Singapore, October 21, 2016
Innovate Singapore 2016 will inspire students to generate creative solutions for challenges faced by Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs) which comprise 90% of businesses and employ over 70% of Singapore’s workforce.
Australia’s Deputy High Commissioner to Singapore, Mr. Adrian Lochrin, launched Innovate Singapore at the Raffles Hotel.
Innovate Singapore is a new collaborative initiative between Murdoch Singapore (a subsidiary of Murdoch University, Australia), Kaplan Singapore, Gemstar Technologies and Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
It is a timely initiative that brings Australian research institutions and local industry partners together as they lead Innovate Singapore, reaffirming the direction set in the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Australia and Singapore.
“How can improved management or external collaboration approaches support the growth aspirations of SMEs?” will be the problem statement for students to focus on over the next few months.
Winning teams will receive a combination of $9,000 in cash awards, the opportunity to visit Commonwealth Bank’s Design Lab in Sydney and the opportunity to further commercialise their ideas working with Gemstar Technologies.
Murdoch University’s Vice Chancellor Professor Eeva Leinonen said, “This is Murdoch’s mission – to not only produce highly employable graduates but also graduates who are entrepreneurial, creative and innovative thinkers.”
Echoing this sentiment, Kaplan Singapore Senior Vice President and Provost Mr. Rhys Johnson says, “Kaplan witnesses the entrepreneurial potential of our students every day. Innovate Singapore 2016 provides them with an opportunity to showcase their talent while addressing key challenge to Singapore’s SMEs.”
For companies, “supporting and promoting innovation is a core focus for us and we endeavor to create an environment where people who do have great ideas can develop them and ultimately bring them to market”, said Richard Wiles, Director of Institutional Banking and Markets at CBA.
“Our Innovation Lab is an example of this, being a living space where staff and customers collaborate to rapidly explore ideas, test concepts, develop solutions and together turn today’s imagination into tomorrow’s ground breaking solutions”
Gemstar Technologies Managing Director Gemma Manning reiterated the importance of ideas generation and stressed the need for commercial implementation and execution. “It is important for students working on real organizational problems to ideate solutions; but, equally important is for them to have a pathway to incubating and accelerating ideas to commercial reality. This is where Gemstar comes in; and, all winning teams will have the opportunity to bring their ideas to life.”
Registration for participating teams will open from 21st Oct 2016 to 12th November 2016.
More details can found at: http://www.innovatesingapore.org