A Traveler’s Around-the-World Journey into E-commerce

About a week ago I received an unusual message from a friend of a friend, some guy named Thibaud Clément who was apparently coming to Japan in order to find out more about e-commerce here. It certainly seemed like a long way to travel for a research project, so I was curious to meet up and hear more about what I thought sounded like a pretty strange plan.

When I met Thibaud in here in Tokyo yesterday, I found that his travel plan was acually far greater in scope that than I originally thought. His trip even has a name: The Dodeqa Project. What sounded like a covert spy operation is actually, Thibaud explains, an extensive world tour with a focus on his own personal digital development, including learning more about how e-commerce works:

The word Dodeqa is inspired by the Twelve Labours of Hercules, also called in Greek the Dodekathlon: 12 months, 12 cities, 12 objectives, these are my labours! So, I am going to leave France again, travel around the world and develop the skills I need to eventually build a strong entrepreneurship project. From November 2011 to October 2012, I will spend one months in each of the 12 following cities: Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Sydney, Melbourne, San francisco, New York City, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo.

Thibaud’s 12 wide-ranging objectives are listed on his site, including everything from photography to programming; from learning Chinese to kite boarding. But his e-commerce fetish is in full effect already, having conducted a few interviews that might be of interest to our readers:

• Focus point about eCommerce in China with Hacène Taibi
• Inside BysoftChina with Florian Legendre
• Starting an eCommerce company in China, with Nicolas Berbigier
• Focus On eCommerce In South Korea With Olivier Mouroux, CEO of Asiance
• Expand your eCommerce business to China, with Frank Lavin

If you follow our blog, Thibaud’s plan might sound somewhat familiar. Last year we told you about the equally adventuresome Yuki Naruse, who also set out on a world tour (his was called The Nomad Project) to learn about entrepreneurship and ‘nomad workers’ in various cities.

Here at PO, we really admire efforts like these to try to bridge East and West, since it’s essentially one of our goals as well in our daily reporting on technology in Asia. I wish I had more time to chat with Thibaud before he sets of to his next city, Hong Kong. But I hope that our readers down there, and in other countries on his route, might get in touch and help him out as he goes. We certainly wish him bon voyage!