Belkin founder and CEO Chet Pipkin started out making cable assemblies in his parents' garage as a solution to the disconnect between consumer electronic products back in the 1980s. The company has since evolved into a US$1 billion business offering a diverse and extensive range of innovations to help integrate our electronics into the way we live. Pipkin speaks to Jacqueline Toyad about building the business and his desire to ensure that technology exists to serve people and never the other way around.

WHERE bad habits are concerned, Chet Pipkin will only confess to one — people watching. He cannot help himself. It's part of his nature, he says.

"I think it has always been a part of me, to really focus on people. It's just the way I'm wired," he remarks. "Some people are really fast runners, some people can throw a ball really straight. Me, I'm just wired to be really in tune with people and relationships."

There are far worse vices in the world, but Pipkin's has helped him build a global business, one that has a presence in more than 25 countries, about 200 patents and over US$1 billion in revenue per annum.

Belkin International, which Pipkin founded in his parents' garage in the early 1980s and of which he is president and CEO, is today an industry leader in connectivity products. This means it's behind an extensive range of innovations that help us integrate our consumer electronics — from our computers to our mobile devices — into our lifestyle at home, at the workplace, in the car and on the go.

If you are the average urban professional who's highly dependent on technology, you would have most likely encountered or purchased at least one Belkin product in your digital lifetime, whether to enhance your digital networking, streamline your entertainment unit at home or just dress up your smartphone. Belkin's repertoire is diverse and far-reaching and its product mix includes award-winning innovations for easy-to-use networking solutions, accessories for mobile devices, such as iPod, iPhone, laptops and netbooks, as well as energy conservation products.

One might say that Pipkin is probably the most famous tech tycoon you have never heard of, but his story has many parallels with those of the more famous (and richer) Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and the late Steve Jobs.

Pipkin too was a college dropout, founding the business in the most humble and unlikeliest of spaces on a single big idea. While the success of Jobs, Gates and Zuckerberg were driven by technology, Pipkin's was inspired by people. His people-watching gave him a keen insight into the user experience and with it, he built a niche that continues to drive technology towards its optimal potential.

The tech mogul made a pit stop in Malaysia recently on a whirlwind market visit to Asia from his home base in Playa Vista, California. In Kuala Lumpur for only a day and a night, Pipkin was gracious enough to spend an hour with us to talk about his business and the brand's future.

Of course, with such a tight schedule, he arrives late for the appointment and apologises profusely. He then apologises to the Belkin Asean marketing manager for troubling her with an emergency — he needs to charge his iPhone. One wonders why he has not whipped out the Belkin Power Pack 4000, a slim and lightweight portable charger that has a 4,000mAh power reserve and the capacity to charge two devices at a time.

Looking at the remarkably down-to-earth innovator, it's easy to see why we have not heard as much about Pipkin as we should have. He is unassuming, curious and more fascinated with people than with fame.

We decided to start at the beginning — "Always a good place to start," he quips — when he chose to quit studying. A history major, he decided to drop out because of a great desire to "do something in a significant way".

"It probably started a little bit earlier than college," he begins. "As a child, there was something inside of me that was really pushing me, a feeling that I cannot fully describe. I had a dream to develop a business, but not just any business. I wanted it to have some kind of significance on society, to make some kind of impact. And there I was in school, but my heart wasn't there — it was pulling me in some other direction already."

He experimented with different ideas, including landscaping, candlemaking and even coupon exchange, but nothing really clicked. He realised he needed to take a step back before diving into yet another "big idea" and so came up with a hard and fast rule for his next big thing: "A business in a big and rapidly developing market that will keep growing for a long time."

Says Pipkin: "It was the 1980s and the personal computer marketplace looked like it was going to explode. The problem was I didn't really know a lot about PCs. In fact, I didn't know anything about PCs. I started to read a lot of trade magazines and started going to stores. I would hang out at the stores just to learn. Some people would throw me out of the stores, some would really welcome me there. So, in the stores that would have me, I would just watch, listen and observe.

"One of the things that really struck me was that people were coming in looking for solutions. They really had a need — desktop publishing, accounting for their businesses, some kind of need. Meanwhile, the people in the store seemed focused on selling boxes. 'Here's your computer'. 'Here's your printer'. And I noticed that once they had bought the computer and the printer, they then had the problem of looking for a cable to connect the two. There was no standard. Back in the early days, every computer manufacturer put a different connector on their computer. So there were hundreds of possibilities of what could connect one device to the other. So the stores could never have the cables in stock because it would be impossible to predict. So that struck me — this is what we had to do, so the very first Belkin product was cable assemblies."

Belkin has sure come a long way from copper cable assemblies. Apart from the amazing Power Pack to fulfil your electricity needs on-the-go, there is also the WeMo Switch + Motion, which allows you to turn almost anything in your home on or off using motion, have a light go on when you enter a room, have a fan go off when you leave. If you can plug it in, you can control it with WeMo Switch + Motion, and it also works on mobile iOS devices like your iPod touch, iPhone or iPad.

Another fascinating contraption is the ScreenCast AV 4 wireless AV-to-HDTV adapter. You can connect your home theatre equipment to your HDTV without having a professional come in to install or the need to run cables through walls. You can even store your devices up to 30m away or even in another room.

These are just a few exciting examples of what Belkin is capable of delivering, each one a testament to the company's achievements in ensuring that technology exists to serve people and never the other way around.

There's no question that Pipkin takes his job seriously as this father of seven has subjected his family and friends to product testing and impromptu focus groups.

He laughs when I refer to his family as guinea pigs. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they all know it," he says. "We'll take the product concepts, and the family, friends of the family will offer their ideas. It's really meaningful, as my wife, her friends, my friends, the children, their friends, they are all very honest with me. They'll say, 'This concept sucks' or 'This is really good'. It's amazing how accurate they can be."

Sometimes, Pipkin would bring home prototypes, parts or concepts and even competitor products just to get opinions and perspectives.

"It's continuous so everyone knows and expects it. It's just part of the day-to-day conversation," he says. "I also bring a bunch of Belkin stuff home and it'll just be there in a box by the door. Anyone can just come and take it. The stuff that's left behind means it's not compelling to that group. The stuff that's gone and you keep refilling it and it keeps going empty — then we have got a winner. It's a simple test, but very accurate."

Now with more than 1,000 employees scattered across the globe, one would think that Pipkin would leave the monitoring of consumer behaviour to somebody else. But he says that as an organisation gets bigger and more successful, it gets harder for the CEO or director to hear the truth.

"People start to filter the truth; there's a lot more editing of information involved. Being in my position, it's important to spend time by myself, and really being self-aware and having the courage to be truly honest with myself. When I see people stumble, some of the time, the issue they have the most trouble with is being rigorously honest with themselves. The most important thing for any CEO or MD to focus on is making sure that he or she or that I ... am I really getting the truth, whether it's good or bad. We can deal with that stuff, but only if we recognise that it's bad stuff. If we pretend that it's not bad, I don't think that's good," muses Pipkin.

And that is why Pipkin's people-watching remains incessant, why he will read reviews by users about Belkin and competitor products and why he continues to spend time in stores.

"I'll be in Asia for eight days, and during this trip I would have visited more than 100 stores, and I would just be there watching people buy, what it is they do, what the products are that are being sold in the store, whether or not people can complete a solution in the store. And you know, I still see the same situation existing — there are some products being sold that go with other products but the solutions cannot be made with the products in those stores," he says.

"Our strategy is to understand people. How do they live, work and commute? How are they educated and entertained? It's all about people. Then in parallel, it's to understand technology — where it came from, where it is today, where it will be in the future. And then we recognise that there are gaps over time between what it is that I want to do as a person, and what technology will allow me to do. It's an endless cycle: the gap will exist, the gap will be closed and a new gap will exist, then closed … but there will always be these gaps. So Belkin's strategy is to anticipate and really understand these gaps and provide the ecosystem which completes the gap, over and over and over again."

And according to Pipkin, that's how it has been for the past three decades and how it will remain for the next few.

"And that's our strategy as a company. We used different words when we first started but it has always been the same. Those gaps varied over the years and our products and solutions have evolved accordingly," he says.

The year 2012 marks a new era for Belkin, kicking off with the launch of a new brand identity in January.

"The strategy, direction and operations of the company are really the same as they've been for the past 30 years. There's not really a change in that; it is really about the brand finally catching up to the company," says Pipkin.

"We never did spend a lot of time on what the brand looked like. It wasn't a priority because we were smaller, and when we were smaller, it was easier to have and maintain relationships and communicate our values personally. And then we realised that we've gotten to a size that we can't do it one-on-one anymore, so we really needed something that symbolises who it is we are. Our existing brand didn't do that well, so now the brand identity has just caught up to the company."

The revitalised brand now depicts a silhouette of a person in dots, and this icon has been affectionately named "Pip", after "People inspire products".

"I'm really happy with it. It really captures what it is we are as a company," says Pipkin with a smile.

The company's revitalisation coincides with Pipkin returning to the hot executive seat of CEO. He had handed over the reins to then Belkin president Mark Reynoso in 2010 before returning to the helm last September. So, why did he take that year off?

Says Pipkin, "We've got a very empowering organisation. We spend a lot of time talking about strategy and vision of the company at a high level — it's about people, high technology and the gaps. Then we believe that it's important to have clear roles and clear responsibilities, that people should be given authority or be empowered to do the job. We also believe that we need to hold ourselves accountable then, where we need to execute.

"It's a very empowering organisation, so people can scale in the organisation very, very quickly. The guy that was CEO for a while, Mark Reynoso, had been with the company since 1996, and he had a brilliant career with us and had a lot of success. And the more success he had, the more he was allowed to do, until it got to a point where he was doing so much, honestly, I wasn't really needed.

"At the same time, I was also ready for a break so the timing was good. I was spending more time with family and I really dove into some start-ups on the technology front as well as in the non-profit space. And then in 2011, I think, Mark decided he was ready to do something else, so when he was ready to do it, I was ready to step back in."

Pipkin came back to the job hitting the ground running pretty hard and shows no signs of slowing down yet. His next move is Belkin's entry into retail. In May, the brand opened its first retail store in Los Angeles, offering a one-stop centre for consumers to experience Belkin's array of products up close. Says Belkin, "Opening a retail store gives us the opportunity to properly showcase our brand's commitment to creating people-inspired products and connect with our customers in a more meaningful way."

The company is also heavily investing in green technology because Pipkin and his team believe that some very exciting things will happen in that field in the next few years.

"We spend time looking at the present, then looking forward a little bit, and then we spend some time looking at the next 20 years. We never get it right, but it puts us on a direction," Pipkin muses. "So looking out 20 years at the population growth of the earth and layer on consumption per person, how much we consume per capita, that graph goes up really steeply and that's scary. So for me, there's no question about where we should head. Something dramatic is going to change, although I don't think it's going to be a disaster — I think it's going to be an opportunity for those who are working to solve it.

"For me, I'm convinced that it's going to be all about monitoring, measuring and being able to manage our natural resources, so we'll see developments specifically in water, electricity, oil, gasoline and natural gas. One of our technologies allows us to go to any electrical circuit in the home and ascertain what's drawing electricity in the home and how much electricity it is drawing."

Of course, the Belkin CEO admits that the odds of the industry actually evolving and transpiring like that are low, but he says with a smile, "We stay on that path as our guiding light and see how that goes."

This story appeared in The Edge on July 2, 2012.