Despite the rather misleading headline, this is an interview with Steve Wozniak. One of the co-founders of Apple who was in town to impart their knowledge and experiences on innovation solutions and applications for competitive advantage and business excellence” to eventually “build a more productive, high-performing work environment”. (sic)
Some excerpts.
" Ms Jose enthusiastically rolled out the reasons why Singapore should innovate, what the government is doing to help PMETs and why we should achieve innovation excellence.
Now you can start scratching your head. Innovation excellence? That’s like saying ‘creative best’ – and what marks the difference between innovation excellence and innovation mediocrity?"
One educator asked Steve, who volunteers as a teacher, how to ‘teach’ his charges ‘to be creative and innovative’. Our man, clueless about the very Singaporean tendency to conflate processes and goals, replies that he frees his students up to explore their own directions. His innovation is in the delivery of the teaching content, and not the content itself. This point may have been lost on our local educators.
And
"in Steve’s world, the trend-setters get space to be creative, support to be innovative, and… free speech.
We have to be kidding ourselves if we think we can buy ourselves to becoming an innovation hub by splashing out a billion bucks on a productivity scheme and inviting big shot speakers over.
Fundamentally it even seems conflicted to bring a speaker to speak about innovation when all you’re really after, are solutions to be productive.
When laundry services evolved from Dhobies balancing sheets on their heads to rows of washing machines in shopping malls, it didn’t require much innovation. Just some product research and capital investment. Furthermore, innovation requires certain amounts of inefficiency, redundancy, unaccounted-for ‘play time’ and the freedom to do nonsense that won’t immediately be anything more than nonsense. Tough for a government so hell bent on results."
All the above pretty much sums up the mentality we have here. Good thing is at least they are hellbent on results.
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