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Ethos Issue 5, Nov 2008
Sharpening Singapore’s Edge: Insights from the
IBM Experience
Teresa Lim
Singapore needs to develop T-shaped workers and a culture that favours innovation, collaboration, diversity and values.
Singapore’s highly talented workforce is world-renowned for being efficient, skilled and hard-working. Singaporeans have often been branded as driven, speedy,
responsive and task-oriented individuals— traits that boost the employability of and demand for our talent globally. Our competent and disciplined workforce fuels Singapore’s economic growth and attracts foreign talent. Supported by a world-class infrastructure and education system—both well suited to the challenges of a highly dynamic economic environment—Singapore has moved to the forefront of global human capital. Our strengths have given us an advantageous reputation for world-class performance: witness the recent World Bank Summit, the staging of the world’s first Formula 1 urban night race, and our hard-won privilege of hosting the inaugural Youth Olympics in 2010.
Nevertheless, a reputation for excellent execution may have served Singapore well in the past—particularly through the manufacturing era—but the same model is not adequate in today’s rapidly evolving service economy. To ride the wave of change in modern business, we need more innovators and creative thinkers. Critically, we need a culture that thrives on innovation, openness, trust, collaboration and diversity. We also need to nurture a workforce that is well versed in disciplines vital to the service sectors, bringing to the table a strong mix of business, technical and people skills.
AN INNOVATIVE AND TRUSTING CULTURE
Does Singapore possess the climate and culture to nurture innovation, embrace openness and instil trust? At IBM, we strongly believe that enterprises built for sustained growth stand on a foundation of core values. IBM’s set of core values—including one which stresses “Innovation that matters, for our company and for the world”—guides every IBMer’s decision-making. Our values, through the innovation process, enable us to develop new business ideas and transform business operations.
For instance, IBM’s recently concluded InnovationJam 2008—a 72-hour worldwide online brainstorming session—witnessed the coming together of over 90,000 participants worldwide, including employees and clients from over 1,000 companies, who contributed ideas in areas such as change, disruption and innovative business models and sustainable growth. In Singapore, more than 1,300 staff and over 40 clients participated in the jam, which was a first for many of them.
A culture that truly supports innovation and ideas creation also embraces openness and trust. Open systems and approaches provide a level playing field which stimulates competition, innovation and the free flow of goods and ideas. Beyond issues such as ethics and legal compliance, businesses today need to build trust.
At IBM, we demonstrate trust by “lowering the centre of gravity” of the company. We trust IBMers, and push decision-making authority out and down by encouraging greater collaboration at the base level in order to mitigate hierarchical thinking. To be a successful, globally integrated company, we have eliminated layers of management, moved more resources closer to clients in the markets and developed innovative policies, such as establishing blog guidelines which encourage IBMers to get out and engage with the blogosphere, but to do so in a responsible and transparent way. Critically, such a culture requires strong leadership: one that can foster greater collaboration, as opposed to more positional leadership.
EMPOWERING COLLABORATION
For people, whether employees or citizens, to embrace innovation and openness completely, the provision of appropriate platforms and tools is important to get incumbents in the right frame of mind.
The IBM Thinkplace is where IBMers around the world come to collaborate. Employees can post ideas and get feedback from colleagues, explore and collaborate with fellow IBMers to find and refine ideas, and join or sponsor a technical team to implement ideas. As a leading advocate for Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies, IBM deploys Web 2.0 tools throughout the company (the InnovationJam being an example). IBMers readily leverage these tools to encourage innovation, communication and resourcefulness. As a result, IBMers are able to form powerful, diverse social and expertise networks within the company, allowing speedy access to subject matter experts in order to resolve client issues. This helps us to live up to our professional commitments as innovators and trusted business advisors.
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