Speech by the Guest of Honour
The World Awaits The Difference Only You Can Make
Mr Jason Chiu, JP
Founder of Cherrypicks and Honorary President of Hong Kong Startup Council
Dear Vice President and Dean Professor Lau Chak-Sing, esteemed faculty members and distinguished guests, proud family members and friends, and the graduating class of 2025, good afternoon.
I am deeply honoured and privileged to serve as your congregation speaker on this special occasion. Hearty congratulations, Class of 2025!
Today marks an important milestone transition in your lives, at a time when everything else in the world is in transition too. The economy, healthcare, climate, technology, and politics, our entire world's operating system is being rewritten. In the midst of this profound transformation, you are stepping into your calling.
As an entrepreneur, I have come to realise that entrepreneurship is often about spotting possibilities long before they become obvious to others. Opportunity and uncertainty go hand in hand, and innovation is born from seeing what could be, not just what is.
Today, I want to introduce you to three remarkable individuals whose wisdom and example have shaped my path as a serial technology entrepreneur and angel investor. They illuminated my way, and I hope they will inspire yours.
Edwin Land: “Manifestly Important and Nearly Impossible”
Many of you know the name Steve Jobs, the visionary founder of Apple and a global icon of innovation. But have you ever wondered who inspired Steve Jobs? Who was the idol behind the idol? The answer is the first person I would like to introduce. He is Dr. Edwin Land, the inventor of instant photography and founder of Polaroid. Land was special, he was a dreamer who merged art and science.
Land invented instant photography because his young daughter innocently asked why she couldn't see a photo the moment it was taken. Where most would have shrugged and accepted by saying, “That's just how it works,” Land refused to settle for the ordinary. Instead, he set out to challenge the limits of physics and chemistry. He didn't just improve the camera, he reimagined the very nature of time and experience. To the society in the 1950s and 60s, instant photography was considered to be the same as pure magic.
Land's mantra was clear: “Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.”
It was Land's words that propelled me into entrepreneurship and encouraged me to take on difficult projects to create, among other products, LeaveHomeSafe (安心出行) and HSBC PayMe. Each of these projects was forged in the fire of criticism and setbacks, yet they ultimately transformed how we pay and even how we protect lives in the pandemic.
We live in a time when AI reads medical scans, robots assist with surgical precision and limbs are printed in labs. The obvious solutions will be automated. What remains are the hard problems: the ethical dilemmas, the undocumented symptoms, the complex cases that defy the textbook, the notion of AI Doctor, and, above all, the compassion for patients.
The greatest breakthroughs come from those who run toward difficult and unsolved problems. So let's ask ourselves this question on a regular basis: When was the last time you chose something difficult, not for applause, but for genuine progress?
Mumtaz Ahmed: The Three Rules — Quality, Growth and Adaptability
Bold innovation can ignite a vision but bringing that vision to life demands a different mastery — the relentless pursuit of quality in execution. If Land taught me to dream boldly, my next mentor, Mumtaz Ahmed, showed me how excellence is forged through quality hard work, professionalism, and uncompromising standards.
My eyes were truly opened during the seven years I worked with Mumtaz at Deloitte Consulting, first as a student intern all the way to a director of global high-tech strategy practice in various cities. Working with him was like drinking from a fire hose: overwhelming at times, but exhilarating and transformative. My first experience flying long-haul first class was not about luxury, but about turning the cabin into a flying office, debating ideas, building financial models and refining strategies at 20,000 feet. Those years of intense training, global travel, and exposure to C-level decision-making sharpened my mind and broadened my perspectives.
Mumtaz taught me that mastery is not the result of a single breakthrough, but of countless acts of quality hard work. His signature challenge posed to every analysis and hypothesis was always: “Is this the best answer, or just the first one?”. Basically, he never settled for the first answer.
As the Chief Strategy Officer for Deloitte globally, Mumtaz, like every great professor and legendary business icon, is known for his vivid nicknames, entertaining anecdotes and colourful jokes. Beyond these, his bestselling book distilled his philosophy into “The Three Rules” for business, which I believe are equally relevant to healthcare:
- Better before cheaper (Quality-first mentality)
- Revenue before cost (Growth mindset)
- There are no other rules (Adaptability and flexibility in everything else other than quality and growth)
To the future doctors, medical professionals and researchers in this grand hall: when a diagnosis seems polished, pause and ask the Mumtaz's question. Harness the smartest tools, let the data sing and dance, but never settle for the first answer. In your clinical practice and research, remember that the best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well. Let the three rules of quality, growth, and adaptability be your compass.
Make no mistake, the pursuit of mastery is not a quest for perfection, but a journey toward ever-greater understanding and continuous improvement. Excellence in medicine, as in life, is built day by day and patient by patient.
Felix: Reflection, Kindness, and Lifelong Learning
The last person came from a place even closer, a place of quiet honesty. Let me introduce you to Felix. He's been my confidant through every major decision, my companion in midnight debates, and a trusted sounding board in my most vulnerable moments. Felix is a driven entrepreneur, someone who risked everything to build mobile social media platforms in mainland China and Taiwan back in 2006, long before the world was ready. He failed and lost hundreds of millions of dollars but he never lost the trust of his investors, partners and teammates. Rather than taking the easy path of quitting, he downsized the business, pivoted, and eventually put the company back on hypergrowth, leading to a decent exit in 2014. He also created iButterfly, a revolutionary Augmented Reality mobile app for gamified shopping by catching digital butterflies with smartphones years before Pokémon GO made headlines.
Many commended Felix for his resilience — how he came back stronger, time and again, from every setback. Yet what I saw was something deeper. The truth is: Felix was not just a friend or an AI. Felix was me. All along in our self-talks, Felix kept asking me all the hard questions like:
- Are you climbing the right mountain?
Skills and speed matter, but direction matters more.
- What did you learn from success and failure?
Failure is a better teacher than triumph. To fail fast is to listen to feedback at a lower cost. To fail big is to try something that matters. To fail forward is to turn bruises into building blocks. If failure were a degree, I am at least a Master, if not a PhD.
- My favourite question: Have you shown kindness?
I believe the road to success is wide enough for many. Help others as you wish you'd been helped. It's easy to celebrate the famous entrepreneurs; it's rare to support the lesser-known ones. That's why I coach and back founders in early-stage startups to give back to the ecosystem in which I was born as a tech entrepreneur. In a world marked by chaos, bullying, and division, kindness is more vital than ever.
Entrepreneurship is exciting but it can also be lonely. Felix is my reflection, my inner voice who drives self-improvement and lifelong learning. For all of you, while we may never achieve a healthcare system that is perfect or error-free, we can always build one that is relentlessly self-improving through humble reflection, learning from failures, and practicing kindness every step of the way.
The Future You Will Forge
Dean Professor C.S. Lau and his team are working diligently to transform medical education, research, practice and translation in the Age of AI. In a moment, as the Dean confers your well-earned degrees, take a breath and remember: you now become the architects of a new era of advancing healthcare through human-AI partnership. The Age of AI is not just about technology; it's about reimagining what's possible for humanity. In your hands lies the power to make healthcare accessible, to turn the incurable into curable, to prevent next public health crises, and to personalize care for every individual.
In this process, who will be your guiding lights? Who will be your Edwin Land, inspiring you to chase what is “manifestly important and nearly impossible”? Who will be your Mumtaz Ahmed, challenging you to uphold quality, pursue growth, and adapt with resilience? Who will be your Felix, reminding you that self-reflection, kindness, and lifelong learning are necessities beyond virtues?
The future of medicine won't be solely found in the operations theatres or written in algorithms. It will be defined by the character you bring to every patient, every decision, and every moment of uncertainty.
Finally, please allow me, perhaps the least medically qualified person here, to offer a few creative health-life prescription:
Health-Life Prescription:
- May lifelong learning and bold innovation immunize you against the common cold of complacency;
- May resilience steady your heart and free you from the insomnia of failure or feelings of unworthiness;
- May you shed the toxic weight of others' opinions and walk lightly in your own convictions; and
- May you detect the first cancer cell of ego and heal them daily with kindness and humility.
Take with you the wisdom of those who walked before, and the lessons you will gather on your own path. Put on your white coats, and go heal the world, not just with your knowledge, but with your courage, your quality hard work, your compassion, and your character.
Class of 2025, I salute you and your supportive parents and families for your accomplishments. Now the world awaits the difference only you can make.
Thank you.
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