Singapore Has The Kitchen For Innovation. Now Time To Focus On Cooking

Innovation is important for countries, companies and individuals. Those who are able to innovate continuously (or even once in a while for that matter) have the opportunity to gain money, fame and power. No wonder it is so sought after.

As per the recently released Global Innovation Index, Singapore is ranked the third most innovative country in the world. (Way to go!)

Here are the top 20 countries in the innovation index:

The index bases its ranking on an assessment of the inputs and outputs needed for innovation. In other words, it tries to capture the foundation/infrastructure that a country has in place to enable innovation and the extent to which this translates into actual innovation. The picture below, shows more details of the model and criteria used.

Over the last few years Singapore has put in a lot of effort, into building a solid foundation for innovation. This reflects in it achieving the top spot in terms of inputs needed for innovation (Innovation Input Sub-Index). The next obvious step is to concentrate further on realising actual innovation outputs, given that Singapore ranks 17th on the Innovation Output Sub-Index.

So what can corporations do to continue improving Singapore’s standing in the Innovation Output Sub-Index?

A study by the Monitor Group and the National University of Singapore a few years back, provides some insights into factors that inhibit the innovativeness of Singapore companies:

1) A number of the drivers of growth and innovation are not as strong as in the most innovative countries

• Relatively low level of competition in some sectors which negatively affects the competitive tenacity of home-grown companies, which is a barrier towards global competitive success
• Less demanding nature of customers compared to leading innovative countries. Singaporeans have a tendency to accept the status quo of product and service quality levels, therefore do not push their suppliers to greater performance levels. This hampers their ability to continually innovate
• CEO ambitions and expectations more modest than in other high-growth, dynamic regions. They appear more easily satisfied, and do not push their organisations as hard as leading innovators

2) The definition and scope of innovation is, in most of the cases, constricted by a pervasive fast-follower mindset, frequently expressed by the desire to look for business models and policies achieved elsewhere

3) Very often the responsibility for innovation is in the hands of an executive. Also, very often, this executive is not exclusively dedicated to innovation and usually delegates the task to a hierarchically lower-level manager

4) MNCs generally find Singapore companies more difficult to partner with than some other markets, keeping relationships transactional and at arms length. This hampers innovation and collaboration between Singapore firms and MNCs

5) In Singapore, the corporate culture of companies and the mindset of workers at many levels hamper innovative, creative thinking

• General and justified pride in Singapore’s achievements in the last 40 years, in some cases lead to complacency, loss of competitive tenacity and lack of humility, which hampers innovative capability
• Hierarchical nature of mid-level employees: pleasing superiors, avoiding controversial ideas, order-taking mentality rather than people pushing the envelope
• Lack of global perspective and experience; relatively difficult to get Singaporeans to relocate because of the comforts of Singapore (schools, healthcare, etc)