Dan joined ?What If! in 2000 after he'd worked with us as a client and thought "Hmm...that looks like fun". He grew up in P&G and Sara Lee working on brands like Radox, Matey, Pantene and Olay and joined ?What If! to further pursue his passion for ideas and innovation. He has since worked on everything from diesel to spot creams to gas to phones to crisps.

Dan is now leading our Shanghai adventure and struggling to learn as much Mandarin as he can.

The following is a transcript of this interview:

Entrepreneur Magazine presents, the China Business Show; Secrets of doing business in China.

CHRISTINE LU: Innovations, the definition of it describes a new idea or method; Basically, a new way of doing things. Well, what if you are working in a country where the emphasis remains much focused on productivity rather then creativity? But what if I told you there was a company out there determined to change all that? What if I introduced you to Dan Goldstone, the Director of ?What If !Innovation’s Shanghai branch? A company, with over 230 employees across offices world wide such as: London, Manchester, Sydney, New York, and Shanghai. Hi Dan! Right off the bat, ??What if! Innovations client roster reads like a whose who of corporate business. Unilever, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, Nestle, British Airways, etc., I was on the website the other day, you guys coined the phrase, “You are the world’s largest independent innovation company.” Okay, what exactly does that mean?

DAN GOLDSTONE: Hi, how are you? What does that mean? Well, basically it means that we focus only on doing innovation, which means in practice, which means we help our clients come up with new ideas. We help our clients learn the tools and techniques of doing great innovation for themselves; and we also help our clients restructure themselves so that they can have a bigger impact on innovation within their business.

CHRISTINE LU: Interesting… And in regards to your branch in Shanghai, ?What If! Just recently just established itself in China; Looking at the other offices outside of London, where you guys are based; this is your first venture into a non-English speaking market, correct?

DAN GOLDSTONE: That‘s right. Yes.

CHRISTINE LU: So, I’m always interested to know why the decision to enter China, and why Shanghai first?

DAN GOLDSTONE: I guess the answer is really, really simple. What if! has been growing really quite nicely, both in its home base in the U.K. and also in the other offices in Sydney and New York as you mentioned. But as we looked to grow our business and also as we looked to try and service our clients better, it was really obvious for us that China was a must have place in terms of opening up our next office our next office. Our clients were doing a lot of business out here, and they were asking us for help. We were spending a lot of time on planes flying backwards and forwards.

CHRISTINE LU: Without a local presence?

CHRISTINE LU: Without a local presence, yes, absolutely. And then we thought, well this is just getting stupid, so we opened up an office out there.

CHRISTINE LU: And expensive I imagine.

DAN GOLDSTONE: Well, that’s true as well.

CHRISTINE LU: Okay, so you know what’s interesting? You’re saying a lot of the initial work you did in China was related to companies that you already had accounts with. I guess in your other cities or in London. How long did it take you to start acquiring after setting up offices – start acquiring local clients on your own?

DAN GOLDSTONE: It took us a good few months. It is quite difficult when you are setting up a brand new business in a very different type of culture or a different type of environment which obviously China is for us. As you can tell, I am originally from the U.K. so minority Chinese is limited. But one of the first things we did, was we went about acquiring both local language skills and people in the team who had a really good local insight, which enabled us to do our work better. So what we tried to do is we try to combine a level of real local insight and local touch together with the global innovation expertise from other ?What if! Offices and trying to get that combination right is not always easy.

CHRISTINE LU: It takes time.

DAN GOLDSTONE: But that’s exactly what we are trying to do now. Innovations in China are different, it’s tough and it’s different but it’s a lot of fun.

CHRISTINE LU: That’s an interesting point, but I noticed that one of the services you offer are training programs, correct? And that according to the site you it says that you increase the innovative skills of talent particularly around creativity and insight; so, basically helping to empower employees in China to become more innovated. That sounds simple when we both say it and talk about it, but when you are dealing with the culture that believes that (you know the phase) “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down first.” I’ve been in situations when I was head of my marketing department there. It used to be like pulling teeth trying to get people to come up with an idea that was different from mine. And so what I found interesting is that in those training programs do you find it’s more of a challenge then you are accustomed to in other markets and do you feel as though you have to change and adapt your current training programs that you have in other cities to factor this cultural difference in?

DAN GOLDSTONE: Yes, all of those are right. We do need to adapt small. So much so we haven’t actually opened a live training business on the ground here in China yet, because of those challenges. We are looking to do that over the next 6 to 12 months and the reason is because getting that adaptation right is something that is obviously a big priority for us. So what we are doing is we are making sure we get that right first before jumping in with two feet. And it is hard finding a way to overcome language and cultural issues is definitely a challenge. But what we are doing is we are trying and we’re seeing how we can find a way to make it work and the flip side is that there is such a huge thirst for knowledge here in China. I’m sitting here in Shanghai now and it’s the dawn of a new day and I know absolutely categorically that all of our clients are desperately finding new ways to grow their business.

CHRISTINE LU: Because of the competition I imagine too.

DAN GOLDSTONE: Because of the competition; also just because it’s China there is an energy and a thirst for growth their which I’ve never seen anywhere else. People are really, really keen to learn new skills. That’s something which to be honest, has really pleasantly surprised me - the thirst of knowledge of our Chinese clients out here is greater than anywhere else I’ve ever seen in the world.

CHRISTINE LU: And the openness of new ideas, new ways of doing things. They are very receptive to that also.

DAN GOLDSTONE: Yes, I think that’s definitely true, although I think it is quite difficult because as I said there is a very set way of doing things in China. In terms of how businesses run and also how people think. There is a cultural way the people approach business challenges, which has worked for a long time and the trick is to try and combine new skills with the tried and trusted ways of doing things out here in a way that will grow business.

CHRISTINE LU: Interesting… So, in Shanghai alone in your first year, I understand, you have already had a wide range of projects with clients from anywhere from Fortune 500 companies, the top players in the FMCG (Fast moving consumer goods) industry to even start ups. Can you give us an example, just for those who aren’t familiar with ?What if! Innovation Company. Just an example case study for Shanghai or what you’ve done recently that is making an impact for those clients?

DAN GOLDSTONE: Sure. We recently worked with a large car manufacturer and the challenge there was to really try and understand what the future is of the car market in China? How can we spot some interesting opportunities for them to grow their business in the next three to five years? So what we did was (it sounds really silly) but we went out driving and one of the big principles of the approach that we take around a perfect work is that we really try to uncover new and interesting consumer insights; So, the reasons why people are currently doing what their doing. I’m sure that all of your listeners have heard of focus groups and traditional research techniques that uncover insights, but actually what we do is we use some of those tools as well, but also we go to different places and we ask different questions to uncover new and different insights which can really help us go “ahhhhh, that’s interesting!” and when you get that “Uhhuh” moment, that’s when you know that you’ve got something that can really lead you to a different place. So what we did was that we went out driving with people and we filmed them with video cameras to really get a clear understanding about how they feel and how they think about driving their cars. We also asked them to switch into different cars. If they drove small cars we got them to drive big cars if they drove big cars we got them to drive small cars to really understand the insight around for why and how they feel when they drive their current car and the best way to do that was to take them out of their current cars and try something different.

CHRISTINE LU: We’re running out of time here gosh the time goes so fast! So basically in summary you are going beyond what we are use to in terms of focus groups and such and you are just hitting the ground and running with – I’m imaging you sitting in a group of your own and thinking what new way can we get to this client and come up with a new idea?

DAN GOLDSTONE: Exactly.

CHRISTINE LU: Interesting…

DAN GOLDSTONE: We do this in a very Entrepreneur way. We really believe that sometimes you just have to try something and sometimes it will work, great. Sometimes it won’t work, okay fine! So we take it and we try it again. That’s enough of an approach of any successful company in China. Things will go wrong for you. You need to take a very entrepreneurial attitude and just try to do things differently.

CHRISTINE LU: With that we are out of time for this segment. Dan thanks so much for taking time to share your insights with us. If you would like to know more about ?What if! Innovation you can visit there website at: WhatifInnovation.com

DAN GOLDSTONE: That’s right.

CHRISTINE LU: Right

DAN GOLDSTONE: Great.

CHRISTINE LU: Up next we have Amena Schlaikjer a Project Driver at ?What if! Innovation , whose own experience embodies the entrepreneurial spirit. Stay tune because if you don’t’ know what a half pat is, you’re about to find out. Stay tuned! I’m Christine Lu.