actualize their creative visions; they seek a means of sustaining and increasing the impact of their creations; and there are motivated by passion to truly innovate. Yuanfen~Flow strives to become a community where creative solutions are born and nurtured.
