Singapore is currently ranked as the sixth most innovative country in the world and it is home to some of the biggest corporate innovation programs. Since launching Collective Campus in Singapore earlier this year, I’ve met many innovation leaders from across the region. I’ve distilled the many insights gained into this article for our lucky readers.

What is the biggest barrier to corporate innovation you’ve encountered and how did or are you overcoming it?

Hari Krishnan

Chief Executive Officer, PropertyGuru Group

“Based on my experience in various industries and companies, the biggest enabler as well as barrier for corporate innovation is the mindset of the leadership team and the impact it has on the teams. The fear of failure and the lack of appetite for taking risks or doing anything ‘out-of-the-box’ impairs any chance of innovation. The digital age has made the speed of change more rapid and this can be very overwhelming, posing another barrier to innovation.

I believe that organisations must adopt a collective ‘growth mindset’. When the organisation’s leadership adopts a learning culture, the individual’s potential is recognized in both success and failure. As a leader, I see my role as setting the purpose for the organisation: the entire team needs to feel and share a common sense of being part of something bigger than themselves. When a growth mindset is combined with a clear purpose-driven culture, it can be a potent catalyst for innovation.”

Altona Widjaja

Vice President, The Open Vault at OCBC

“One of the classic innovation conundrums faced in a large organisation would be what’s become known as the ‘innovator’s dilemma’. According to Professor Clayton Christenson, large, outstanding firms can still fail ‘by doing everything right’ as their current successes and capabilities become obstacles in the face of changing markets and technologies.

Banks are complex organisations and we are no stranger to this problem. We’ve tried to overcome this by letting the business results speak for itself. For eg, if you suffer from chronic migraine and we introduce the best panacea that doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg, it works and you are now able to function and focus 10 times better than before.

Would you not want this solution?

This same analogy applies to us.

We start by having a view of what the bank of the future might look like. With this, we align our beliefs with a clear business strategy and scout for the best Fintech companies to solve selected business problems via customer pilots.

If the experiment works, we push it to the next phase and expand the experimental scope. If the experiment fails, we embrace it and learn quickly from our mistakes. We call this smart experimentation. At the end, it’s all about the business results. If we can help to solve the right business problems with the right technology within the given boundaries in a shorter period of time,  we are actually encouraging our businesses to innovate intelligently and explore new business models safely.”

Alvin Chia

Innovation Program Lead, DBS Bank

“Trust. Being a corporate innovator means that you will have to work with teams and senior management from the business-side that has 10, 15 or even 20 years’ experience dealing with the particular product. How do we contribute meaningfully with our breadth of experience, in order to help them achieve the desired outcome is one of the biggest corporate innovation barrier I’ve encountered.

We overcame that barrier by demonstrating value. Instead of taking for granted that the business needs innovation, we first understood what were on their KPIs, and we went above and beyond to help them exceed what they needed achieve. This then forged trust between ourselves and the businesses and allowed us to be their trusted advisors over and over again.”

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