Horological Meandering

SJX
[Purist]
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Why the Grand Prix d' Horlogerie de Geneve Asia Edition is a seminal event

I just returned from the Grand Prix d’Haute Horlogerie de Geneve Asia Edition awards ceremony held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Singapore.

Some of the watches that won prizes were surprising, for example the jewellery Lange 1 for ladies; two deserving individuals, Rolf Schnyder and Richard Mille, won individual awards. But the Asia Edition of the GPHH is a seminal event and could have significant implications for the industry.

The inaugural Asia Edition of the GPHH was distinguished by two vital factors: choice of jurors and the system of voting.

First, unlike the Geneva edition of the Grand Prix, the jurors on the Singapore edition were all pure collectors, with the exception of co-chairs of the jury, Wei Koh of Revolution Press and Dr Bernard Cheong, a moderator on this site. So the jurors are consumers who can vote as potential watch buyers and not have any perceptions coloured by industry experience. Furthermore, the jurors were all extremely financially independent individuals; one of the jurors was Tan Sri Dato Francis Yeoh who is on the Forbes list of billionaires. Now that would mean they are not representative of the buying public as a whole, but that guarantees that the jurors are voting as possible actual buyers of the candidate watches, and it also means the jurors cannot be bought with advertising or any other incentive.

Second, the Asia Edition had a professionally developed voting system that is transparent and effective. The candidate watches matter, and so do the jurors, but the voting system is equally important. The voting system was developed by an economist, Dr Massimiliano Landi, whose specialty is political economics and game theory – Dr Landi is an expert on voting systems – and one of his current areas of research is effects of electoral campaigns on voting and turnout decisions. The resulting system was rigorous and fair, its details are available for all to see and understand the process.

So what does all that mean? This could possibly result in the Asia Edition of the GPHH becoming the benchmark prize in horology because of the integrity of the whole process. If the status quo remains and the Geneva edition does not change, I am certain the Asia Edition supersede it in the eyes of both the industry and the watch-buying public.

There is room for improvement of course, most notably the jury can be expanded to include a broader spectrum of people.

The Asia Edition will be held again next year and it will definitely be tweaked, the 2009 awards may just turn out to conclusively assert the pre-eminence of the GPHH Asia Edition as the horology award.

- SJX

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