#12 Monica Kang: Empowering Professionals & The Workforce Culture With Creativity
By Emily Pinlac-
This week, for the first installment of CompanyRoots in 2018, we decided to interview someone whose business approach is a little more on the creative side. Monica Kang of Innovator’s Box took an approach that is geared towards established professionals who are in need of ways to think of fresh, bold ideas that can make waves in the often stagnant pools of big business.
According to Kang, Innovator’s Box’s roots come from the core value of making empowerment easy. Despite the emphasis on creativity and innovation in the business world, focusing on these qualities is easier said than done. This led Kang to create Innovator’s Box in an effort to make innovation “more affordable and understandable” in order to remove the limitations that professionals often place around themselves. On her biggest influence that contributed towards the creation of Innovator’s Box, Kang says that her family was critical to convincing her to make the leap that would change her life. They taught her that “you regret what you don’t do” and pushed her to take risks, a sentiment that definitely holds true for any kind of business.
Another feat of Kang’s was the impressive lineup of awards that she has accumulated over the years. Winning the Women’s Empower Expo Award and being featured in the White House 2016 National Week of Making, Kang has definitely gotten her fair share of recognition. When we asked her to give the greatest factor towards these accolades, she said that patience and persistence were the qualities that got her the furthest. “You need a lot of hard work and diligence in order to obtain these qualities,” Kang says, and claims that these concepts are more important than connections and relationship building, since going outside of your comfort zone is what is most likely to distinguish you from others the fastest. Another quality that Kang claims to be important for success is curiosity, an attribute that she credited with helping her with the creation of Innovator’s Box. Since the very beginning of the company, Kang has been determined to help people by empowering them with curiosity.
The final question we asked her was, as always, concerning her advice to the next generation of entrepreneurs. Her response was, “Always try to do things that can make you curious…curiosity gives a student the passion to learn”. She also emphasized the importance of being an explorer and doing different things that utilize your strengths and keep you curious. Constantly trying new things can expose you to what you could become and offer plenty of opportunities for reflection and growth into your next venture.