Empowering employees to be creative

THIS WEEK'S TOPIC: What is essential for an organisation to cultivate an innovation culture? How do you as a business leader bring innovation to the workplace?

Melissa Kwee CEO National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre (NVPC)

LEADERS express the WHY of innovation that inspires and emboldens people to overcome their fear of change. I believe social innovation matters most because it means more good created and more people served or served more efficiently. We need to call forth and unleash talent to pursue public good and not just private interest. NVPC has a Digital Innovation team that is seeking to enable system-level innovation by evolving from a product to platform strategy with giving.sg to transform our giving culture with many partners. Our most recent is a blockchain pilot to increase transparency and giver engagement. May we apply the best for the most and the least.

John Bittleston Founder and Chair Terrific Mentors International Pte Ltd

INNOVATION comes about as a result of three things - purpose, resource, freedom. Every organisation must have purposes more specific than making money, clearer than being efficient and productive. Its purpose must be a benefit to people other than those in the organisation. Producing more delicious food, increasing mobility of the aged, making parking your car simpler are examples of purposes. Resources include time to tinker, equipment to conduct experiments, creativity and enthusiasm to allow failure. Good innovation leaders provide these PLUS the freedom to examine crazy ideas. Provide these and you will have an innovative company.

Annie Koh V3 Group Professor of Family Entrepreneurship VP, Business Development Singapore Management University

INNOVATION takes place with the right culture. I would say it's almost as basic as learning your ABC.

A to go with being Agile and Adaptable - to experiment and try with small projects. Make changes and reinvent almost constantly and learn as you change and implement.

B stands for being Bold which is not about being reckless. It's about being courageous and responsible. Spend time doing your own homework and understand the problems deeply.

C is about being collaborative. Nobody innovates in a vacuum - the best ideas come from working with diverse groups of talent, across different units and not necessarily within the same office or even same company. The SICC innovation awards, for example, will only allow participation of innovation projects between big companies and SMEs.

Innovation is iterative - almost as simple as ABC. And include determination to fail and try again and again if you need a D - innovate by Doing.

Max Loh EY Asean and Singapore Managing Partner Ernst & Young LLP

AN INNOVATIVE organisation will need to simultaneously solve the now, explore the next and imagine the beyond. This will require organisations to transform their structure, talent and processes from the current model that is optimised for efficiency to a future-ready model that is geared for disruptive growth. Leadership will need to drive enterprise-wide transformation, persevere through change resistance, and keep an open mind on the sources of innovation - whether it is ground-up, internal or through external collaboration with partners or competition. This includes introducing management structures such as corporate venture vehicles to provide for autonomy and agility in seizing opportunities, hiring for diversity of thought to spark new ideas, while embracing failure as part of a learning culture. To stayed anchored, leaders will need to instill an embracing sense of purpose to guide the choices they make.

Laurent Dedenis CEO Chainstack

ARTIFICIALLY creating the right conditions for your company to innovate is a complex balancing act. Many countries, companies and leaders try, and most fail. Most likely, you will not bring innovation to you ... innovation will come to your organisation as you finally put together the right talents, values and conditions, for teams to collaborate. External conditions and location of your company does matter as well these days: "smart" people like "smart" places. The good news is that today's technology creates the conditions for anyone to innovate from anywhere! Global innovation is now available in a city near you!

Pierre-Jean Châlon Senior Vice President, APAC Plantronics

FOR a truly innovative workplace culture to flourish, business leaders need to step up. They need to know when to step in and break down the barriers between ideas and innovation. They also need to empower and trust employees with the right tools to do their jobs effectively. More importantly, they need to know when to step aside to let their people truly innovate.

This was top of mind when we merged Plantronics and Polycom into a new entity, Poly, as we envision a future where we connect people, and quietly get out of their way, to let them be the best that they can be.

Technology has been called a democratising force, allowing anyone the opportunity to drive change. However, as many are discovering, having access to technology does not a great leader make. It's how you innovate with technology that will make all the difference.

Jayaprakash Jagateesan Chief Executive Officer RHT Holdings Pte Ltd

IT'S ESSENTIAL for organisations to be clear and explicit with the values and culture they aim to cultivate from the get-go. At RHT, Seeking Innovation and being Instinctively Commercial are part of our core values.

Innovation is not just technological, it also calls for an entrepreneurial mindset. I bring a startup culture to our organisation as we expand our suite of services. Last year we set up RHT Rockchain Advisory to help clients explore the right opportunities in the token economy and blockchain technology.

With a team of industry professionals, we also develop, test and commercialise the right solutions and tools with a short time-to-market, the latest being scorecards designed for regulatory compliance.

Ronald Ong Chairman and CEO, Southeast Asia Morgan Stanley

To encourage an innovative culture, we focus on cultivating collaborative and creative thinking across all departments, so we can deliver against all our clients' needs and requirements.

Adopting a client-first mindset and approach also ensures that we innovate and develop bespoke and expert solutions for all situations rather than using "cookie-cutter" methods.

I believe in being accessible and fostering an inclusive and innovative environment that encourages creativity at all levels. Morgan Stanley hires people for their values and curiosity and we welcome ideas which challenge the status quo.

Philip Yuen CEO, Deloitte Southeast Asia and Chairman, Deloitte Singapore

INNOVATION is about people and their ideas. For an organisation to say that it has an innovation culture, it means that it has embedded innovation significantly in its overall business strategy, and has continuously engaged its people across all ranks and functions in spontaneous ideas generation - ideas that are valued as part of business growth.

For innovation to take place, this culture needs to be pervasive across the organisation where everyone is encouraged to contribute. Business leaders can act as the catalyst by allowing, within reason, business disruption in order for good ideas to be incubated and tested, and also making a deliberate effort to celebrate and implement breakthrough ideas to incentivise more innovation sparks among their people.

Tirupathi Karthik CEO Napier Healthcare

ONE of the things we learnt early on is that an "innovation department" cannot make an organisation innovative. Innovation is a mindset and must be in present in every employee's DNA; besides, nobody has a monopoly on innovation. We encourage innovation by everybody across the rank and file. We typically recognise innovation in every townhall and reward the individual or the teams for it. Napier being a healthcare software product company, we ask our teams to "demo" their innovation to all staff during the townhall. The recognition of their peers is a great motivator in keeping the lamp of innovation burning within the organisation.

Teo Lay Lim Senior MD, ASEAN Country MD, Singapore Accenture

ACCORDING to Accenture's Getting to Equal 2019 report, a culture of equality is a powerful multiplier of innovation and growth in the workplace. Statistics from Singapore shows that employees' innovation mindset is nearly nine times higher in companies with a robust culture of equality as compared to least-equal companies. Singapore is a highly competitive market in the global environment. Businesses across all industries are pushing for innovation to deepen their capabilities, increase productivity and internationalise their offerings. Our research shows that if you have a diverse workplace that encourages autonomy, collaboration and experimentation, you have a workforce that supports innovation. At Accenture, our goal is to create a workplace environment where everyone feels like they belong and experiences equal opportunities.

Vincent Magnenat Limited Partner and CEO Lombard Odier Asia-Pacific

LOMBARD Odier has a deep culture and long history of rethinking the world around us. Over 223 years we have continually reinvented ourselves to remain relevant and today technology is a key differentiator for us. Our leading banking infrastructure and technology platforms support not only our own private client business but the banking activities of external parties as well. The seamless union of our longstanding tradition and a powerful history of technological innovation is an unrivalled advantage in serving our UHNW clients.

As a leader I believe innovation starts with the creation of a diverse, flexible working environment which promotes exchange, innovation and performance. At Lombard Odier such a culture empowers our teams to challenge the status quo and offer a fresh perspective as they work to create lasting value for our clients.

Yeoh Oon Jin Executive Chairman PwC Singapore

INNOVATION is not just about creating new services and products. It is about the empowerment of employees to do things differently. Innovation must be intentional and not be left to chance. Organisations must make clear their innovation ambitions from strategy to execution to all levels to create the right environment to support an innovative culture and get stakeholders excited about the transformational changes. To walk the talk, organisations must be open to experimenting through trial and error with a recognition that there will be the inevitable failures. This also means that performance metrics and KPIs will have to be set differently. Business leaders would need to support the experimentation and celebrate both the successes and failures of innovation.

Natalia Kozyura Head of Innovation Centre FWD Group

BUILDING an innovation culture begins with inculcating an experimental mindset. This means every team is willing to experiment without the fear of failure while having clearly defined goals in mind and relevant data points as a source. As innovation doesn't come from just a single person or team, leaders should encourage employees to speak up, question how things can be done better, and share their thoughts. The onus is also on leaders to listen, drive cross-functional ideation, and ensure that everyone is familiar and equipped with the best-in-class technology required to push the boundary every day.

Shweta Shukla Director Human Resources, Asia-Pacific Netflix

INNOVATION is not something you can turn on at the flick of a switch. At Netflix, we are able to foster an environment of constant innovation by trusting our teams to do what they think is best for the company. We do this through being loosely coupled yet highly aligned - giving them freedom and context in support of their decisions. In turn, this generates a sense of responsibility and self-discipline that drives us to be innovative and do great work that benefits our consumers. We believe that people thrive on being trusted, on freedom, and on being able to make a difference. We try to cultivate empowerment wherever and whenever we can.

Anneliese Schulz Regional President, Asia Pacific Japan Software AG

ORGANISATIONS need to address two things when trying to foster an innovation culture: removing the fear of failure and activating their teams to contribute.

Teams should be encouraged to experiment, and organisations should support the notion that failure will not be held against the employees.

Techniques like design thinking should not be seen only as methods exclusive to the creation of new products or services. Rather, these techniques should be celebrated across all areas of the organisation, so creative ideas can thrive, and teams can better leverage on each other's expertise to collaboratively come up with solutions to issues.

Kevin Fitzgerald Regional Director, Asia Xero

BY ENCOURAGING the open contribution of creative ideas and by providing training to develop soft skills such as creativity and empathy, organisations will naturally see employees start to challenge the norm.

But, ultimately, no innovative idea will change the world if it stays an idea. Businesses also need the means to execute creative ideas in the first place: funds. A healthy cashflow provides a financial cushion that allows businesses to invest, experiment and fail. Because that's the key - innovation is often born out of failure - and it's something we emphasise all the time at Xero.

Peter Zaman Office Managing Partner Reed Smith

AS LAWYERS we primarily encounter the drive for innovation in two areas. Internally we are always looking at ways to improve the delivery of legal services to our clients. Externally many of our clients challenge us to do the same, either in a drive to become leaner and more competitive or to address other areas such as reducing budgets for legal services.

Irrespective of the driver, our approach is broadly the same in that we firmly believe that successful innovation will only be born out of collaboration. As a firm we seek to drive progress through partnership. Too often innovation is seen as being a ground-breaking technology-enabled exercise when, in fact, many excellent opportunities for innovation often lie in making simple improvements to existing processes.

In order to foster innovation at Reed Smith, we have rolled out a concept of "innovation hours" which enables our lawyers to count hours worked on approved innovation projects towards their annual hourly targets. This initiative has already delivered some fantastic results for us as a firm.

Victor Mills Chief Executive Singapore International Chamber of Commerce

FOR innovation to keep happening, you need a leadership team that always believes the company can serve its customers better. Next, is for the leadership team to ask their colleagues, who serve the customers directly, for their ideas to improve the customer experience. The leadership team needs to listen to these ideas, verify them, by asking their customers and then prioritising with their colleagues what and how to execute. An execution plan might include collaborating with external parties to bridge any capability gaps. Leadership needs to ensure that the execution plan is implemented and that the desired outcomes are achieved.

Ken Lim GM and MD, Building Technologies and Solutions, Singapore Johnson Controls

CREATING a culture of innovation is an ongoing process that requires participation from all stakeholders. Firstly, it is important that businesses equip their teams with the required skills, knowledge and tools to realise their innovative ideas. This can be done by providing on-the-job training, and adopting technology-driven solutions that help employees enhance productivity. It is also important to continually nurture partnerships to avoid pigeonholing, such as by working with educational institutions on training programmes. Besides giving students hands-on experience with the industry, these engagements also help us introduce fresh perspectives to old problems.

Martin Alintuck MD, South East Asia Ruder Finn Asia

AS AUTHOR Simon Sinek says, your people need to feel "safe" in the organisation. They need to feel comfortable there will be no repercussions for sharing new and different ideas. They need to know leaders in the organisation want and need innovative ideas. There needs to be a culture of innovation where new ideas are encouraged, evaluated, talked about and implemented. We can't just say "We are innovative". We have to be. The organisation needs to live it.

It's early days for me with the company. As a start, I am encouraging our people to "think different" when it comes to our clients, our experience at work and how we treat each other. I want innovation to be as common as breathing. It's not just something we want to do; we have to do it. Or else we die.

Narinder Kapoor Managing Director Hewlett Packard Enterprise Asia Pacific

AS a technology company, innovation is HPE's lifeblood and is core to our DNA. The key to cultivating a culture of innovation is to bring together a diversity of perspectives to come up with totally new solutions. By creating an inclusive workplace that welcomes and values a diversity of ideas from people of different kinds of backgrounds, HPE is fostering culture innovation at every level of our organistion.

Our people are innovators at heart, and they continuously push the boundaries of technology to deliver solutions that accelerate customer innovation. By creating an authentically inclusive culture where people feel accepted and valued for their uniqueness, we will continue to attract and retain a diverse workforce that brings meaningful innovations for our customers and partners.

Motohiko Uno President Fujitsu Singapore

COMPANIES often tend to be caught up in solving issues using their business-as-usual approach in the effort to be efficient. Today, artificial intelligence, algorithms, Big Data and chatbots are "tools" that can be utilised to design creative solutions. At Fujitsu, our digital co-creation approach brings multiple perspectives together with digital technology to create innovative outcomes. Bringing this approach to our customer organisations, by understanding their core values and businesses, we apply technology to co-create solutions, instead of using it just to support their business processes. Co-creation with technology can disrupt the core processes themselves -- rethinking the possibilities, generating innovation and enabling genuine transformation.

Liam Wee Sin Group Chief Executive UOL Group

THE business landscape is changing so rapidly that what worked well yesterday may not work today. Business leaders must be innovative in their mindset which means they must be agile, responsive to changes and to be solution-minded always. It is the ability to constantly not just to ask WHY?, but also WHY NOT?

Innovation thrives in an organisation that embraces diverse views with strong and practical implementation attributes. Leaders must set the right tone and be open minded themselves. After all, who would want to work with people who are so narrow-minded that they can look through a keyhole with both eyes?

Prashant Kirtane Co-Founder and CEO Travelstop

THE culture at Travelstop is built on trust and openness; true innovation lies in our ability to get the best out of our employees and scale the business simultaneously. We essentially operate without the rigidity and structure of larger companies, ensuring that our employees have the flexibility and maturity to manage their own responsibilities. We also encourage them to be active learners and leaders in whatever task they set out to do. At Travelstop, we celebrate achievements big and small. Those who go the extra mile and are consistently creating a significant impact are recognised and rewarded. Innovation was a strong driving factor behind Travelstop's journey as a company, and we have come to embody that spirit in how we lead and grow our team.

Chris Riley Chief Executive Ogilvy Singapore

CULTURAL dysfunction and the lack of innovation mindset can be a greater impediment to business performance than lack of budgets. Leaders need an agenda for culture and innovation that is pervasive across the organisation. Innovation is hard to define, and harder to predict, so leaders need to take a leap of faith. This translates to creating innovation labs or special project groups operating under different rules. It means encouraging experimentation and embracing failure - easy said but difficult to accept. It also means allowing 'Mavericks' into the organisation and giving them free rein, something that established leadership often finds difficult.

Paul Endacott Regional Managing Director, Asia Ambition

"THAT'S the way we've always done things" is one phrase that must be thrown out if a company truly wants to innovate. To foster innovation a company needs to hire and retain the best people who fit into this future culture. An agenda of innovation has to come from the top down; leaders need to encourage new ideas and embrace failure to set the tone. At Ambition, we've created a cross-functional and diverse group, with people from all levels, to work on generating fresh ideas that will push the business forward. Structure time for employees to experiment and work on innovative projects, provide them with incentives that engage them, and measure the impact of these projects to push past the ideation stage and into implementation.

Mark Weaser Vice President - Asia Pacific OutSystems

HAVING a supportive environment that promotes healthy risk-taking and an appetite for learning is necessary to drive an innovation culture in any organisation. At OutSystems, we pride ourselves on being a learning-focused organisation that values independent thinking while taking a pragmatic approach to innovation. Our leaders empower employees to generate unique ideas and encourage them to try and fail - cultivating a culture that treats each failure as a learning opportunity to fuel further innovation. Encouraging "innovation from the bottom up" and fostering an environment where leaders' ideas are constantly challenged by employees ensures that innovation happens at every level in the organisational hierarchy.

Svend Janssen Head of Asia Western Union Business Solutions

INNOVATION is hard-wired in Western Union's DNA. Our story is about continuous advancement in digital innovation to ensure we remain a step ahead of market needs. We have a 167-year track record of disrupting ourselves and transforming our business model. In fact, many today aren't aware that we actually started out as a national telecommunications company in the United States before evolving into a global fintech company. We are changing our cultural metabolism too, adopting an "experiment and fail fast" mentality that enables us to bring innovations to market faster.

Renzo Taal Head of Asia Salesforce

FROM startup to Forbes' Innovator of the Decade, thinking differently has always been in our DNA. Although we're now a Fortune 500 company with 35,000 employees globally, we still innovate like that small startup in 1999 and have kept up this pace of innovation after 20 years.

Innovation is a core value at Salesforce and it drives everything we do. We listen to our customers and those conversations influence our innovations. We have a beginner's mind, where we embrace new trends to deliver new tools to our customers like Salesforce Einstein. Our motto to 'do it simple, fast and right the first time' has enabled us to deliver technology to our customers that is flexible, efficient and simple to use.

Wilf Blackburn CEO Prudential Singapore

INNOVATION is core to what we do at Prudential. It drives our purpose, is embedded in our culture and is key to our strategy. Our people are not only encouraged to be innovative, they are recognised for creating something new. And if they experiment and fail along the way, we celebrate their efforts in pursuit of innovation, and encourage continuous learning. This way, we remove one of the biggest obstacles to innovation, which is the fear of failure. Our drive for innovation has led to several industry-first initiatives such as the implementation of claims-based pricing to motivate our customers to live well. We also became the first financial institution to remove the retirement age for our employees, empowering them to work for as long as they are able and willing to.

Willson Deng Chairman, Singapore Manufacturing Consortium (SIMCO) CEO, Arcstone Pte Ltd

INNOVATION comes from being given the freedom to explore and try, not from micromanagement and dictation. A truly innovative culture is one in which everyone has a certain level of decision making power. This power involves taking ownership of a problem, coming up with a potential solution and then given the ability to execute on it. Leaders should focus on celebrating new failures as learnings and hunting down repeated failures for repair.

Jay Varman Co-Founder & CEO Dei

I'VE always considered innovation as an incrementally better, smarter way to do something. Within the sphere of business, a mindset of doing better, smarter, needs to be honed around a problem statement - addressing why the business exists, and what problem is it solving. It is only with this structure and purpose that companies can point their employees towards a common objective, and empower them with tools and a culture of innovation to get there. For example, we formed Dei, an online retail platform which uniquely helps Little India's mom and pop shops sell online. Prior to Dei, these merchants relied on foot traffic, which limited their pool of potential customers. Our team lives and breathes retail transformation, and in the process, we are enabling customers to shop more conveniently and efficiently.

Adam A Lyle Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Padang & Co

A CULTURE of innovation must start with an appreciation of providing value to customers. That is meeting their unmet needs - not just those articulated, but truly understanding what a customer is seeking to achieve, the "job to be done". Business leaders should encourage all employees to walk in their customers' shoes to develop solutions that accomplish these "jobs".

At the same time, business leaders must provide a safe environment for their teams to learn continually and always be curious about possibilities; and to experiment and iterate solutions based on customer feedback.

It's popular to talk about "failing fast". But I believe it's better to encourage rapid experimentation and celebrate the learnings from those experiments as the drivers of delivering customer value and satisfaction.

Foo Mao Gen Head of Southeast Asia Qualtrics

INNOVATION is about turning customers into fanatics, employees into ambassadors, products into obsessions and brands into religions. To be innovative, organisations need to manage the four core experiences of business: customer, employee, brand and product experience. The most successful companies don't just react to problems as they occur; they try to predict and mitigate those problems before they ever happen.

Ivy Lai Country Manager Philips Singapore

I BELIEVE that key to cultivating an innovation culture is collaboration between different people, and disciplines, which is why we encourage a more diverse and inclusive workforce. However, to promote this culture, businesses need to ensure that there are opportunities for these diverse thoughts to come together. While we have created a physical environment with comfortable common spaces for collaboration and innovation, what is crucial is to create a safe environment for people so that they can try new ideas and are not afraid to fall, get up and try again. Only when fear is taken out of the equation, will people be willing and be spontaneous to innovate.

Tony Lombardo Chief Executive Officer of Asia Lendlease

AT Lendlease, innovation is change that adds value and we make it second nature to the way we think, act and create. We have established a framework to foster discipline around how we guide innovative thinking so any seed of an idea is given the chance to flourish. We believe in collaboration within and outside of the organisation with like-minded organisations to push the boundaries. For example, we launched Propell Asia last year, South-east Asia's first proptech accelerator. At the same time, our experience has shown us that workplaces can be created and designed to support innovation and collaboration, and we look forward to bringing such concepts to Paya Lebar Quarter in the year ahead.

Ong Pang Thye Managing Partner KPMG in Singapore

AN organisation's values are essential to cultivating an innovation culture. At KPMG, our values such as respect for the individual, teamwork, open and honest communication, are catalysts to enable sharing of ideas and thinking outside the box. As a leader, I encourage innovation by living our values, and creating an environment that allows for a diversity of views, empowering our people to experiment and feeling safe to fail.

Michael Gourlay Chief Executive Officer MSIG Insurance (Singapore) Pte Ltd

CULTIVATING an innovation culture requires a fundamental shift from the traditional mindset of focusing on mainly risk mitigation. It is crucial to build and inspire a sense of purpose for your people by actively and constantly sharing your innovation strategy, as well as recognising success stories when they happen. It helps to pick one innovation theme or topic each year to have some focus and alignment.

Business leaders need to walk the talk in translating this vision, by providing the right environment and support to foster innovative thinking, including personally taking part in some of the innovation work. MSIG helps staff obtain new skills in this digital era, and to cascade learnings on innovations to small and large groups. Above all, we celebrate the best ideas through our regional innovation awards. Recognition is a great motivator.

Imad Abou-Haidar Managing Director, APAC Finastra

ORGANISATIONS and teams must collaborate to innovate in today's increasingly interconnected digital economy. Businesses can no longer innovate in silos but must instead embrace the potential for collaboration across and beyond the organisation to spark new thinking and focus on building ecosystems where all employees are empowered to interact openly with colleagues, customers and partners. Finastra's internal hackathons and Spark Days have served as an invaluable platform to encourage our own innovators. Meanwhile, our platform encourages collaboration with banks, fintechs and the industry's innovation leaders to bring new solutions to market. At the end of the day, it's our ability to connect and harness diverse skills and expertise, internally and externally, that allows us to truly innovate for the future of financial services.

Yann Hamon Managing Director why innovation!

TO sustain a culture of innovation, there needs to be a systematic approach to designing novel initiatives, coherent with organisational strategy and purpose.

This centres around self-organising, cross-functional teams who can deliver incrementally towards a vision - ably supported through coaching and timely decision making. Innovation thrives when "build, test and learn" mindsets are in sync across all layers - product teams delivering new features, middle managers removing impediments and business leaders providing strategic direction.

My advice to leaders is to not assume an 'I know best' attitude, but instead push the teams towards innovative outcomes by validating and challenging their assumptions.

Emre Olcer SEA President Mondelez

INNOVATION and progressive thinking lie at the heart of our business model. We are evolving our innovation approach to be more responsive to consumer needs via agile test and learning and rapid scale after validation. This way we can innovate boldly, always think ahead and anticipate our consumers' needs.

Our new strategy enables us to have a "local first but not only" approach. This refers to acting in the service of local demands of our consumers while benefiting from our global expertise and experiences. To drive innovation, we will need to have a strong understanding of the local consumers' palate and behaviour, and then have the agility to execute our ideas with both speed and excellence - whether it's introducing local flavours to our iconic brands, innovative packaging to suit the local market, or creating limited edition gift packs for local festive occasions.

Takaki Hibino Executive Chairman Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific

DIVERSITY is a hotbed for creativity; only when our teams are truly diverse can we build an innovation culture. Our leaders must lead by example in encouraging and rewarding entrepreneurial thinking, looking beyond traditional qualifications and appreciating new ways of problem solving. This culture creates a pioneering mindset for our people to innovate across the entire business to meet the challenges of the digital economy and develop the best solutions for our clients. This is our philosophy of Good Innovation - Ideas that reach beyond the imaginable, Technology that crosses the bounds of possibilities and Entrepreneurship that surpasses the expected.

Raman Singh CEO Mundipharma

AT Mundipharma we believe innovation stems from empowering our people to think big, make decisions, try new ideas and not be afraid to fail. This requires creating a culture conducive to this mode of working, hiring great people and inspiring them - just knowing that their work helps Mundipharma touch the lives of millions of people every day is a powerful motivator. In addition, boundaries between industries are evolving - we are transforming from a healthcare business into a tech company that provides medicines, because we believe it is critical that the industry better harness the power of technology to drive innovation and ultimately deliver superior patient outcomes. It's a dynamic environment. I see innovative work being done all the time, and I'm hugely excited about the future.

Rob Bryson Managing Director - Singapore Robert Walters (Singapore) Pte Ltd

CREATING a culture that thirsts for and thrives on innovation goes beyond creating processes and borrowing best practices, for innovation is all about people.

Hiring a diverse pool of professionals from a range of backgrounds, yet share the values of the organisation, is the first step.

At Robert Walters, our innovation strategy starts with encouraging our staff to be open to new ways of thinking while staying focused on developing solutions.

Only then can we take a calibrated approach to test and trial emerging new technologies and harness their potential to increase our productivity, while maintaining the human touch of recruitment.

Magesvaran Suranjan President P&G Asia Pacific, India subcontinent, Middle East & Africa

IT IS imperative for organisations to constantly innovate on every level to keep up with the rapidly evolving expectations of consumers. One of the key elements of cultivating an innovation culture in an organisation is to bring together individuals from diverse backgrounds, cultures and thinking styles. This diversity will create the healthy tension which is key to deliver breakthrough innovations and business growth.

At P&G, innovation is ingrained in our DNA. Today, we are innovating the way we innovate. We apply the lean innovation model, which leverages both external and internal partnerships to co-create, share knowledge and unlock sources of growth in technologies, products, services or solutions. Our people are at the forefront of driving innovation and hence we continuously provide training so our employees can be exposed to different environments, capabilities, diverse people and, more importantly, different projects.

Leo Costes MD, Retail and Chief Customer Officer AXA Insurance

ANY employee in any role can harness innovation to make a difference in an organisation. This is something we strongly believe in at AXA and we strive to create an agile and collaborative culture that encourages the exchange of ideas and fosters an environment that drives innovation.

As a leader, I see it as my responsibility to create a culture that not only accepts but embraces failures so people feel comfortable to push themselves by taking risks and challenging the status quo. That is why we organise regular company-wide exchange sessions to share learnings from our successes and failures, and hackathons to create opportunities to innovate together.

But innovation also comes from learning different things or being exposed to different perspectives as "we don't know what we don't know". Hence, we invest in building the capabilities of our employees by exposing them to new ideas and ways of thinking such as through advanced learning programmes, inspirational talks and conferences.

Ho Chye Soon Country Manager, Singapore Nutanix

GREAT innovators are those who are comfortable with being uncomfortable, adaptable to change and able to balance paranoia with ambition for the future. The disrupters of yesterday can easily become the disruptees of tomorrow, so it's important that an organisation's culture encourages tenacity, courage and most importantly, action. Failures should be embraced as opportunities to learn and opinions should be voiced with brutal intellectual honesty so that every iteration churning in the innovation engine brings us closer to success.

That said, it's no good innovating using a scatter-gun approach. At Nutanix, we ask all our employees to start with why? Then how, then what. It helps us prioritise, be strategic and consider how innovation fits into the bigger picture. As insurgents, only then can you truly wage a war on behalf of customers to challenge the status quo.

Foo See Yang MD and Country Head, Singapore Kelly Services

AS workplaces rapidly transform, businesses must be flexible to keep pace with their competitors. They are increasingly looking towards skilled contingent workers to boost workplace innovation. Temporary staffing allows businesses to inject project-specific skills and innovation without the need for long-term commitment. This enables them to efficiently scale up talent only when required. Integrating temp hires into the workforce creates opportunities for knowledge and skills transfer to permanent employees - contributing to the larger innovation culture and ecosystem.

Contingent staff may have traditionally been seen as talent stopgaps, but they are playing an increasingly important role in the future workforce led by innovation.

Karl Hamann Chief Executive Officer QBE Insurance (Singapore) Pte Ltd

INNOVATION requires mindset change, a problem solving spirit and an openness to doing things differently. Just as important is the need for individuals to feel empowered to contribute. A collaborative culture that isn't beholden to bureaucracy forms a strong basis for the birth of new ideas. Business-wise, leaders should also be open to partnerships that deliver ready innovation to product or service delivery. This takes some of the pressure off them to do it all alone. For example, we recently partnered with Jupiter, a startup that predicts climate risks with up to 50 years of foresight. After investing early, we integrated their prediction capabilities into our underwriting policy processes, adding new value to our customers.

Mathias Kuepper Managing Director Koelnmesse Pte Ltd

THE key ingredients for businesses to encourage a culture of innovation are having an open mindset and a collaborative environment. No matter how established a business is, its people can always learn from what other industry players, partners and even competitors are doing to gain inspiration that will spark off innovation. For example, at our upcoming trade show, THAIFEX-World of Food Asia, we will be bringing experts and stakeholders from all around the world to discuss innovative food trends and technologies, and we believe sharing best practices is one of the most effective ways to inspire people to be excited about change.

Kelvin Lee Co-Founder & CEO Fundnel

INNOVATION and reinvention are vital for success in today's volatile business landscape. Leaders should remain open to new perspectives and ensure failure is not stigmatised, recognising both as essential steps in the pursuit of constant improvement. At Fundnel, this is enabled through an inclusive culture embedded in our corporate DNA, embodied in the form of an idea board open to all employees to contribute ideas for business improvement. Facilitating ideation across multiple functions at all levels of the organisation breaks down traditional barriers such as top-down communication that inhibits creativity, providing a conducive environment for novel, innovative ideas to thrive.

Vincent Goh SVP, Asia Pacific & Japan CyberArk

AN innovation culture starts with a clear mission. Unless employees - current or prospective - have a clear view of what the vision is and unless the company invests in it, innovation is impossible. With the structure in place, the people have the conditions to thrive. Aim to hire like-minded, passionate individuals. Give them time to work on "non work-related" interests or projects. Most importantly, allow failure. Fear of failure stifles innovation. At CyberArk, we endeavour to encourage every idea and support it until it's obvious that it's unviable. In the event of failures, we provide an environment where those who tried but failed are not humiliated and we embrace their effort.

Gibu Mathew VP and GM, Asia Pacific Zoho Corp

FREE-FLOW communication from the trenches to the top brews a culture of creativity and refinement that is essential in building great products and companies. With reimagined enterprise office software bringing in group messaging, online meetings, chatbots and news feeds, a new form of collaboration is breeding and blending digital natives and other employees internally. It breaks the silos in the way we think, act and work with others within the organisation. Make room for mistakes. Now that is an environment, for experimentation, which releases the creative juices in people that, in turn, calls for lesser micromanagement and more of self-driven targets, making for a well loved place to work too.

Pauline Goh Chairman, Southeast Asia CBRE

AS an industry, real estate is generally seen as conservative; we haven't been as agile as say, financial services in pushing for innovation. At its core, innovation is a mindset and a culture of innovation needs to start from the top. To accelerate innovation, we may need to think and operate like a startup, encouraging our people to pursue and prototype 'out-of-the-box' ideas with the confidence that the company will support them - whether they succeed or fail. Leaders need to walk the talk and lead by example in this journey. If we expect our teams to deliver the latest workplace app, we can impart our wealth of business experience during development and participate in beta testing. Only then can we develop the best possible digital platforms to create value for our clients and our staff.

Damien Dhellemmes Singapore Country President Schneider Electric

INNOVATION can only exist if corporations give employees the opportunity to create new ideas and the space to make mistakes when turning them into reality.

Taking care of staff well-being is paramount. At our office, we have installed hundreds of sensors to measure temperature, air quality, lighting and noise levels; then combined them with big data analytics to ensure optimum comfort levels at individual workspaces while reducing energy costs and maximising space utilisation.

Working in a comfortable environment enhances staff productivity while setting the stage for their creative juices to develop into the next innovation breakthrough.

Ambica Saxena Director and Head YSC Singapore

INNOVATION comes about when there is diversity in people and ideas. However, it is fundamental that organisations build safe environments where diversity is not only celebrated, but the notion of failing fast is embraced. Building these spaces requires that open-mindedness and resilience are ingrained into companies' DNA, so that differences are seen as strengths, and failures a chance to learn.

Identifying biases can also help spur change and innovation, as we've done in conscious inclusion workshops. Allowing staff to explore their own biases and self-awareness has resulted in organisational changes, such as our own "maternity coaching" that is now delivered to all staff, not just mothers, as parental coaching. This isn't possible if we only ask people to solve problems - true innovation comes about by fostering that culture of diversity and exploring the 'why' behind the things we do.

Stephen McNulty President, Asia Pacific and Japan Micro Focus

IN A competitive global market, innovation and agility can be a defining factor in determining the winning edge. Innovation is a team sport, requiring collaboration among functional business units to support a fully-digital enterprise. While IT operations have traditionally kept the business at arm's length, direct relationships with the leadership team can provide greater insight into change required - allowing agile, intelligent responses to new situations and improving the quality of domains such as security and app development.

As business leaders, we must also be willing to allow the teams to experiment and have their best ideas tested and refined - while adopting a pragmatic and agile approach.

Bijoy Mohan CEO LIXIL Asia Pacific

INNOVATION for us means solving everyday, real-life challenges, and making better homes a universal reality for everyone. As an organisation, innovation is rooted deeply as an ongoing process in one of our core LIXIL behaviours - 'Experiment & Learn'. I task my teams across the Asia Pacific region to pursue innovation by focusing on three filters: 1) The biggest innovations come not merely by meeting the needs of your customers, but by addressing those who do not buy your products today; 2) Say no to being a follower - be it products, business models or promotions; and 3) Disrupt ourselves before we are disrupted.

Steve Wood VP, Asia Pacific Japan Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company

AT Aruba, we are constantly changing the rules of networking in order to create smart digital experiences for our communities. In the current climate that thrives on mobile, cloud and IoT technology, we leverage on tech-enabled physical workspaces to facilitate collaboration across regions. We believe that by providing our employees with these next-generation tools, they are then empowered to create solutions that will shape the future of networking and solve critical business challenges.

We are firm believers in future-proofing businesses of tomorrow today, and as the future of work is defined by smarter work experiences, Aruba helps communities combine the right technology with the best workspace design to make that happen.

Cherian Varghese VP and MD, ASEAN and South Asian Growing Economies (SAGE) Oracle

WITH rapidly developing technology driving seismic change and disruption globally, businesses must either embrace this accelerated pace or risk being left behind. However, innovation is impossible without enterprise-wide change. This means taking stock and leveraging current assets - your brand, your customers, your technology needs and resources and the strengths and talents of your organisation - and investing in transformational technologies. An innovation culture is only successful when an organisation embraces it completely and reshapes the way it thinks and acts. Culture change needs to come from the top. Business leaders need to be the change agents, with one foot in technology and the other in the business, to drive innovation within the organisation.

BS Teh SVP, Global Sales and Sales Operations Seagate Technology

ORGANISATIONS need to look at innovation holistically so that they can tap on talent and skills across all levels and disciplines and not be limited to geographical borders to solve the challenges of tomorrow. This will then empower positive change for all stakeholders - customers, partners, employees and the local communities where they live and work. With 40 years of expertise at Seagate, we've learnt that cultivating a culture of innovation requires a concerted, global effort where everyone has a role to play. We recognise that the best innovations will come from the consolidated effort of learning from all our markets around the world. We invest in the right infrastructure and training to ensure we have access to a range of talent, which is an important part of how we work together every day. This is key at Seagate as we focus on developing innovative technologies to guide the transition towards future data ecosystem.

Lee Fook Chiew Chief Executive Officer Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants

AS the national accountancy body, ISCA constantly explores ways to foster innovation in the accountancy profession. In local accountancy SMEs, where having limited resources is one of the key challenges, fostering a culture of innovation enables the firms to solve problems creatively. To support our accountancy firms, we are ramping up efforts to curate digital solutions for local accountancy SMEs, as part of the government's SMEs Go Digital programme. ISCA is also working closely with the Singapore Accountancy Commission and IMDA to develop the Accountancy Industry Digital plan (IDP), which will be launched this year. The IDP helps local accountancy SMEs assess their digital readiness in different stages and support them in their digitalisation journey. ISCA also partners Enterprise Singapore to help local accountancy SMEs build capabilities and improve productivity under the Local Enterprise and Association Development (LEAD) programme.

Ian Lee CEO, Asia Pacific The Adecco Group

IT is critical for innovation culture to be incorporated into an organisation's strategy, be given prominence, and form a part of every individual's job. The organisation needs to be open to new ideas, constructive feedback, and listen to clients' changing needs both internally and externally. Innovation culture is often influenced by an organisation's leadership style so the leadership team needs to enhance organisation structure to enable collaboration across functions, provide resources such as a conducive space for teams to experiment and promote psychological safety in teams to encourage innovative thinking. The organisation should also embrace digital transformation and simplify policies and procedures to free up valuable time to facilitate the innovation process. A reward system, on top of the annual review, can be put in place to recognise teams and individuals who exhibit innovative thinking and outcomes.

James Brasher Managing Partner RICE

AN organisation needs to provide its people with the freedom to take risks, experiment and, potentially, fail. Without this mindset, people won't be comfortable pushing themselves - and the organisation - into uncharted territory. When the leadership within a company doesn't promote a culture of risk taking, innovation will be slower as fewer people are inclined to do things differently.

We operate a dual organisation structure where a traditional hierarchy sits alongside a more "network" structure. We find that the hierarchy is great for managing the operations of the business as it's predictable, efficient and reliable. However, it constrains innovation. The network empowers anyone within the company to drive changes, improvements and innovations without having to deal with the bureaucracy usually associated with a hierarchy.

Paul Henaghan VP, Data Centre Solutions, APJ Dell EMC

THE building blocks of an innovation culture encourage everyone in an organisation to bring their ideas to the table. A forward-thinking and innovative company will foster a culture that's founded on the collective entrepreneurial spirit and creativity of its talent to drive better outcomes for the organisation, its customers and society.

At Dell, we believe in a strong stance on diversity and inclusion so that we can encourage contrasting opinions, new ideas and a healthy culture that looks and sounds like our customers. We encourage our team members to find new ways to work and offer flexible work solutions to support them; and as a result, attracting the best talent capable of delivering breakthrough performance. Above all, we have preserved our entrepreneurial mindset to create customer-focused innovations and instil agility as we navigate shifting market conditions.

Grace Park Co-Founder & President DocDoc Pte Ltd

EVALUATE every aspect of the organisation that competes with or is in opposition to an innovation culture and modify wherever possible. Remove the blockers. Hire people who are not in search of a task list to complete but who have demonstrated how to solve problems. Ensure your processes are set up for innovation to take place. Do you need every department head's approval for any idea to move forward? Set up a budget that does allow for iterative learning. This is a start. As the business leader, you are setting the example for colleagues to emulate, and if authentic and inspiring, they will follow suit.

Ramakrishna P CEO CIO Academy Asia

BUILDING an innovation culture will take more than a dressed down code, foosball tables in the pantry area and colourful beanbags in meeting rooms. These gestures are skin-deep. What is most critical in creating a sustained innovation drive is senior management commitment and example in embedding innovation into its corporate culture. For instance, management's reaction to failures, which is critical for innovation, particularly in adopting the lean methodology to start small and act fast, will be more telling than the rhetoric of not fearing failures. In empowering staff to be innovative, leaders must have the right HR policy in place so that staff taking novel approaches to solving business or a technological problem are duly rewarded. The infusion of innovation into current corporate culture is a difficult task and requires leaders to move beyond cosmetic changes in office layout or putting together a small team to drive "innovation" in the organisation.

Isaac Ho Co-Founder Ark

TO cultivate an innovation culture, it is essential for an organisation to know and focus on the purpose of innovation. Innovation is a key catalyst for the growth and success of any company, but it is only truly impactful when it solves real-world problems. At Ark, our mission is to deliver real solutions that save lives. We bring innovation to the workplace by encouraging nimble, inter-disciplinary thinking and collaboration across business units and functional teams working together to deliver early cancer detection solutions so that late-stage cancer can be eliminated by 2048.

Tan Swee Yiow President Singapore Green Building Council

BEYOND traditional building and construction methods, the incorporation of innovative green building solutions - from offering sustainability as a service to novel applications of renewable and low carbon materials, as well as using revolutionary ways to design and construct our buildings - bring about significant benefits for both building occupants and the natural environment.

Over the past decade, the advancements in green building design, practices and technologies that drive environmental sustainability in the building and construction industry would not have been possible if industry pioneers did not step out of their comfort zones and dared to innovate. Applying this to the workplace, innovation needs to be encouraged, whether for incremental or exponential change. By fostering such a culture, employees would feel empowered to approach workplace challenges with innovative, creative solutions.

Dileep Nair Independent Director Thakral Corporation Limited

THE core meaning of innovation is renewal. For such renewal to take place, people must change the way they make decisions; they must choose to do things differently and go outside their comfort zone. Cultivating such an innovative mindset starts with the company's leadership - the Board and top management. They must educate themselves on the company's business, its strengths and vulnerabilities, and stay on top of latest developments. Likewise, employees must be encouraged to submit new ideas that challenge the status quo. Promoting such a "capacity to think" must be accompanied by a "freedom to fail" so that management is seen "to walk the talk". Listening to suppliers and vendors is yet another source of ideas for an innovation culture to take root. Ultimately, survival depends on anticipating change and responding with innovation.

Alice Bentinck Co-Founder Entrepreneur First

IN my view, innovation cannot happen without risk and ambition. We need to be ambitious and aim sky high, and then cultivate a culture where people get that it is ok to take risks and fail. That's part of the innovation process.

Conventional wisdom has it that it's important to "get it right the first time". But that's not going to fuel innovation. People should believe that it is OK to fail the first time, learn from it, and become stronger. This ambitious and risk-taking mentality is what drives many of the world's most innovative and influential entrepreneurs and companies.

Peter Hamilton VP & Regional Director, APAC Kelly Outsourcing and Consulting Group

BUILDING a culture of innovation requires leaders who understand that change starts with themselves. Innovation is never the sole responsibility of R&D teams. The best ideas come from employees across all levels as multiple perspectives foster creativity. This means that leaders need to hire the best talent and build a diverse workforce because no culture can be innovative without great people. Identifying, recruiting, and retaining the right talent to fuel innovation requires new thinking. With one-third of global workers being free agents, an organisation's ability to attract the best talent would mean breaking down old notions of work and offering different work styles for changing employee preferences. Organisations that cater to diverse work preferences will see better success in the innovation race.

Dev Dhiman MD, Southeast Asia and Emerging Markets Experian

AT Experian we foster and inspire a culture of innovation to create opportunities to address real world issues faced by both our customers and consumers. It is this commitment that led us to launch Experian X Labs - our innovation centre based in Singapore focused on solving Asia Pacific challenges through data science and engineering excellence. Additionally, our unique Marketplaces offering helps accelerate financial inclusion by matching consumer financial solutions through alternative data to the millions of unbanked in South-east Asia. We also recognise that our ecosystem partners play a part in innovation: beyond funding, one crucial element of our innovation investments is to provide our partners with our global expertise and insight.

Andrew Bunn Area Manager for Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia Emirates

EMIRATES has always focused its efforts on innovation and creating a better travel experience, end to end. While in recent years we have established an innovation ecosystem, with our own in-house Emirates Innovation Lab, and partnerships with leading institutions and incubators, such as Carnegie Mellon and Aviation X-Lab, we have also always believed in harnessing the power of our own people who bring great ideas to us. Emirates IdeasHub is an internal programme that enables any employee to pitch an idea that will increase revenue, save costs, improve efficiency, or overcome a challenge. Our talented and diverse teams hail from over 160 countries, and are a deep source of ideas, which have in one way or another enabled us to introduce several industry-firsts, from our game-changing Boeing 777 First Class Private Suites featuring fully-enclosed cabins, to our iconic A380 Onboard Lounge which was first introduced in 2008. These innovations afford continuous personalisation and redefine the travel experience of our customers around the world, including Singapore, from the time of booking till the journey is completed.

Sebastian Mueller Chief Operating Officer MING Labs

AN innovation culture exhibits high degrees of trust, autonomy and mastery. Teams are enabled and capable. To that extent, organisational structure, behaviours and values are more important than anything else.

Companies need to break down silos - both between teams and towards their customers. They need to trust their people to do a great job. They need to give them the freedom and autonomy to do so. And they need to provide the vision to work towards.

With those basics in place, people will start looking for the best solutions to serve customers. That will lead to innovation.

Ho Yat-Wai Singapore Country Manager American Express

AMERICAN Express' vision is to provide the world's best customer experience every day. To fulfill this promise, we are constantly innovating, not just to meet the evolving needs of our customers, but to consistently exceed their expectations. As leaders, we try to foster a culture of innovation by encouraging diversity of thought and collaboration with colleagues from across our business. We have an annual global award for innovation to celebrate teams who have developed products and services that enhance customer experiences and are aligned with the company's growth strategy. In addition, we continue to build upon our global competitive advantage by using our global assets to develop differentiated products and services for our Card Members. It is in our DNA for the past 169 years to put our customers at the heart of everything we do, and we continue to do this to stay at the forefront of innovation in financial services.

Yeo Mui Hong Chief Executive Orchard Turn Developments

LOOKING back at the last 10 years, doing things differently has been key to ION Orchard's success as one of Singapore's most iconic malls. As experiential retail takes off, we are committed to offering immersive, interactive and technology-enhanced experiences that continually delight shoppers. These include a one-of-its-kind digital art exhibition on Versailles, as well as Orchard Road's first live bird shows, aerial performance, light and sound garden, and butterfly dome, to name a few. Come April, we will unveil an aquarium featuring a mermaid for our Spring/Summer campaign. We also use QR codes and mobile apps to enhance the shopping journey. Innovation will continue to be an integral part of our culture as ION Orchard enters its second decade.

Kong Wan Sing Founder and CEO JustCo

TO cultivate an innovation culture, keeping an open mindset is necessary - embracing new ideas, experimenting, seeking partnerships to do things differently. Co-working is a new model of working, one that fosters innovation and collaboration amongst like-minded individuals and companies. At JustCo, innovation is at the heart of all that we do across various teams, from designing smart workplaces, incorporating technology to build more efficient processes to curating startup incubator programmes such as our JustCo Lab in partnership with TRIVE. The essence of a co-working space is the community and its people. Connections, conversations and collaborations open doors to new ideas to help us achieve greater things as an organisation, and make work better.

Celine Landie Managing Director Novartis Singapore and Emerging Asian Countries

AT Novartis, we unleash the power of our people to drive innovation. From developing breakthrough medicines to collaborating with digital start-ups to achieve better patient outcomes, our business is built upon teams with diverse experiences and leaders who lead with curiosity. We cultivate a corporate atmosphere that encourages everyone to ask "Why not?" to challenge fixed mindsets, develop healthy risk appetites and make room for innovation and discovery. To foster an innovative-oriented culture, companies must give employees the freedom to develop new ideas without fear, provide the right infrastructure to test these new approaches and recognise teams and individuals for their courage to innovate.

Jayajyoti Sengupta Head of Asia-Pacific and Japan Cognizant

INNOVATION is not just about ideas; it's about converting them into tangible benefits. We believe 'innovation = idea + implementation + benefits', where the absence of any one of these elements will make innovation unattainable. Most organisations equate innovation with dollar-spends in R&D. However, the more important part is to create a culture of innovation. The fast-changing world of business today demands an activist approach to shaping this culture. One should create an ecosystem that's not fail-safe, but one where it's safe to fail. Motivating right-brained people from diverse backgrounds to innovate within a left-brained environment calls for a different set of reward and recognition mechanisms.

Ronald JJ Wong Director/Shareholder Covenant Chambers LLC

INNOVATION is the outcome of a culture of honest constructive feedback from stakeholders and a determination of internal stakeholders to constantly improve.

Mario Singh CEO Fullerton Markets

IT is important for business leaders and entrepreneurs to have a spirit of innovation. The data speaks for itself: out of the Fortune 500 companies present in 1955, only 60 remained in 2017. In recent years, big names like Kodak, Toys R Us and Borders have also gone belly up.

In my opinion, one of the best models for driving innovation is the Disney Creative Strategy. I find it very effective and use it every year for my company planning with my heads of departments. The strategy involves having three different groups of people called the Dreamer, the Realist and the Critic. The strategy is to have the Dreamer come up with disruptive ideas to propel the company forward. The Realist will plan the execution and the Critic's job is to point out weaknesses in the ideas and plans. This strategy is one of the best to drive a culture of innovation in the workplace.

Zhou Junjie Chief Commercial Officer Shopee

AT Shopee, we believe that innovation in today's economy requires a diverse workforce equipped with interdisciplinary expertise and problem-solving skills. We harness their knowledge by creating an open office with minimal dividers and where managers sit alongside their teams. Employees are encouraged to share their ideas freely with anyone and implement initiatives that promote greater productivity and growth. Culture begins at the top; my role is to empower my teams, facilitate ideation and create an environment where people are comfortable to speak up. Together, we can continually invent new and exciting strategies and features for our users.

Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen SVP & GM, Asia Pacific & Japan Red Hat

A CULTURE of transparency, openness and collaboration is essential for driving innovation in an organisation. An open culture empowers employees to speak up openly across hierarchical lines and contest ideas. There are extremely talented people in the world who may not be leaders in their companies. By finding them and creating a platform for them to flourish, you can innovate so much better and faster. Being open to those people who may bypass ranks and hierarchies will be quite a transformation. That is why my top priority in Asia Pacific is to stay unique and maintain our open culture in a fast-growing organisation that operates in a fast-growing, complex region.

Prakash Govindan Co-founder and CTO Gradiant Corporation

AN in-depth understanding of market fundamentals, open-mindedness, curiosity, collaboration, and diversity of thought are vital ingredients to cultivate innovation, collectively facilitating the discovery and ideation of novel approaches to solve business challenges. We've incorporated these elements into our workflow at Gradiant, often collaborating with research institutions such as NTU, NEWRI, START, ERI@N, NUS, and other industry players for insights into current trends and technologies to improve upon our existing solutions. Moreover, our team comprises a healthy mix of Singaporean and global talent with diverse perspectives leading to some of our most innovative, impactful technologies in the wastewater industry.

Joanne Joynson-Hewlett CFO Pocketmath

WITHOUT a culture of innovation within an organisation, the kind of out-the-box thinking needed to disrupt the status quo or enable entirely new ways of doing things is impossible. One of the essential ingredients is to do with this idea that great products are always built by entrepreneurs who were their own first customers. In other words, they wanted something that didn't yet exist, so they built it themselves. In the workplace, we inspire this thinking - getting inside our customers' context and spotting opportunities before they see them. Thinking this way allows us to identify gaps in the adtech market. In short, stay close to your customers - and always one step ahead.

Alex Jeffrey Head of Asia Pacific M&G Asia

TO foster a truly innovative culture, the team must strike a balance between management of the business today alongside building the future. Overemphasis of the "now" makes innovation nearly impossible. It is up to leadership to establish this balance by removing the silos between functions that crush forward-thinking. Leaders must hypothesise on what the next frontiers might be - and inspire their entire team to do the same.

Allan Tan Managing Partner Ying Communications

OVER the last 18 years working with tech companies, we've noticed that the most innovative businesses are led by people who distinguish between "problem space" and "solution space". Successful innovators play with gusto in the former, willing to challenge all past assumptions about what the market needs, while laggards spend almost all of their resources on the latter, optimising what they already offer. Yes, innovation is culture, not a product: we've seen that companies that buy innovative businesses in an attempt to shortcut the journey often end up wasting their money, if they haven't fixed their own cultures first.

Getty Goh Co-Founder and Executive Chairman CoAssets Pte Ltd

HIRING the right people with drive and creative thinking skills is a first step forward; and do it fast before other companies hire them! Companies want talented staff who can exchange ideas and find the right innovative approach so that you will not be left behind with old-fashioned culture and operating systems. Be willing to approach other companies or tech providers to innovate - invest or acquire startups that have innovative approaches to very specific problems but don't have the cash to scale or develop clever ideas. Keep lines of communication open because the best ideas may come from far down the rungs; don't keep innovation at executive level - allow a forum or feedback email for everyone to contribute ideas. Last but not least: Be willing to fail or rather, don't be afraid to waste time and capital resource in taking what you thought were good ideas to developmental stage, and only to fail. Companies must have an experimental sandbox attitude; only then will they keep up with the times and profit from the hard work that went into innovating.

Ana Dhoraisingam CEO, Singapore PineBridge Investments

IN order to create a culture that wants to innovate and grow, companies and their leadership have to create an ecosystem where people are not afraid to try and fail. Only with failure will come true learning, which can then be applied to innovation. By nature, innovation carries two key components - experimental and risk. We believe it is important to establish a mindset that encourages employees to innovate in the workplace, and not be afraid to embrace failure and change. Having a diverse and inclusive corporate culture allows companies to leverage off this for innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. Without collaboration, innovation will mean little to companies.

Martin Lim Chief Executive Officer Electrify

DISRUPTION is a certainty in today's fast-moving economy, making innovation vital to success. We believe successful innovation begins with an in-depth understanding of real-world challenges, facilitating the development of solutions that address the root of the issue, and are also compliant to regulatory and technological limitations. For instance, we have our Synergy platform that enables peer-to-peer energy transfers across the national grid, providing consumers with an efficient method of transacting electricity in line with existing technology and trends. At Electrify, collaboration and diversity are both proven methods that spark novel ways of perceiving a problem - the very origin of innovation.

Chua Hock Leng Managing Director, Singapore Pure Storage

FOR a company to build an innovation culture, a few things are required. First is the curiosity to understand business issues and develop out-of-the-box solutions to address them. Employees also need to feel like they can fail without severe repercussions. Not all innovations work out but if you don't try, you will never know. Lastly, all employees should feel empowered to contribute, from CEOs to executives. Great ideas are not the monopoly of the elite and we encourage innovation at every level.

Our team at Pure Storage works alongside our partners to address challenging problems faced by many large organisations in Singapore. This requires creativity and breakthrough ideas every day - which is challenging but satisfying when the customer's problem is solved.

Chris J Reed Global CEO and Founder The Dark Art of Marketing and Black Marketing

NOT by hackathons, beanbags and Apple Macs. Innovation comes from entrepreneurs iterating, innovating and trying new things out. Not being afraid to fail and learning. But this comes from your leaders and your culture and mostly from startups and SMEs, not MNCs who just play the PR game in a monopoly space like large telco/power/real estate/finance companies do here here.

Innovation comes from a customer need, a product or service that needs refining/adding/reinventing and the leader's ability to drive change through the organisation and get customers/finance on side. You need a Jack Ma/Steve Jobs/Elon Musk to make innovation happen. You rarely see those people in Singaporean companies too worried about share prices, not losing face, shareholder value and winning pointless awards.

Helen Ng Chief Executive Officer Lock+Store

TO foster an innovation culture at the workplace, organisations need to emancipate their workforce from the shackles of routine. Innovation is inherently spontaneous; as such, do not set goals but seed ideas. All employees should be empowered to lead and drive innovation. Some employees may need help with articulating and presenting their ideas, while others may need help with staying focused. We spark innovation over impromptu team lunches and games sessions in our organisation. From reducing customer response times to developing out-of-the-box self-storage offerings, all creative ideas are welcome. Ideas with a clear impact on productivity will fast-track to the next stage of review and implementation.

Calvin Goh Founder and CEO Koku

AS we're a growing fintech startup, innovation is crucial for our business' competitiveness. Koku takes a holistic approach towards a culture of constant innovation trickling down from our people, processes and to our technology.

We believe in hiring people who bring a balance of professionalism, creativity and an open mindset to make a positive change. We also actively encourage the exchange of ideas and learnings across teams, hierarchies and industry peers. Being in a fast-paced industry offers its own complex challenges, but equally also offers opportunities for quick learning and adaptation; an open feedback channel with our partners helps accelerate our understanding of their perspectives for continuous innovation.

At Koku, we marry innovation with a digital-first mindset, enabling partners to provide real-impact offerings to their customers.

Joanne Wong Senior Regional Director for Asia Pacific & Japan LogRhythm

FOR innovation to take place, we believe developing and attracting a diversity of talents is vital. At LogRhythm, we are invested in helping organisations reduce their cyber risks. We start by automating tasks and implementing analytics so that our employees can focus on ideation. Since our company was founded in 2003, we have evolved from monitoring logs to having pioneered new solutions that leverage AI to automate threat detection and response. This is also complemented by our customer-centric approach where we constantly seek out customers' pain points to ensure they constantly stay ahead of cybercriminals whose methods of attacks have also been evolving.

Tan Yoong Heng Singapore Office Leader Arup

CULTIVATING innovation culture is about encouraging and providing opportunities for people to challenge the status quo to achieve the best solution or outcome. We need to empower people and provide opportunities for trial and error, encourage integrated team collaboration, and reward innovative ideas that create new value.

At Arup, our Foresight + Research + Innovation team helps our clients and internal teams understand trends, explore new ideas, and identify future markets. As an employee-owned firm, we have the freedom to allocate investment funds that staff can apply for, with the aim of supporting creativity, collaboration, and innovation from ground up. Ultimately, the most important thing to remember is that innovation is part of everybody's job.

Snehal Patel CEO & Co-Founder MyDoc Pte Ltd

IT'S essential that leadership recognises the value of innovation in terms beyond just revenue. Innovation is about a process of structured learnings, where continuous learning and improvement is the goal.

Organisations must formally change their incentive structure to spur innovation. When individuals are asked to be creative, but are measured solely against structural KPIs, they'll often take the safe route and create new products and services that are simply tangents to existing products and services.

Organisations must create environments where the leaders need to embody and celebrate innovation at the highest levels and protect employees from being sucked into daily operations at the expense of innovation opportunities. This could mean dedicated blocks of time for non-traditional work (eg 20 per cent of the time), creating dedicated internal innovation teams, introducing quarterly innovation rotation programmes, and finding ways to inject critical analysis into the status quo.

Eddie Ang General Manager Lenovo Singapore

FOR me, there are three key aspects to focus on when cultivating an innovative workplace culture - customers, culture and tools. This is how Lenovo enabled a massive internal cultural transformation from a product-focused company, to one that puts our customers at the heart of our innovations.

That said, change isn't easy, and this evolution needs to be driven from the top. Not only should all levels of the organisation be aware of what needs to be done, they must also be empowered to do them. That's why Lenovo emphasises the importance of embedding customer centricity throughout the entire organisation by implementing cultural changes, such as training programmes and setting KPIs with our customers in mind. Furthermore, we continuously leverage emerging technologies including machine learning and analytics as tools to keep our employees - the true innovators - empowered and inspired.

Craig Nielsen Vice-President McAfee

BUSINESS leaders need to recognise that the best innovation is sparked by the confluence of diverse perspectives. This is vital in the cybersecurity industry where a volatile cyber threat landscape necessitates an ever evolving approach to combat rapid advances in cyberattack methodology. An essential step for driving innovation is the development of an organisational culture where every team member is able and encouraged to share their opinions and feedback to drive continuous improvement. This is practised extensively at McAfee, where we have established multiple channels to facilitate open, bottom-up communication, ensuring ideation is not limited to heads of organisations.

Chia Ngiang Hong President Real Estate Developers' Association of Singapore (REDAS)

IN this digital age, to compete successfully in today's challenging business environment, companies have to be at the forefront of technologies and innovation.

With demographic shift and lifestyle changes, there is a notable demand for differentiation in product branding and design to accommodate varying housing and social needs as well as lifestyle preferences.

As more real estate firms integrate technological innovations such as artificial intelligence, robotics and synthetic biology into their business processes, innovation should be infused in all aspects of our business operations - from organisational structure and recruitment strategy to corporate communication with external and internal customers. Indeed, innovation should be a culture and a part of everyone's mindset and responsibility.

With innovative performance as a crucial determinant of competitiveness and economic progress, a co-ordinated, collaborative national strategic roadmap is also required to foster nation-wide adoption to enhance its overall economic impact.

Ali Azarian Head of South Asia Rackspace Asia

AT Rackspace, innovation and disruption have been part of our DNA. It's the genesis of the mantra of 'Fanatical Experience' which we are famous for. The idea goes back to the company's earliest days, when Rackers were empowered to do whatever necessary, not just to solve customers' challenges but to make a difference to businesses that perform life-saving research, power cities, and feed millions.

In the same way, Rackspace as a business is committed to fostering a diverse, motivated workforce. Every Racker is encouraged to bring their true authentic selves to work every day. If they can come here and bring who they truly are, they can bring their best to our customers.

This is why employees are encouraged to satisfy their curiosity, come as they are and make a difference with various programmes like Rackspace University, Rack Gives Back, to name a few. As business leaders, we believe in strong advocacy to inspire our individual pillars - the employees - to better understand their purpose and the crucial roles they play in not just our customers, but the world.

Peh Yi Han Chief Operating Officer Global EduHub Pte Ltd

MANY successful businesses have been created by combining good ideas with great execution. An environment where teams are motivated to generate ideas and experiment with new ways of doing things is key. As innovation usually involves challenging the status quo, leaders need to keep an open mind and create a culture where making mistakes is not taboo. At Global EduHub, we embrace mistakes as learning opportunities for our staff, enroute to attaining the desired end goals. We also regard constraints not as obstacles but opportunities for us to think creatively to come up with alternative solutions.

Dolly Goh CEO Singapore National Co-operative Federation (SNCF)

A GREATER sense of purpose can foster innovation as it makes finding solutions a priority. For example, the formation of Co-operative of Singapore Civil Defence Force Employees (COSEM) and Premier Security Co-operative were the culmination of the efforts of the officers to think creatively of new ways to solve a pressing issue - finding jobs for those retired from SCDF and the police force respectively. To bring innovation to the workplace, we need to welcome new, bold ideas and have a positive attitude to challenges, even failure. At SNCF, we work with schools to set up coop clubs, providing an environment where students can innovate, take risks and build resilience when running a business with a focus on social good. Likewise, innovation can be inculcated in the organisational culture by providing employees with an environment that embraces new ideas and new ways of doing things, and does not penalise ideas and execution that fail, but encourages staff to learn from these failures and continue to innovate.

Lim Soon Hock Managing Director PLAN-B ICAG Pte Ltd

COMPANIES which have an innovation culture often have a 2x2 Growth Matrix in place. It constitutes a strategic framework that compels a company to innovate, strategise and to focus on corporate development. It is so fundamental for a company to achieve sustained growth, yet most companies do not invest enough time to explore new ways of generating new businesses from new products and new markets.

This 2x2 Growth Matrix drives the boards and management of companies to continously review what needs to be done for current products for current markets, current products for new markets, new products for current markets and new products for new markets. All these will require innovation by way of clearly defined and articulated road maps for new products or services and technologies, as well as systems and processes to improve yield, reduce costs, minimise cycle time of production, enhance quality and reliability as well as customer satisfaction. Through cross-selling and up-selling, companies can make the investments in capabilities and capacity work harder for shareholders.

Companies such as Apple (the iPhone is now an indispensable camera), Grab (the company now offers delivery services and a new suite of financial services) and Razer (which has started e-payments and software services to complement its core business of gaming hardware) are adept at leveraging on a 2x2 Growth Matrix to drive innovations to generate new businesses and to stay ahead of the game.

Companies have no choice but to implement the 2x2 Growth Matrix if they are to emulate the success of Apple, Grab and Razer.

Lionel Lim VP and MD, APAC and Japan Pivotal

CREATING a culture of innovation is an organisation-wide effort. Every employee must do their part to cultivate a collaborative culture where barriers between teams are broken down and opinion sharing is encouraged. This is how the foundation for innovative thinking is formed.

Collaboration lies at the heart of what we do here at Pivotal. In line with our value of "Always being kind", we emphasise on empathy and ensure no friction exists between our numerous teams. This is achieved by establishing well-defined collaboration frameworks where proper forums to communicate are established, on top of constant reminders to be psychologically safe to each other.

Alan Watts President, Asia Pacific Hilton

SINGAPORE'S commitment towards building a Smart Nation has earned it a reputation of having one of the strongest innovation ecosystems in the region. This incentivises both public and private organisations to adopt a technology-forward mindset. Changi Airport, for example, is well-recognised globally for its use of digital technology to enable seamless immigration clearance and a dynamic retail space that meets evolving consumer preferences.

At Hilton, innovation is an integral part of our DNA and we see it as a driver of greater productivity as well as customer and brand loyalty.For 100 years, we have led through innovation, starting from being product-focused such as introducing the concept of airport hotels and colour televisions in rooms, to now being digitally-led through tools such as Digital Check-in and Digital Key which enable guests greater personalisation including selecting their desired hotel room and unlocking their room door through their mobile phones.

Chris Burton MD, South-East Asia Vistra Group

IN THE information age, innovation manifests itself predominantly around technology, as connectivity between people and devices changes our lives at an ever-increasing rate. The problem is that traditional "analog" businesses (such as corporate services) find it challenging to innovate, because the potential impacts of more sophisticated technology solutions are difficult for staff to understand and deploy in their work. Vistra is focusing its innovation through specific "digital labs", putting together business people with IT analysts to work through problems together, isolated to some extent from business as usual. Innovation should be moved from the day-to-day into more creative, risk-free environments where new ideas can be sandboxed - without recrimination, as some of these will inevitably not succeed. Clear senior management support for this experimentation culture, which to some degree goes against traditional P&L maximisation objectives, is critical.

Lieu Yew Fatt Managing Director Omron Electronics

CREATING an innovation-driven culture begins by making it a core part of a company's vision. Improving lives and contributing to a better society is at the heart of what we do at Omron. In over 80 years, that has led to innovations such as the world's first automated railway ticket gate system, cutting-edge mobile robots to create safer and more efficient factories, and healthcare devices that help prevent heart attacks and strokes.

The Omron Automation Centre in Singapore is an innovation space that encourages that same spirit. The facility allows employees to express their creativity, transform ideas into solutions and collaborate with industry stakeholders such as MNCs and startups. It's by keeping to our vision that we continue to innovate for our society and workplace.

Dan Marjanovic Singapore Office Country Head Simmons & Simmons

INNOVATION is critical to remaining relevant in business. But we can't simply mandate being innovative. It is principally the output of two core elements: a culture that supports creativity and the people, process and tools that allow ideas to be developed. For business leaders, being open to encouraging and supporting their people to be creative and explore new opportunities is essential, but from a business perspective, balancing that with the need to develop the process by which those opportunities are commercialised while mitigating the risk of failure. This is the approach we have adopted, with the overarching objective of being able to continue to improve the way we deliver value to our clients.

Michael Maltese Director of Innovation, Asia Pacific, Japan and China (APJC) Cisco

GREAT ideas can come from anywhere. So innovation needs to be part of an open ecosystem and not in private R&D labs. There are three essential factors that accelerate innovation. Firstly, forming local and global partnerships with industry partners, startups, government organisations and universities to build trust, exchange knowledge and create shared value. At Cisco, we believe in the power of creative collaboration to transform ideas into impact. That is why we nurture a space called 'co'-innovation centres - to highlight the importance of co-creating together toward outcomes that improve business and society.

Secondly, keeping people at the heart of open innovation. The integration of innovative technology and imaginative people who are laser-focused on a common goal will drive infinite possibilities in problem solving. By embracing and empowering diverse perspectives, we can accelerate the implementation of inspiring and creative ideas through a "test and learn" approach. All of this comes down to fostering empathy. As new challenges arise and needs evolve, we need to be agile in identifying and prioritising pain points. The human side of innovation is what will carry us into the digital future, and together we can bridge the gap between hope and possibility.

Kartik Krishnamurthy Managing Director, Asia Cornerstone OnDemand

AS we accelerate into the digital age, innovation remains a crucial component of an organisation's success and competitive edge. However, with 77 per cent of CEOs finding it challenging to find talent with creative and innovative skillsets, cultivating this culture will remain one of the biggest challenges for companies in the years to come.

At Cornerstone, we believe that when employees are encouraged by their leaders to learn new skills and think creatively, all they will need is the confidence and resources to pursue their ideas, before they begin to approach problems through an innovative lens. This can be through discovering new ways to rekindle an employee's passion at work through new and creative projects, fostering diversified collaborations across the workplace, or simply - just allowing them to fail.

Narong Chong Chief Operating Officer Uppsala Security

INNOVATION cannot thrive in a vacuum; in today's global environment, we are witnessing the power of many - the wisdom and strength of crowds not only in spearheading new initiatives, but also in providing the support needed to turn those ideas into a reality.

This is especially evident in the technology landscape. Many users are still taking a reactive and defensive posture to addressing security incidents, isolating and containing threats internally - leaving other players, and the ecosystem at large, vulnerable. Tapping on the community, however, can result in the sharing of collective intelligence and innovation to create solutions, to ensure a secure cybersecurity ecosystem for all.

Within our own organisation, we promote open communication and the exchange of ideas among team members of all roles and designations through inter-departmental collaboration. Recently, we had a junior team member spearhead the development of our latest crypto analysis and tracking visualisation tool, which gives users the ability to track the movement of stolen cryptocurrencies in real time.

Matt Kovac Executive Director Food Industry Asia

WHETHER it's small scale or breakthrough innovation, any organisation serious about innovating needs to encourage experimentation and not to fear failure - otherwise a "let's play it safe mentality" will be pervasive.

But innovating also requires discipline and hard work, and ensuring that individuals have a sense of ownership to give them confidence to try new things that are different from business as usual so ideas can have a chance to develop into practical solutions.

Leaders in the organisation should proactively seek to eradicate micromanagement in order for these new ideas to have any chance of flourishing into new innovations.

Tan Mui Huat President and CEO, Asia International SOS

SUCCESSFUL organisations are all about continuous innovation. International SOS is a child of innovation - we pioneered a new industry to provide medical and security risk solutions. Half of what we were doing 10 years ago, we no longer do; nevertheless we grew our business by a factor of four.

Innovation needs to be the DNA of the organisation and driven from the top. As an organisation, we place innovation at the heart of our development and continually promote and recognise an innovation mindset among our employees. Innovative ideas must be encouraged and failures must be accepted. We also prioritise investment in technology which is central to the way we innovate, operate and provide services to our clients' mobile workforce all over the world. Many of our solutions were borne out of this innovation culture to meet our clients' needs better and more efficiently, eg TravelTracker which allows clients to quickly locate and communicate with their employees especially in a crisis, and to render assistance if required.

Hari V Krishnan CEO PropertyGuru Group

TWO tenets of PropertyGuru's values-driven culture are: 'Push beyond Good' and 'Create what's Next'. As a high-growth technology company, innovation and having a culture of experimentation in all you do is infused in our DNA and operational framework - the 'how' is as important as the result itself. We operationalise this further by creating platforms that give employees the oxygen for innovation such as our biannual 'Guru Hackathon' - not just Product and Technology teams but everyone gets an opportunity to contribute, innovate and impact change - and our regular 'GuruHour' peer to peer learning sessions. The impetus for all this stems from PropertyGuru being purpose-driven: our goal is to solve customer problems in the property market and using latest technology we reimagine solutions for the ideal state, and not just iterate the status quo.

Darryl McKinnon VP and MD, APJ Puppet

CULTURE is not organic - leaders need to be extremely deliberate about their approach towards creating a culture that drives innovation and growth. Recognising the importance of embracing differences in people and knowing how to connect the dots amongst the differences to get the best outcomes is critical to an innovative culture.

At Puppet, we understand the importance of embracing and leveraging differences in people. It is vital for leaders to continuously foster a commitment amongst team members to embrace an innovative mindset - be it empowering them to create their personal and group workspaces or by providing them with education and training opportunities to expand their knowledge base and skillsets. Leaders play a critical role in empowering teams to make decisions for the better of themselves and the organisation.

Lance Little Managing Director Roche Diagnostics Asia Pacific

HEALTHCARE digitalisation brings immense innovation opportunities - especially in the space of personalised medicine - that can help address increasingly ageing populations and reduced budgets. However, to cultivate an innovation culture that maximises these opportunities, organisations need to be built for it. As a pioneer in healthcare, Roche Diagnostics has a business model equipped to facilitate a relentless and bold pursuit of innovation. This includes the way we seek and fund innovations, empower employees for decision making and how we approach innovation. Leaders must also encourage the richness of ideas from their people and continually invest in them, so innovations can come to fruition and provide value to as many patients as possible.

Marcus Tan Co-founder and President Carousell

AN innovation culture starts with underlying values. Our values were sparked by our life-changing experience in Silicon Valley, where we attended classes at Stanford University and worked at fast-growing technology startups. We experienced a culture that values problem-solving and being mission-first. At Carousell, as we scale from 3 to now 300, we foster those values as deliberately as possible.

It starts with articulating those values into our guiding principles, "Solve Problems" and "Be Mission First", leading by example and encouraging one another to live them, and implementing programmes to foster and reward that culture. We hold CarouHack twice a year, an internal product building competition that sparks creativity and empowerment. Anyone can suggest an idea to work across different functions and build something meaningful for our users.

Magnus Grimeland Founder and CEO Antler

INNOVATION comes from exceptional people and teams that are given the right freedom and ownership to drive change. For Antler this is the core of what we do; for larger organisations one needs to enable this within or even better, partner with the right entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Andrew Tan Managing Director JOS Singapore

PROMOTING and encouraging a culture of innovation within a company starts right at the top. Business leaders must be open to different and unorthodox concepts or initiatives, and create room to explore these ideas. Here at JOS, we have cultivated an environment where our employees, across all departments, are always thinking of innovative ways to streamline processes or boost productivity. We also encourage everyone in the JOS family to share any ideas they have that would contribute to the overall growth and progress of the organisation - there is really no 'red light' when it comes to ideas or concepts that could change the way we work. We firmly believe that these are some key traits of the Future Workplace.

Leslie Ong Country Manager, Southeast Asia Tableau Software

SOME of Asia's most innovative and successful companies (think Grab in Singapore, GOJEK in Indonesia, iflix in Malaysia) put much of their innovation down to the insights provided by data analytics. Being armed with detailed, up-to-date information about their business and customers has augmented their thinking and allowed them to do new things well - and old things better. To create fertile ground for data-driven innovation, organisations need to instil a culture of data by empowering staff with access to data, easy-to-use tools to work with it, and providing trainings to help them think in an analytical data-first way. People must also have the freedom to use data to solve problems. Senior leaders will play a crucial role in this, as top-down support will help the culture take hold. Without it, the use of data will be stifled, along with the potential for innovation.

Steve Dixon SVP and GM - APAC NetApp

TO businesses, innovation is life. Mastering it is critical to stay relevant and ahead of the competition in this rapidly changing landscape. Amid this wave of digital transformation, companies increasingly recognise that data lies at the crux of change - it's the new oil we need to leverage much better to help drive innovation.

At NetApp, we drive an innovation culture by encouraging open collaboration. Everyone's opinion, which is also data in a way, counts and is an essential part of growth. For example, I host regular 'Coffee with Steve' sessions to connect to employees across the region from all levels and backgrounds. It's a great opportunity for both sides to exchange new ideas of doing things differently and better than before. Data and innovation go hand in hand.

Sandie Overtveld Vice President, APAC Zendesk

THE most successful innovation cultures have two things in common - a steadfast focus on the "job to be done", and a willingness to embrace change.

From proudly homegrown brands like DBS, Grab, Circles.Life, Honestbee and Singapore Life, to global brands like Amazon, Uber and Airbnb, they all set about disrupting their industries by innovating the customer experience. They exist to make our lives easier, and are constantly seeking new ways to meet customers' changing expectations.

I believe that a culture of innovation thrives on curiosity and diversity. Hence, I encourage our teams to embrace disruption by challenging the status quo, putting themselves in our customers' and their customers' shoes, respecting different points of view, and to be open to exploring new ways of getting things done. It is also this mindset that has been core to Zendesk's success as a market disruptor.

Henry Tan Group CEO & Chief Innovation Officer Nexia TS Group

INNOVATION requires mind, heart and hands. It has to start with the heart before the mind. We must want to change and we must be open to change. Once we have the heart to change, we can apply our mind to it to seek out ways to change. Once these two are aligned we can put our hands to the plough to start changing. In our firm, we started by having me as Group CEO also holding the responsibility as Chief Innovation Officer. It's not just an additional title but because the CEO has this responsibility, the tone is set right at the top. Constantly we are asking, How can we do this differently, and How can we do this better? We have also appointed a Director of Transformation recently who works with me to explore and implement innovation. One of his tasks is to form taskforce groups to brainstorm ideas or look at pain points. Follow up after ideas are germinated within a most efficient budget is key. Start with low hanging fruits as success encourages more innovation. To give an example, we used to have many papers flowing around the office for many processes, starting from onboarding of clients, to delivery of services and also recruitment and purchase approvals. We implemented an online practice management system that not only allows us to do all this digitally but also remotely, resulting in huge savings. Our staff can also work remotely from anywhere in the world. We are also looking at innovative work space of the future in our pending move to new premises as we believe that collaborative space is important to encourage innovation.

Dora Hoan Group CEO Best World International Ltd

INNOVATION is key to staying competitive and it also encourages growth ahead of competition. Companies failing to keep up with the latest are at risk of falling behind. In modern society, competition between industries is getting more intense. Only by being innovative, seeking continuous improvements, can an enterprise survive and maintain its leading position in the market. Being innovation-minded, making innovation, working on it, making it become a part of everybody's job, is essential to bring out the correct mindset and skills that will aid in being able to spot what needs improving along the way.

In my company, we stay innovative by focussing on our product development, training and marketing. We encourage all our departments to uphold the mindset of continuous improvement in their day-to-day work. Each department has to conduct brainstorming sessions to collect ideas for projects and tasks in order to stay on top of trends.

Liz Kim General Manager Philip Morris, Singapore

DRIVING innovation begins with a purpose - ours is to address the problem of smoking by one day giving up cigarettes, and providing less harmful, smoke-free alternatives to smokers who would otherwise continue to smoke. This requires a seismic shift in the way we operate and the culture we need to cultivate to drive innovation. Our mantra of thinking big and starting small encourages teams to take risks, navigate ambiguity and collaborate, forming project teams, rather than being constrained to functional verticals. Most importantly we know it's people that change industries, not companies, and to that end I encourage all our employees and stakeholders to get involved, to self-select the projects they are most passionate about and bring new ideas to the table.

David Leong Managing Director PeopleWorldwide Consulting Pte Ltd

INNOVATION is not a new and fashionable buzzword for the day. It is a defensive and necessary strategic inclusion in business continuity. Innovating to change, innovating to have competitive and comparative advantages, innovating to the top of the pack or innovating to survive as an ongoing concern are phases we go through in business and as founder of the company, I have to instill this mindset to every employee - to learn to respond innovatively with fluidity to changes.

Workplace innovation must be a constant in the work culture and this must be demonstrated in the way we introduce innovation, encourage adoption and celebrate successes and taking the brunt of failures collectively. The killer to innovation is blame assignment and finger pointing. In promoting a culture of innovation, we must accept failures, however many, so that the spirit of innovation is not killed with the burden of failures and blames.

Leonard Cheong Managing Director AdNovum Singapore Pte Ltd

INNOVATION is about creating new things, ideas or way of doing things, and can be nurtured. Innovation is one of AdNovum's corporate strategies and has been part of its DNA and history. AdNovum's innovative spirit is ingrained in its name: AdNovum, translated from Latin, means 'towards the new'.

Thus, at AdNovum, the way we work shapes and supports the way we innovate and vice versa. We consciously monitor and develop our culture to support innovation. From the early beginnings, innovation has driven the company's growth.

Innovation happens across the company in AdNovum. All employees contribute to innovation to create value for internal and external, current as well as potential customers. We innovate incrementally and by listening closely to the customers' needs and wishes. One good example is the Car Dossier Innovation project that will witness one of the early adoption of blockchain technology at a nation-wide level, planned for rollout in 2020 in Switzerland, that will digitally map the life cycle of a vehicle.

Sheena Chin Country Director Veritas Storage Singapore

THERE are three essential factors that an organisation should keep in mind when it comes to cultivating an innovation culture.

1) Understanding what an innovation culture entails, including the rules and behaviours;

2) Setting tangible measures to encourage accountability and putting in place rewards to incentivise innovative thinking;

3) Cascading the importance of pursuing innovation to every employee to achieve transformational rather than cosmetic outcomes.

Recognising innovation goes beyond technology and includes other critical elements such as processes and people. I believe in leading by example to foster innovation. This includes improving the workplace by breaking down barriers that impede creativity or positive changes and embracing a fail-safe, open mindset so that the employees do not shun away from proposing new ideas that could positively impact the organisation and our customers.

Jessie Xia MD - Southeast Asia ThoughtWorks

IN order to thrive in the rapidly changing marketplace, businesses need to innovate and provide an infrastructure for innovation. Adopting a lean startup approach, such as leveraging rapid learning cycles to allow teams to innovate constantly, could be an effective strategy. These data-driven cycles enable leaders to find the right direction for their business and ensure they make informed decisions.

Leading the journey of building and sustaining an innovative culture is particularly challenging. As leaders, we must balance collaboration with individual accountability and the challenges of a flat hierarchy. Innovative cultures are inherently paradoxical and tensions created by this paradox must be intricately managed to foster an innovative culture.

Laletha Nithiyanandan Managing Director Behavioural Consulting Group

IF a company is struggling to innovate, the problem lies with the leadership, not the employees. It's too easy to blame the employees or the market. It is possible to be innovative in any condition but the leaders need to listen to the ground, especially its customers, and be willing to challenge the status quo. They also need to nurture a culture of curiosity where asking questions is the basis of conversations and actions. There is always an element of risk involved with innovation and how the leaders deal with mistakes influences whether ideas percolate and gain momentum. Innovation is core to business sustainability in our current environment and the answers often lie within the organisation, not outside

Maren Schweizer Director Schweizer World Pte Ltd

1. CUSTOMER-CENTRIC business model: enabling customer experience:

Create tailored customers' experiences by a radical client-oriented approach. Know your customers (instead of products) via an ongoing stream of valuable information about your clients.

The key to understand your customer is data. Ideally clever decisions are made on a predictive basis, even before your customers request them.

Focus on results, while not only putting efforts into your processes but on the output for your customers.

If you cannot provide all services, incorporate partners into your value proposition ecosystem.

2. Interdisciplinary teams including wide-ranging responsibilities:

Enable your teams to make their own decisions in an ecosystem of cross-functional guidelines and a full P&L responsibility. The advantages are rapid pilot solutions being stabilised and expanded along a stage gate development process. It is also important to have operational activities in a department structure aside.

It's crucial to enable and train our executives to orchestrate and balance both.

3. Trust:

We believe in a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on trust, knowledge, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology.

Lee Siang Chief Executive Officer Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS)

THE way a leadership sets its organisational goals plays a pivotal role in creating a vibrant innovative culture. At the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS), our five-year plan singled out "creating and delivering a comprehensive and holistic range of programmes and services for people and children with dyslexia and associated learning differences" as one of the key goals. This has encouraged staff to adopt a pioneering attitude and empowered them to explore and recommend new ideas for our programmes and services. Our other key goal, to "ensure the quality of DAS programmes and services through programme evaluation and the publication of research", has also motivated staff to constantly review existing programmes and services. Business leaders can bring innovation to the workplace by recognising and rewarding ideas.

Toby Koh Group MD Ademco Security Group

INNOVATION starts from the leadership team. In Ademco Security Group, the leadership team is empowered to seek and encourage innovation, constant improvement and foster a no-blame culture. Innovation means trying new methods, systems, products and ideas. Anything new will generally carry a risk of failure. Hence, a no-blame culture is vital to spur innovative practices.

Leaders also need to lead by example. Some time ago, I decided that we needed to set up our own private wireless transmission network in Singapore so as to provide an alternate means of secure communications for critical alarm signals. Many naysayers, both within my own organisation as well as external, ridiculed our plans, stating that the Singapore authorities will likely not permit a private wireless network. It took us almost two years to convince the authorities to allocate us a frequency for the benefit of our customers and the industry. Thankfully the authorities were open minded and saw the potential benefits in our pitch. This successful effort helped changed many mindsets into a can-do positive flavour. Leaders must lead the way with small victories to set the tempo.

There is also a case for external innovation catalysts. We have invested in blockchain startups because we did not feel we have the necessary talent within our organisation. This gives us a quick route into a key high growth technology which has huge potential to revolutionise the security and loss prevention industry. Alignment of strategies with key partners helps create new synergies with speed.

Annie Yap CEO AYP HR Group

INCREMENTAL changes are vital for innovation. Habits are formed over time. The challenge lies in their subtlety. They often seep into our minds and harden without us realising. With innovation, changes shouldn't be dramatic or dogmatic, as the idea likely won't leave an imprint.

The first smartphone wasn't the iPhone. It was the Simon, launched by IBM in 1992. You could send emails and faxes with it, but sales were moderate. People weren't ready for it.

I exhort my staff to voice ideas. They add value in ways that amaze me. They are the ones on the ground and know how to enhance the way we operate.

Cindy Leong Founder Relationship Studio

AN open culture and open-mindedness is essential to cultivate an innovative culture. Innovation would mean doing the same task differently, or do it better/faster to achieve the same result. Thus, having an open mind to try new things, to accommodate change, to even allow new ideas to float, is key.

A business leader has to be humble to acknowledge that we do not know everything and sometimes the team can have better and more innovative ideas. Being a secure leader allows us to openly solicit for ideas and recognise those who manage to come up with those innovative ideas.

Zaheer K Merchant Regional Director (Singapore & Europe) QI Group of Companies

OF late this catchphrase of innovation has led to our organisation empowering our employees so they know they can make changes. They are set some innovation metrics, then form special groups or projects and are allocated resources, mentored and then given free rein, largely left to make decisions. We try not to fear failure; we allow learning from it. And flowing directly from this, as a Board, we have learnt that if we truly want to innovate in our workplace, we must facilitate matters for staff, particularly the groups leading innovation. We've reduced some bureaucracy (it's hard work), allowed a more "modern twist" of thinking and scrutinised our processes, offerings and the competition across all elements. We've also tried to hire more GenZ employees and enabled them to lead, or at least identified potential leaders. It is work in progress, but if we are to grow and continue as a Group, we really do not foresee any other way.

George Lee Vice-President, Asia Pacific & Japan RSA

AS organisations embrace digital transformation in the race for innovation, the volatile, hyper-connected nature of digital business also amplifies digital risks that can hinder growth-including increased threat of cyber incidents and risks around customer data. Yet, organisations must be comfortable to manage these risks to fuel the progress of their digital initiatives. Hence, to enable innovation, we must identify and address risks associated with the use of emerging technologies, employ a unified approach leveraging integration, automated insights and coordinated actions across IT, security and risk management functions to create a secure digital foundation. This gives employees peace of mind with more time dedicated towards what they do best ─ driving innovation.