Tackling the growth-efficiency feud

Singapore

MANY Singapore firms, both small and large, often have the twin goals of ensuring efficiency in their operations, while creating growth opportunities for the firm through innovation.

However, these twin goals of innovation and efficiency often compete with each other, requiring focused resources and energy, resulting in unsynchronised operations and discrepancy in meeting objectives. In fact, we often hear small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) complain that they face significant resource constraints, which limits their ability and energy to innovate. Hence they can only afford to focus on improving the efficiency of their current operations and processes.

Firms face a dilemma when they struggle to find a balance between innovation and efficiency. This is well captured by management advice in their need to be ambidextrous - to exploit the opportunities that they have and increase their efficiency, while exploring new possibilities and investing in inno…