Businesses should be ‘intra-preneurs’ to succeed: Singaporean Management Guru

As the Chairman and Managing Consultant of ManagementWise Pte Ong Teon Wan settles himself for the interview, his calm and pleasant disposition belies his incredibly busy schedule. Having just returned from back-to-back business trips to China, Indonesia, and Malaysia, he takes time out in between two board meetings to expand on his thoughts on how businesses can harness innovation for organisational sustainability.

The author of the bestselling book on productivity ‘Results Management,’ Teong Wan is an established consultant who has advised and trained government ministries, statutory boards, and national and international organisations. In addition to his 25 years of private sector experience, he has spent 12 years advising Singapore’s Ministry of Education, which is why he believes that innovative thinking should start in the classroom and continue throughout a person’s life.

Following are excerpts:

By Tanya Warnakulasuriya

Q: Innovation in business is a very common phrase – used and abused. But what exactly does innovation in business mean to you?

A: Indeed, innovation is the current management and business buzzword. To me, innovation is a derivative of creativity. Creativity implies breakthrough thinking; that is, the creation of an idea, product, process, system or anything that people have never thought of before.

So we have the internet and the micro-chip spurring subsequent developments and a vast array of applications, which are innovations based on these two initial creations. And innovations spur more innovations or derivatives in an ever multiplying stream. They are not necessarily confined to businesses.

Q: Who are these innovators? Where do they come from? What is the characteristic of an innovator?

A: We tend to think of innovators as being a special breed of people with a God-given gift, often confined to a small percentage of the population. Innovative people exist everywhere and innovative thinking is present every day.

If you take a different route to work because of a traffic jam, you are in a sense being innovative. You have changed your fixed notion that that is the only route to your workplace. The main difference between people who are deemed more innovative and others is that they are not straight-jacketed by their mindsets, paradigms or fixed notions about things.

Q: Innovation is sometimes relegated to the realm of entrepreneurs. Creative mavericks and rule breakers. To what extent does business innovation have a part to play in traditional “established” businesses?

A: Innovations and innovative thinking are often associated with entrepreneurs and I guess there must have been scholarly studies done to validate the correlation between the two. Related to that is the “courage” or gumption to take risks and not fear the unknown.

I am not sure that entrepreneurs are the ones gifted with divergent thinking. There are others who dare to try new things especially in “established organisations” that foster innovative thinking such as 3M. So innovative thinking as well as “intra-preneurship” is very much a manifestation of the environment, situation or organisational culture.

Q: Innovation is sometimes thought to be only the responsibility of the operational/ product development areas of an organisation – the areas the impact the profit line. Is this the case? Why should we be fostering the innovative spirit in other parts of the business that are not business critical?

A: I think it is a fallacy to think that innovation only applies to product development and operational areas. Everyone and every part of an organisation is “business critical” in that every function, process and system contributes to delivering the product or service to the customers or clients to meet their requirements or needs.

Q: Business innovation is often cited as being essential as a channel for value creation. To what extent does the external environment and market culture play a part in this?

A: Value creation can be internally fostered and it can be externally impelled too. Competition, of course, is the greatest impetus. The more players there are in the marketplace, the more innovative people have to be to compete and survive.

Q: What do you think “sparks” innovation?

A: Competition. Constraints. Conflicts. Crises. These situations cause people to think out of the box.

Q: How important is timing in business innovation? Most innovations, in process or mindset change take time. Some board members are reluctant to take the hit for an innovation where the benefits may be reaped outside their term of office. How can a business ensure that innovation is not squashed at the expense of a board’s personal objectives?

A: As with everything in life, the right timing is a critical success factor. Some innovations are ahead of its time, i.e. people are not ready for it. Some innovations never take off because the situation does not favour it. Some innovations are resisted or inhibited because of vested interests or lack of it.

Boards that approve or sanction innovations or discourage them are not the only ones who could stifle or foster innovation. The only difference between them and others is that they are in a position to champion something or not.

Q: In business we would normally measure the success of an innovation by its impact on the profit line. Should we be looking at other ways to measure its effectiveness?

Q: The extent or how widely the innovation has been copied or adapted and used are measures of its appeal and usefulness.

Q: Famous fashion designer, Coco Chanel once said, “One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics”. As we all jump on the “innovation band wagon” is there is risk of innovation for innovation’s sake? Can the new live with the old?

A: Some innovations and creations stand the test of time, like good music. There is no reason why everything should be new.

Q: Some countries have a tradition of living with innovation; e.g. Russia, America, and of course Singapore! As a Singaporean who travels all over the world what do you think these countries have or do that others don’t?

A: There are quite a few countries which have a tradition of inventions and innovations. Scandinavian countries, with their harsher environments, tend to spur innovations. A pioneering spirit is what sets these countries apart from others.

Pioneering spirits are imbued with the courage to take risks and they do not fear the unknown. Failure is not disdained but an opportunity to learn from it and be stronger in the process.

Q: What effect does globalisation have on innovation? Good or bad?

A: There will be a multiplier effect as well as a demonstrative effect all round. Neither is either good or bad. Use or misuse of innovation makes it so.

Q: When it comes to progress and the effectiveness of our institutions to nurture creativity and innovation, it seems as though we still have 19th mindsets, and use 20th century tools to solve 21st century problems! As an established educationalist, how do you think we can break this cycle and groom our children to become more passionate about innovation?

A: Schools as formal institutions replaced the family in the transmission of social values and in the process became a preserver of what is right and wrong. In the transmission of knowledge the role of the educational institution also became the preserver of knowledge until the knowledge explosion made it difficult for schools to play this role adequately.

Educators now have to teach students how to think instead. However, most of the thinking skills have emphasised logical and analytical thinking processes than in creative thinking processes.

With the advent of the internet where students can easily access information, it becomes more crucial for schools to teach less so that the students can learn more, on their own, using thinking processes to help them assimilate, integrate and innovate from knowledge gained.

Teachers and educators have to undertake a paradigm shift in the way they guide learners to learn. They have to facilitate learning rather than teach or prescribe.

Q: Do you have any examples of countries that have successfully changed their educational institutions?

A: The US educational system evolved and moved away from the UK system and allowed more leeway for individual choices and greater participation than the one-way lecture approach commonly associated with tertiary education. Together with an emphasis on individualism, the US educational system has nurtured generations of creative thinkers and entrepreneurs.

Scandinavian education systems are also worthy of greater attention.

Q: Lastly, can you give three top tips for a business looking to be more innovative and three for an individual?

A: For businesses: 1. Differentiate, not by products and services alone, but by the way you deliver products and services to the end-user; 2. Have a mix of employees with different outlooks and educational preparations, instead of just looking for qualifications in recruiting your workforce; 3. Provide a work environment where everyone feels that he is doing a business within a business because every job and function can now be outsourced if it becomes too expensive in-house.

For individuals: 1. Adopt an entrepreneurial mindset and realise that one day you may have to set up your own business; 2. Engage in as many different pursuits including voluntary work, as time permits and be curious about things. Ideas beget ideas; 3. Regard any mistake as a learning moment (think positive) and not a time to regret or agonise over (thinking negatively).