About
Adam Bell.
I have worked right across business, marketing and technology — which is why I read a technology problem as a business problem first. Innov8 has been doing exactly that for Hong Kong businesses since 2002.
I have founded and run businesses of my own, so I have signed the invoices as well as sent them. Roughly sixty businesses worked with since 2002, across sixteen sectors.
Strategy through to build, if that is what a job needs — the plan and then the working system, from the same person rather than handed to somebody else halfway. AI, FileMaker and custom databases, web applications, and integrations with whatever you are already running.
I also work with startups on AI and technology strategy, research and getting from an idea to something that actually runs.
I take on a small number of clients at a time. That is deliberate — it is the only way the work stays senior and the measure stays business results rather than technology delivered.
Interim CIO to a contracting group. Document and compliance systems on The Venetian Macao, through Hsin Chong Engineering (Macau). Secure data rooms for capital and advisory firms. A warehouse management system that took picking errors down by 99%. An AI tender checker. And a great many systems that were older than the people running them.
Egnyte® Value-Added Reseller — licensing, migration, configuration, training and support from the same person who understood the problem.
What I am good at is the thing that has already gone wrong, the thing that should work better than it does, and the thing you have not started yet and want a straight opinion on.
What I am not is a helpdesk, a firewall specialist, or a licensed adviser of any kind. For those I bring in an associate or refer you on.
I work with the owner or the board directly. Bounded engagements, agreed in writing, with an end date.
Based in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong. In person here; remote and fractional across Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and the mainland. Most engagements run remotely, and are better for it.
In detail
What I actually do
Narrative is easy to write and hard to check. So here is the list — the work I take on now, in the words you would use to ask for it.
Recover and stabilise
- Failed server, database or application recovery
- Cleaning up and hardening after an incident
- Backup and continuity designed, and then actually tested
- Legacy applications assessed — repair, wrap, migrate or replace
- Systems nobody left in the business understands, documented
Run and improve
- Interim and part-time technology leadership
- IT cost and licence reviews, and what to cancel
- Vendor selection, tendering, and holding them to the quote
- Phased server and infrastructure upgrades, delivered out of hours
- Network review, re-segmentation and fault-finding
- Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace administration and migration
Documents and information
- Document control review for contractors, with written findings
- Egnyte® licensing, migration, configuration and training
- Common data environment set up so the rules are enforced, not requested
- Drawing, submittal, variation and transmittal registers
- Secure data rooms for a raise, a sale, a board or a dispute
Design and build
- AI document and tender review systems
- FileMaker and custom database applications
- Web applications and internal tools
- Workflow automation and integration between systems that do not talk
- Reporting a director will actually read
Advise
- Technology strategy and a roadmap with costs against it
- Where AI pays in your business, and where it does not yet
- AI and technology strategy and research for startups
- An independent second opinion before you commit the money
Why that list is not longer. Over two decades I have done a good deal more than this. But everything I have ever touched is not the same as what I should be selling you today, and a list that says everything tells you nothing.
If what you need is not on it, I will either bring in someone from the associate network and stay accountable for the result, or tell you plainly that you want a different firm. There is no helpdesk here, no 24/7 desk, and I am not a firewall specialist or a licensed adviser of any kind.
Platform partners
Experience
Four technology eras, and the wreckage each one left behind.
PC and client-server. Then the web. Then cloud. Now AI. I have delivered through all four, which mostly means I have cleaned up after all four.
What that means in practice
I can read a system built in 2009 as easily as one built last year, and I am not frightened of either. That combination is rarer than it should be — the people who understand the old systems have mostly retired, and the people selling AI have mostly never seen one.
It also means I have watched four waves of vendors promise the same things. I am difficult to sell to, which is useful when I am buying on your behalf.
Where I have worked
Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and the wider ASEAN region, with engagements reaching the UK and Dubai.
Sectors: construction and engineering, hospitality and gaming, logistics, professional services, property, retail, media and technology.
The associate network
One senior head, and specialists behind him.
One senior point of contact, from first call to handover. The person who scopes the work is the person who does it and the person you ring afterwards.
When a job needs a specialist, I bring one in from a network built over two decades: security and firewalls, networks and infrastructure, software development, document control, finance and payments systems, and construction-specific expertise.
These are people I have worked with repeatedly and would use on my own business. I stay accountable for the outcome either way — you are not handed off to a stranger and left to manage them yourself.
It means a two-person job and a ten-person job both get run properly, without me pretending to be an agency or you paying for a bench you do not need.
How I work
-
We agree what the problem actually is
Usually different from what it looked like at the start. A quick call is normally enough to tell.
-
Scope, price and outcome in writing
Before anything begins. Fixed fee, no hourly billing, no open-ended retainer.
-
I do the work
Bringing in an associate where the job genuinely needs one, and staying accountable for the result.
-
You get something your people can run
If a job turns out to be different from what we scoped, we stop and re-scope rather than run up a bill.
Worth a conversation?
A quick call, no charge, and I will tell you honestly whether this is something I should be doing.