As a global center for innovation, research and development, The Singapore government seeks to support economic growth and meet future challenges, It established the Innovation Center that supports companies to develop their visions and transform them into new products, processes, services or business models.
For decades, R&D efforts were considered valuable strategic property for companies, and a significant obstacle to the entry of new competitors into the market, Until the emergence of an open innovation mentality that offers an alternative to traditional methods and opens up horizons for sharing information and experiences.
today New innovations involve significant risks and high costs associated with the development of products and services internally within the companies themselves, To run into the obstacles of the short life cycle of products and market challenges.
In Singapore, which the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) ranked seventh on the Global Innovation Index 2022, International startups are coming up with new technologies that are changing the landscape for large organizations in sectors such as healthcare, banking and insurance.
In the technical field, A developer cannot be satisfied with its knowledge, It must explore prospects for cooperation with external partners, Most notably academia. To give companies a rich source of knowledge, The Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) has established the Holistic Innovation Centre (BITC) that aims to drive innovation.
The center seeks to provide an integrated infrastructure that takes the hand of companies, Small or large, Through the innovation journey, From the birth of the idea to its development, the production of initial samples, the conduct of experiments and the evaluation of its results, all the way to spreading in the market. It also provides integrated and commercially viable solutions to the problems faced by the target sector, whatever it may be, It gathers expert knowledge of financing possibilities and consultations from different disciplines.
4 departments branch out of the Comprehensive Innovation Center, The first of these is a design factory that helps companies design human-centered processes. It provides solutions to realistic challenges. This designation was chosen for the department because it adopts a design thinking methodology in providing advice after studying the needs, determining the scope of the project and developing the appropriate work plan.
As for the second section, It is the center of rapid product development and innovation, which supports companies of all sizes, From the largest institutions to the emerging ones, To benefit from the applied research expertise offered by the multidisciplinary academic staff, Besides the energies of trained students and skills for professional practitioners. They collaborate on new ideas by developing fast and flexible prototyping and shortening sample production and testing processes. The centre's latest achievement was a collaboration with a local company to develop an engineering solution to keep birds away from food debris thrown into waste containers.
The third section was named the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Complex, It will provide a range of necessary services in the testing phase, Such as three-dimensional printing, AI-based designs and other aids needed to enable the development of innovations quickly and efficiently.
At last The Center of Innovative Excellence, which represents the channel of communication between SMEs, comes on the one hand, and the expertise, facilities and equipment it needs, It brings together talent working within the Singapore Institute of Technology and other innovation and research centers, To help develop new products and services. The center recently collaborated with a logistics provider to design an improved eco-friendly storage unit that allows medicines and food to be preserved in light of the obstacles that constrain the movement of global supply chains.
Moreover, The project has an educational dimension, The collaborative work it supports is not limited to companies, It includes students and old graduates, strives to achieve continuity of learning in the workplace, offers programs for companies interested in developing their employees' skills in terms of innovation, and provides them with training within their company-specific programs.
The Innovation Center also seeks to expand its network of partners to include applied research centers and other interested and stakeholders. This is to pool all possible resources and capacities to launch comprehensive, multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral projects.
Singapore's innovation ecosystem is characterized by high-quality infrastructure and strong government support. It allows the dynamic growth of startups, the development of their competencies and the achievement of their goals, Many government entities are working to secure the necessary resources for this, Among them are the Economic Development Board, The Information Development Authority, The Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council (RIBEC) has leveraged the support of the National Research Foundation Council to develop a strategy to transform Singapore into a knowledge-based society with research and technical capabilities.
The Comprehensive Innovation Center will provide an incubator for the crystallization of new ideas and the development of innovations, It will also reduce the risks associated with launching new investments to enable owners to focus on the quality of their products and build the skills of their staff.
When consolidating the concept of cooperation within academia and different sectors, would unleash rapid technical development, It establishes strong and competitive markets.
References:
https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2022/article_0011.html
https://www.nrf.gov.sg/about-nrf/rie-ecosystem
