Would Apple Ever Have Been Created in Singapore?

iWoz: Culture Shiok in Singapore. Credit: tsevis

10 March 2011

iWoz: Culture Shiok in Singapore. Credit: tsevis

10 March 2011

Singapore is well known around the world for its efficiency, success and cleanliness. It’s a place of ongoing progress and growth in the global economic arena and a hub for multinational organizations expanding their reach to in South East Asia. But what about innovation and creativity?

Creative innovations to match the likes and sensational phenomenon of Apple.

WDA and NTUC LearningHub organized “Innovation and Creativity in the 21st Century” kicked off by a keynote speech by Assistant Secretary General of NTUC, Ms Josephine Teo.

The event launched DRIVE (DRiving InnoVation Excellence) with a series of keynote speeches about innovative solutions and applications for business that build productive and high performance environments. The initiative was part of a SG$1 billion National Productivity Scheme.

But is creativity and innovation one and the same as productivity? And efficient as Singapore is, do more efforts need to go into increasing productivity of the workforce? Or is the need really, to diversify the workplace through growing talent and creating opportunities in the creative and innovations arena?

The government believes the local workforce needs to be more productive to compete in the world market and reduce dependency on foreign slave-workforce. The government also recognized their need to keep the economy buzzing and achieve the objective – through raising productivity. The idea is: innovation helps companies find better solutions to their productivity problems. All this according to newnation

That sounds like an awfully confusing way to achieve two non-directly related objectives.

How about, raising productivity through education and better workplace practices.

And creating innovation and creativity in the marketplace through initiatives and opportunities targeted at local talent?

With a scope of diversifying the business environment, giving companies new opportunities to seek out creative solutions and avenues to increase the efficiency of their teams.

So what is creativity? How did Steve Jobs create the Apple products?

Well a big contributing factor to the man’s success and genius lies in a humble – and random – typography course he did in university when he was bored with the classes in his major.

If Singapore wants to create innovation and creativity in the marketplace, it has to ask: how?

It clearly did, and came up with productivity.

Well productivity is nothing more than:

1.    Time and email management.
2.    The right person doing the right job.
3.    Work-life balance.

It’s that simple, but things both government and private firms struggle with. Achieve this through creativity?
It’s up to organizations to offer workplace training to achieve these objectives. Singapore has a highly educated workforce, sure. But grades and textbook learning are no replacement for knowledge of workplace best practices.

As for creativity and innovation, what brings it about?

1.    Variety. Of learning and life experience.
2.    Necessity (the mother of invention).
3.    Imagination and inspiration.

And to bring it all to life: opportunity. An arena. A conducive environment.

Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder spoke at the event, captivating the local audience with his story, raised questions among the audience about the things that hinder creativity and innovation in Singapore:

1.    Rigid education system: It’s not so much the science of an apple computer, or the creativity when it comes to what separates Singapore and the US in innovation. It’s the people. In Singapore, children are not encouraged to pursue their passions but adhere to a rigid schedule instead – that all the rest of hundreds of thousands are learning. You don’t get different cookies using the same cutter.

2.    Problem solving: In Singapore, teachers and employers are caught up with “the right answer”, instead of the journey to get there and the creative solutions to other problems – or inventions that are discovered along the way.

3.    Pressure and competitiveness for nothing but the best grades and schools. Does that leave room for life and experience, the corner stone of creative innovation? Can a grade-A engineering student design a new ski-lift if he’s never been on top of a snow capped mountain?

I’m not sure exactly how Singapore expects a $1 billion productivity scheme and a speech by Steve Wozniak to turn itself into an innovation hub, or conjure creative solutions. It just seems like something (and somebody) “creative” everyone else has – and Singapore doesn’t want to miss out.

Perhaps a more productive solution to bring about innovation and creativity to the Lion City, is straight forward: capital investment.

Liz Zuliani

EconomyWatch.com