Archive for Asia
Disruptive Innovation: Music to My Ears, Especially When Flexible Speakers Are Used
Posted by: | CommentsOne of my favorite inventors from my days at Kimberly-Clark, Fung-jou Chen, recently visited Taiwan and shared with me the news of an exciting innovation hailing from that innovation-rich island. Thin films have been used to create flexible speakers that can deliver reasonable sound quality from an inexpensive, flexible sheet. The sound quality is worse than conventional speakers, but offers new dimensions of convenience, ease of use and installation, small volume requirements, and low cost–a classic formula for disruptive innovation. When this becomes fully commercialized, there will be opportunities to add sound to places and ennvironments where it was too costly or difficult before. The ability for many objects and surfaces to become more interesting, useful, and interactive may increase and enable a variety of new business models to be considered. Disruptive innovations of this kind can be the raw materials for further waves of innovation. Stay tuned!
Further information is available at Fast Company. The technology was developed by ITRI, the Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan’s largest and one of the world’s leading high-tech research and development institutions. See their press release on the breakthrough FleXpeaker, which was given a prestigious award by the Wall Street Journal for this development. Below is a Youtube video showing a FleXpeaker in action.
Global Entrepreneurship Week Starts Today
Posted by: | CommentsGlobal Entrepreneurship Week starts today. This event was started by the Kauffman Foundation, leading champions of entrepreneurship and education, and Make Your Mark, a British group reaching out to young people to inspire innovation. The goal of this global initiative to inspire young people to embrace innovation, imagination and creativity. They want millions to join a growing movement of entrepreneurial people, to generate new ideas and to seek better ways of doing things. Events are taking place around the world this week.
During my recent visits to Singapore and Mexico, I’ve been inspired by the culture of innovation that I’ve encountered. Singapore excels in advanced technology and a powerful approaches to advancing and funding R&D that will create leadership in targeted areas such as biotech and data mining. Mexico has an amazing university system with some wonderful centers for R&D, but what impressed me most is the culture of innovation at the personal level, where individuals are ready to go the extra mile to create success and find better ways of doing things. If this mindset can be fortified and amplified with governmental support and vision, Mexico could become a real leader in global innovation. Innovation can come from anywhere across the globe, but each nation has its own limitations and challenges in terms of regulations, taxation, educational support, infrastructure, capital, markets, and talent. Each nation should have a high-level commission exploring the challenges of innovation at the personal level (one of the key issues we explore in Conquering Innovation Fatigue) to ensure that the voice of the innovator is heard and unintended consequences of government policy are not choking innovation success.
The View from Singapore: Vision and Leadership in Conquering Innovation Fatigue
Posted by: | CommentsI just returned from an adventure in innovation and culture in one of the world’s most delightful and innovative nations, Singapore, where I spoke about innovation during Innovation and Enterprise Week 2009 sponsored by A*STAR, the government’s large program for the advancement of scientific technology and research. What remarkable vision is at play in this effort!
Singapore is an example of what can be achieved in a nation with a bold vision of economic progress and long-term growth. One consistently gets the impression that officials there, whether university leaders, team leaders, or high-ranking politicians, have a strong desire to advance the welfare of the nation and its people by giving people the resources and opportunities to work hard and succeed through innovation and entrepreneurial activity. There is a culture of cooperation and vision that seems to permeate the activities of leaders and influencers far more than you might see in other parts of the world. The nation is not without its problems, and no individual is without human flaws, but what I saw impressed and surprised me.
The nation decided years ago that it wanted to be a place for world-class research and development. They boldly recruited leading talent and ramped up education for its own citizens. They crafted beautiful complexes for interdisciplinary research to pursue targeted areas. This resulted in a large science park, and then the One North complex with Biopolis, a collection of large buildings for R&D in the life sciences, and Fusionopolis, a massive edifice intended to bring together numerous disciplines in other areas. They invested huge amounts of money to support R&D. While other companies and nations are cutting back, they are increasing their R&D spending from what was about 2.5% of the GDP recently to 3% in 2010. Many billions of dollars are being committed to achieve their vision.
One cannot explore Singapore without realizing that its leaders are serious about making Singapore an attractive place for business, for research, and for innovation. They understand the importance of location and co-location. They have worked hard to make Singapore a center for business for many multinational corporations. Currently over 7,000 MNCs have a presence in Singapore. They have worked to bring many disciplines together for targeted purposes by co-locating disciplines in research at One North, which is also near to the National University of Singapore, the Ministry of Education, and other key facilities, not to mention integrating industrial centers such as the Lilly Center for Drug Discovery on the Biopolis campus. Bringing people and institutions together physically creates opportunities for synergy and cross-fertilization that can’t be matched by remote online interactions.
The synergy between business and state-funded R&D is further strengthened by sending researchers into industry for internships or limited engagements to provide firsthand experience into the realities of a start-up or other business.
The planning behind A*STAR has resulted in many fruits. There have been nearly 30 spin-off companies from these recent efforts. A patent estate of over 3,000 applications and patents exists (this number from A*STAR apparently includes filings in multiple nations, so the number of patent families is considerably less, but still healthy). Significant growth in licensing revenues is coming through the efforts of Exploit Technologies, the licensing and commercialization arm of A*STAR. International recognition is being earned for the accomplishments of A*STAR.
How a small nation of four million people has transformed itself into a powerhouse of R&D and excellence in science and business shows what can be done with strong leadership and a commitment to the future. Of course, you can’t overlook one of their secret weapons that help attract and retain so much great talent: some of the best food in the world. Check out the food courts at Biopolis and across this island nation. This is a land that understands the importance of great food. After all, isn’t food ultimately the fuel behind human innovation?
Here is a gallery with a few photos I took while in Singapore. Click on a thumbnail to see more of the respective photo. The first photo shows the famous mascot of Singapore, the mythical Merlion. The building in the 2nd and 3rd photos is Fusionopolis, showing two different views (north and south sides). Then there are some downtown shots and a Buddha in Chinatown.
Almost like something out of a Utopian science fiction novel, two neighboring research communities, Fusionopolis and Biopolis, stand as R&D beacons to scientists and companies across the globe, rising from the small island nation of Singapore and its remarkable research park, One North. Fusionopolis and Biopolis are visible fruits of a dramatic new focus on innovation in Singapore. Not just innovation in biomedical fields, the specialty of Biopolis, or innovation in advanced science and engineering at Fusionopolis, but innovation in innovation itself. The leaders of Singapore, recognizing that innovation is the key to the future of this small nation with so few natural resources, are developing new ways to innovate, to collaborate, and to stimulate commercialization. As they find new ways to collaborate with companies and researchers around the world, they are striving for the upper end of the Ascent of Collaboration scale, guided by the nation’s most prominent scientific ministry devoted to innovation, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, or A*STAR.
Singapore, whose name comes from the Malay word for “Lion City,” has been a riddle to the West for years. The 5th wealthiest country in the world based on GDP per capita, it is also one of the smallest (250 square miles) and one of only four remaining city-states in the world. It is truly a melting pot, a nation of multiple ethnicities and religions among its 5 million people, with four national languages: English, Malay, Tamil, and Chinese. How can such a small island city with few natural resources have become so prosperous? How can a community with so much diversity seem to have so much unity? How can a country known for order and discipline be a hotbed of creativity and innovation?
Boon Swan Foo and A*STAR
Boon Swan Foo, Executive Chairman at Exploit Technologies
Singapore’s booming emphasis on science, technology, and innovation were on my mind when I contacted Boon Swan Foo, Executive Chairman of Exploit Technologies, the strategic marketing and commercialization arm of A*STAR. A*STAR’s mission is to foster world-class scientific research and to develop human capital for a knowledge based Singapore. It funds billions of dollars of research, drives collaboration between global companies and Singapore, and works to commercialize the fruits of its R&D work.
A*STAR comprises the Biomedical Research Council (BMRC), the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), Exploit Technologies Pte Ltd (ETPL), the A*STAR Graduate Academy (A*GA) and the Corporate Planning and Administration Division (CPAD).
Boon oversees the commercialization and spin-off activities for A*STAR’s intellectual property and technologies. Under his leadership, A*STAR has accumulated a portfolio of close to 3,000 active patents, granted more than 250 licenses for its technologies, and created a portfolio of two dozen spin-off companies. Estimated business revenue to be generated by licensees from sales of products and provision of services using or incorporating A*STAR’s technologies is projected to be over S$500M.
Insights from the Interview
Boon Swan Foo proudly explained that his nation is pursuing and promoting innovation in numerous ways, not just by funding world-class R&D centers. Singapore is innovating in its educational systems, in its airlines and airport system, in its management of ports, in its roads and traffic management, and so forth.
“Our civil servants are very enterprising,” Boon explained. “One does not have to be an entrepreneur to be an innovator. They are intrapreneurs rather than entrepreneurs.”
The economy of Singapore is often described as an entrepot economy, in which imports are purchase and given added value which are then exported. Singapore imports numerous raw materials that are then converted to pharmaceuticals, chemicals, computer chips, electronics, and other goods for export. The Port of Singapore is the world’s busiest. Further, it has an exceptionally well educated work force as a result of the nation’s education policy, which helps achieve success in their business operations and in innovation.
Now R&D is becoming an increasingly important part of Singapore. Over 3% of their $200 billion GDP is spend on R&D. They know innovation is the key for a bright future. The goal is to develop pools of ideas in targeted fields and also to develop deep pools of local talent. Read More→