Innovation Current to Charge the Nation
Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong scripted a new chapter
for the Productivity Movement by launching the expanded Productivity and Innovative
Movement on 4 April 2000. The Campaign kicks off with a 5-year theme focused
on Innovation and Value-Creation
Campaign theme - Innovation and Value Creation
To support Singapore's investment-driven phase of development, the promotion of the productivity mindset in the 1980s focused on positive work attitudes such as teamwork, pride in work, skills upgrading and service quality. While these qualities remain important today, we cannot compete on efficiency and quality alone. To seize the opportunities presented by the new global environment, Singapore will have to transform itself into a knowledge-based economy (KBE) - a new economy comprising learning organisations and a thinking workforce that compete by creating value through new ideas and innovation.
This year's campaign thus marks a new chapter in Singapore's Productivity Movement.
The theme of the campaign, Innovation and Value Creation, calls for creativity
and the generation of value-creating ideas and their implementation to realise
the value of these ideas. It builds upon the Teamwork and Quality mindsets that
were promoted in the last 18 years of the Productivity Movement. Thus, the campaign
is an extension of the Productivity Movement to include the inculcation of an
innovation culture in the workforce and society at large.
The Innovation Mindset
Deriving from Theodore Levitt's succinct description that "Creativity is thinking up new things" and "Innovation is doing new things", the Innovation Mindset is defined as "Think and do new things to better the best".
An innovative worker will not be content with just solving problems and perfecting
the known. He constantly aims to surpass the status quo with breakthrough ideas.
He seeks new ways of doing the job to create extra value. A creative and innovative
manager takes the initiative to find new markets and invest for the future.
He does not just issue instructions, but taps his workers' knowledge to streamline
processes, cut costs and raise productivity. To address the rapid speed of change,
the thinking worker and manager must be highly responsive to critical factors
affecting an organisation's competitiveness. Being sensitive to time-to-innovation
and time-to-market is crucial, as well as having an inquiring mind and thirst
for life-long learning.
Furthermore, innovation is not just about creativity but also about implementation.
It requires both unorthodox thinking as well as a sense of purpose, discipline
and perseverance to organise and implement ideas. Moreover, innovation need
not be limited to the realms of the technical and scientific. It occurs in the
financial and retail sectors as well as in the public and private sectors. Thus,
innovation is a social phenomenon - it occurs when people think up new ideas,
accept these new ideas and work together to realise these ideas.
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