How do you build a culture of innovation inside a 200-year-old conglomerate without tearing down what already exists? Yaniv sits down with Anthony Liu of Swire Properties to explore how New Ventures — Swire’s internal innovation pipeline — operates like a startup inside one of Asia’s most storied property groups, and how they co-founded Urban Lab, mainland China’s first PropTech corporate accelerator.

About Anthony Liu

Anthony Liu is the founder of New Ventures at Swire Properties, which sources and funds innovative tech solutions across 17 business units. He is also co-founder and board member of Urban Lab, China’s first PropTech corporate accelerator, launched with JLL and Ping An.

What We Cover

• Why innovation culture starts with accepting the culture that’s already there
• The three pain points: time, knowledge, and money
• New Ventures’ four-step process: Study, Source, Trial, Adopt
• What “internal product-market fit” means and how New Ventures achieves it
• The origin of Urban Lab: 12 startups, 3 months, 100% POC conversion rate

Timestamps

(00:00) Introduction and guest background
(02:30) Why innovation culture starts with what’s already there
(07:30) New Ventures’ four-step process
(15:45) Building trust over knowing the tech
(24:00) What is PropTech?
(28:30) Urban Lab: China’s first PropTech accelerator

Key Takeaways

1. Don’t fight the existing culture. Connect innovation to what people already care about — their KPIs, their promotions, their teams.
2. Remove the three blockers. Time, knowledge, and budget. Once you do, people are willing to try almost anything.
3. Real-world POCs beat lab experiments. Lab experiments give you data; real deployments give you buy-in and genuine learning.

Resources & Links Mentioned

• Swire Properties New Ventures — search “Swire Properties New Ventures”
• Urban Lab — China’s first PropTech accelerator (JLL + Swire + Ping An)
• Airlite Air-Purifying Paint: airlite.com

Where to Find Anthony Liu

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/anthony-liu-swire

Where to Find Yaniv Corem

Link in bio: sleek.bio/yanivcorem
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/yanivcorem

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