The 2016 World Happiness Report, published by the United Nations in March 2016, ranked Hong Kong 75th among 157 countries and territories. Hong Kong’s Happiness ranking sinks from 46th in the first survey published in 2012, to 64th in 2013, 72th in 2014 and now 75th.  Hong Kong people become sadder year by year, why? Is there any solution to reach happiness? “Solve for Happy” Workshop may provide you with an answer.

Workshop is hosted by Mr Mo Gawdat, Vice President of Business Innovation, X (Formerly Google[x]). Mo is responsible for designing and deploying at scale business and partnership models for projects at Google[x], a ‘moonshot factory’ at Google that applies audacious thinking and technology to big global problems.

Mo joined Google in 2007 to establish and grow Google’s business in over fifty countries in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.  Before joining Google, Mo’s twenty-five year global business career included engineering, sales and management roles at IBM, NCR and BAT. Mo is also a serial entrepreneur having started more than fifteen businesses in his career and continues to serve as a board member for several numerous startups and government technology and innovation boards in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The global nature of his work requires Mo to speak multiple languages including Arabic, German, Turkish and Russian.

Mo seems to have it all, but unfortunately lost his son Ali unexpectedly and suddenly in the summer of 2014. Yet, in the face of tragedy, he and his family maintained a steady state of peaceful happiness, purpose and joy. This steady state was possible with the help of a simple equation, developed by Mo as he traveled through emerging markets in Africa, Middle East, Central Europe and Asia to set up half of Google’s worldwide operations in the past decade.

After this tragedy, Mo has started “Solve for Happy” Project to spread out his special insight of staying with happiness in whatever situations. 

“Solve for Happy” Workshop was held at HKUST, for the first time in Hong Kong, on 19 March 2016. It gathered over 100 participants who were university staff, professors, business leaders, undergraduate, master’s degree or PhD students and alumni. In the morning session, Mo explained the Truth about Happiness and how illusions of thought, self, knowledge, time, control and fear affected people’s emotion status. In the afternoon, he further elaborated why brain failed in handling sadness and the ultimate way of maintaining happiness. Participants experienced a wonderful journey in this one-day interactive workshop.  They got a chance to explore the scientific reasons for one’s suffering through a series of design thinking and empathy inspired activities and steps towards reaching a state of uninterrupted happiness which is a brand new prospective of understanding “happy”. Just as Mo says “Happiness is our default state, it’s the thought that makes us unhappy.”  If you are also interested in following Mo to step into the truth of happiness, you may visit the facebook page of Solve for Happy.