On the 19th of November, 2015, nine of the CITO representatives visited the Taiwanese company Noodoe in Taipei. We met with the founder of Noodoe, John Wang, who is the former Chief Marketing Officer of HTC with diplomas from both Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Business School. Mr. Wang explained how HTC was able to ride on Apple’s success and how they were able to become Apple’s counter story.
Later on, John left HTC together with some colleagues to start Noodoe. To this date, the company has two products – a block used in restaurants and a watch with no features. The block is called Noodoe Service Block and consists of five icons – Water, Service, Next course, Check and Good service. The customer will simply flip the block to the appropriate side and the waiter will get notified through the Noodoe watch. This decreases the waiting time for the customers and raises the table turnover for the restaurants.
The second product is the watch. The Apple watch offers all kinds of apps and corresponding iPhone software. On the other, Noodoe sells its watches completely blank for users to customize. For example, an athlete has three different symbols for breakfast, lunch and dinner on his watch, and gets notified whenever it is time for the specific meal. He doesn’t really care about what time it is, only when to eat. This watch enables you to express yourself in a unique way and pushes “the world to think a little more”.
Mr. Wang offered an enormously interesting and motivating visit. The CITO representatives were very inspired and are satisfied to have learned about his take on innovation and success.