Ethos Issue 5, Nov 2008

Singapore as Innovation Nation
Conversation with John Kao

It has been said that the bottleneck for science and technology innovation is no longer the generation of ideas. There are plenty of ideas and lots of idea-generating capability. What’s lacking is the capacity to transition ideas from the laboratory into the marketplace. To do that you need people who understand both science and the entrepreneurial business process, which is why places like the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences has training programmes that are called "Idea to IPO...and Beyond".

Similarly, it doesn’t matter if you have a zillion patents if they don’t yield value for end-users. All these great technologies are not going to do any good unless they are applied to something that’s going to change somebody’s life. Over-engineering processes will lead to improvement and predictability but that won’t necessarily lead to innovative design. It is all about the interfaces that enable transfer among disciplines.

Because design is an approach to innovation that involves prototyping, visualisation, collaboration and other useful skills, it is also important for a country to invest in design in terms of educational institutions and resources, the arts and so forth. There are many deep skills embedded in the design disciplines that need to be unpacked for greater benefit.

I think that if Singapore remains a primarily engineering-oriented culture, it will miss out on opportunities in the future. When I come back, say, in ten years’ time, I’d like to see deep design as a much more ingrained mindset, not only in terms of product development but in terms of how senior policymakers plan and carry out their vision for the country.

In Singapore as Senior Visiting Fellow to the Civil Service College from 12 to 14 February 2008, Dr John Kao was interviewed by ETHOS Editor, Alvin Pang. He is the Chairman and CEO of Kao & Company, and author of several bestsellers, including Innovation Nation (Free Press, 2007) and Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity (Harper Collins, 1996). Dr Kao served as a faculty member of the Harvard Business School from 1982 to 1996, where he developed courses on innovation and entrepreneurship. He was a Visiting Professor at the MIT Media Lab and served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Innovation at the US Naval Postgraduate School. The Economist has called him "Mr. Creativity" and a "serial innovator".

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