Large corporates embark on business transformation through Singapore's national digital innovation platform

One common myth is that large companies, with their larger resources, tend to perform their innovation activities in-house. However, as business models face increased disruption by technology, many progressive companies have recognised that talent and great ideas can come from anywhere - even in the external ecosystem. This has led to the process known as open innovation or the sharing of knowledge with other organisations to build innovations.

This practice is especially seen in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), immersive reality and the Internet of Things (IoT), where deep and specialised knowledge is required to find ways to implement technologies to address business challenges.

Helping large companies find the right technology providers with such expertise is where the IMDA's Open Innovation Platform (OIP) comes in. The OIP provides businesses with structured, high-touch and end-to-end support - from refining problem statements, scouting and evaluating proposals, to the prototyping process.

Launched in 2018, the OIP has grown to a pool of more than 11,000 solution providers with a good mix of local and international technology companies. The platform has hosted more than 250 problem statements with over $8.5 million worth of prize monies.

We look at three large companies which have leveraged the OIP's community of technology solution partners to complement the efforts of their own in-house innovation teams.

BSI is the business improvement and standards company, which as well as playing a key role in the development of standards, certifies technical standards across products, services and operations. It has 90 offices across 31 countries globally and has set up its first BSI Global Innovation Lab in Singapore earlier this year.

Through the OIP, BSI found ways on how to better conduct remote audits with three tech start-ups - LexaTexer, Tail Risk Analytics and Augmenteed. BSI found solutions to enhance remote audit verification for quality control in manufacturing facilities, draw deeper insights from audit sessions and various information sources, and leverage video assets to improve their clients-auditors' digital experiences.

Separately, Smith+Nephew, a multinational medical technology company with over 17,000 employees globally, is setting up a medical education centre in Singapore this year. It has issued two challenges on the OIP, to develop solutions on immersive reality and AI to train medical professionals. It has attracted over 25 proposals from technology companies.

Singapore's Mandai Wildlife Group has a 1,100 employee-strong workforce and is the steward of Mandai Wildlife Reserve - home to Singapore's world renown award-winning wildlife parks such as the Singapore Zoo and Jurong Bird Park. Close to 19,000 animals representing nearly a thousand species call the parks home. The organisation has issued four challenges to seek for innovative solutions in areas such as smart monitoring of the integrity of aviary mesh around the Mandai area.

Complementing open innovation capabilities

For BSI, the OIP has been crucial in kickstarting its open innovation journey, leading up to the launch of its innovation lab in Singapore in January 2022.

For an organisation that works with 77,500 large and small businesses across 195 countries, BSI is on the lookout for technologies that can be adapted and easily implemented for clients, with the potential to be scaled at a global level.

Working with the OIP team for only five months, BSI had identified three potential areas of innovation in digital assets, data insights and remote audit verification.

BSI recently awarded the three selected start-ups with a total of $90,000 worth of prize monies in, and are working together to tackle its challenges in the coming months.

"The IMDA OIP has helped us to connect with some of the most promising entrepreneurs and tech start-ups from all around the world," says Mr Harold Pradal, BSI's Chief Commercial Officer.

"In the coming years, we intend to continue to leverage the OIP's professional team members and its collaborative platform to help address together some of the sustainability and digital trust challenges our clients are facing globally," he adds.

Finding new capabilities essential for transformation

For Smith+Nephew, the challenge was to find a new way to interact with its customers, especially with the accelerated digital transformation efforts across many organisations.

"Immersive media and AI will help enhance customers' learning experience and increase operational effectiveness within Smith+Nephew," notes Mr Atri Banerjee, the company's Asia-Pacific Strategic Planning Director.

"The first challenge involves using augmented reality to simplify the understanding and communication of complex medical products to our healthcare professional customers and enable them to deliver the best care plan for their patients," he says.

"The second challenge involves using AI and advanced analytics to recommend optimal training courses for our healthcare professional customers to advance their skills with a personalised learning pathway," he adds.

After going through OIP's structured, high-touch innovation process and putting up its challenge in November 2021, it is now reviewing proposals with hopes to scale the chosen solution to commercialisation.

IMDA will also be supporting Smith+Nephew with innovation facilities and programmes to create their solution. For example, AR/VR equipment and co-working spaces in PIXEL, a 28,000 physical innovation facility, will be made available to their selected technology company to develop their prototype.

Tapping into a vibrant innovation ecosystem

For Mandai Wildlife Group, the OIP allowed the organisation to tap into the external community and innovation ecosystem to accelerate and scale innovation to drive transformation across its Planet goals.

"In our effort to drive innovation in animal care, we realised that this is a domain where solutions are not as mature, or where technologies may already exist, but not yet applied to this domain with proven success," says Ms Belina Lee, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Mandai Wildlife Group.

"Another area where we are unique is the environment that we operate in," she adds. "Singapore's wildlife parks are well loved at home and around the world for our open-concept rainforest zoos. But the immersive and luxuriant nature setting comes with challenges, such as a good amount of rain in the tropics and tough weather conditions throughout the year, as well as living connected to and in harmony with the nature and wildlife around us such as macaques and snakes."

One of Mandai Wildlife Group's goals was the smart monitoring to safely and efficiently monitor and inspect the integrity of wire mesh to keep the aviaries safe in the precinct, which is part of restricted air space where use of drones requires prior approval and special permits.

"Through the OIP, we received many feasible alternatives and eventually selected one to proceed with," says Ms Lee.

"This experience has given us great confidence to continue partnering with IMDA's Open Innovation Platform to develop innovative solutions for our unique challenge statements."

Smith+Nephew's Mr Atri agrees. "The OIP is a strong strategic partner as they have the ability to connect companies like Smith+Nephew to the broader ecosystem in Singapore and Asia-Pacific, especially in priority areas such as digital marketing, education content development, technology and AI," he says. "OIP has helped us to access Singapore's rich start-up ecosystem, thus fostering external collaborations to solve complex business problems." Visit www.openinnovation.sg now to request for the structured, high-touch support to start your business' innovation journey. Look out for a new feature to search easily for proven innovative solutions later in the year.