Lack of Innovation in Singapore?

It’s a common discussion that pops up at any event. Some people said that Singaporeans are not creative or original enough or simply just not innovative. While people debate on the reasons, it seems like almost everybody believes that Singaporeans are just not good at coming up with new ideas. On the other hand, we seem to be really good at copying from other countries and implementing it, however, that’s not within this post’s scope. For now, I’ll give my take on why I think Singaporeans are not coming up with something new.

For a start, some discussions revolve around our culture, while others think that we are over-protected by government. I do share some views and I was enjoying the discussion during the e27 Unconference while a person popped up and asked for solutions. He’s the man… being brave enough to stop the discussion and prompt for ideas to improve the current situation rather than just everyone slamming Singaporeans for not being innovative enough.

Before I go in to what we can possibly do to rectify the lack of innovation, I will perhaps offer some comments on why I think Singaporeans do not come up with innovative applications until someone else has done it. Since I’m a student, webmaster/ blogger, national serviceman and working on a startup all at the same time, I may be able to look at things from many different perspectives. Of course, I welcome any further insights or disagreements as long as we don’t resort to personal attacks.

Firstly, I think that Singaporeans are actually creative and innovative, contrary to most discussions going on. I’m stating this because of what I see among students when they brainstorm together and how fast people in the local scene can come up with ideas. Anyway, creativity is impossible to quantify, so it may not be the most ideal to consistently discuss whether Singaporeans are creative. I also think it’s quite pointless to blame our educational system for being too rigid and thus stiffling creativity. If we assume that Singaporeans are just as creative as other countries with tons of innovations, it may be easier to justify the lack of innovative applications around.

I propose that the cause may be due to Singaporean’s sense of competition, thus slowly bringing upon the unwillingness to share information. I say this because of what I see in University nowadays, where people talk about bell curves and everyone is afraid of doing badly. There are even some people thinking that they can do better if others do badly or believing in the power of moderation. With time, this may bring upon the fear of competition over time and this fear of competition causes Singaporeans to be afraid to share what they know. I speak from personal experience, where my friend was unwilling to lend me his notes because he said he spend time attending lectures and it’s unfair if I don’t attend lectures and get notes.

This unwillingness to share causes problems especially when we are doing business. Many innovative projects require lots of manpower to do research, come up with the proper features and to finally deliver the product. However, when people are afraid to share their ideas for fear of competition, they have no choice but to work by themselves which results in long development time. By the time they deliver the application to the market, some other countries may already have developed it.

To sum it up, my hypothesis is that Singaporeans typically are just as creative, but we are slower in development time, which causes the illusion that other countries came up with the idea first. This may or may not be true, but everything is subjective. My reason for writing this post is only to encourage the sharing of ideas and collaboration on projects, thereby bringing ideas to fruition. By ourselves alone, ideas will just reside somewhere within our memory bank, until the day where an idea that we had thought of is being commercialized by some other people. Isn’t that common?

Stop bashing yourself when someone launches your million dollar idea and start working with friends or like-minded people to get your ideas running. Isn’t that a better alternative?