With the hyper-speed of change and growing interconnectedness of how we work and interact with one another, disruption will be an ongoing trend. More than 100 years ago, Charles Darwin wrote: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.”

Darwin is still right today. It is no longer enough to be productive and more efficient. We must constantly prepare ourselves for the future by adapting to economic, technological, and social shifts. This requires learning and building new innovation capabilities, and challenging our ways of thinking and establishing new collaborations. Cultivating curiosity, spotting trends, and anticipating customer needs are important skills we need to develop. The past may not necessarily help us predict the future.

Collaborating With Others

Another way to open our minds to new possibilities is through interacting with future thinkers. In Singapore, this can be done in networking communities such as the newly-launched The Innovators Network (TIN). Co-founded by Mr Charlie Ang and Mr Ong Gin Keat of The Innovators Institute, TIN is the first cross-industry professional network for innovators in Singapore. Backed by more than 20 partners including enterprise development agency SPRING Singapore, the Infocomm Development Authority and Exploit Technologies, as well as funders and incubators such as Red Dot Ventures, TIN’s vision is to inspire, nurture, and help innovators drive the innovation economy.

It is heartening to see that collaborations between government bodies and the industry are gathering pace in Singapore, as this can create rich cross-fertilisation of knowledge and ideas. Innovating can often be a lonely and uncertain undertaking, so platforms that offer a way for innovators to come together to learn, share, and build connections are valuable endeavours.

Mr Leslie Loh, managing director of Red Dot Ventures, underscored the importance of collaboration when he said that local enterprises must move beyond productivity, invest in innovation, and adopt powerful digital technologies to help them grow. “They should also collaborate with innovators outside their organisations. If not, they risk being disrupted by new technologies or made irrelevant by competitors who are more innovative,” he said.

We need to raise the bar in thinking beyond just productivity to one of game-changing innovation. The ability to be agile and adaptive will help us create new innovations that we have not seen or even dreamed of yet. The opportunities are endless, but they require a robust ecosystem of collaboration between ideas, funding, and know-how. Working with others through networking platforms and other forms of partnership will be critical.