"Amidst a rapidly evolving environment impacted by socioeconomic trends and global uncertainties such as equitable economic growth, priorities will need to shift in Singapore,” noted Nitin Bhat, partner & country head, Singapore, Frost & Sullivan, in his keynote address at the 2015 GIL Asia-Pacific summit recently held in Singapore.
Only through collaboration and innovation will businesses and Singapore as a whole be able to retain and enhance its competitiveness. Businesses who invest in new models of developing and acquiring talent will synergise the workplace. This will bring about a greater outflow of ideas/ products and new business models. In addition, harnessing the power of technology will rethink the conventional workplace by igniting change and enable assets to be used more efficiently. This in turn allows industries to radically improve their effectiveness and to transform themselves to meet stakeholder requirements more so than before.
With this culture of innovation, companies can turn the disruption into opportunities if they are able to respond appropriately with the right tools and strategies. Conversely, companies are likely to put their business at risk if they are not aware of changes in other industries and realign their products and services adequately. Even global companies such as Apple and Samsung have to keep up with the challenge of innovation to meet their customers’ expectations.
In the spirit of innovation, the market research analyst also organised an inaugural ‘Investor TechVision Forum’ where quality start-ups were provided a platform to pitch their technology, product or service wrapped within scalable business models with the potential to make national or international impact.
Convergence of technologies and industries are supporting the mega trends, which are expected to have a major impact on Singapore. For instance, under the Innovating to Zero mega trend, Singapore aims to achieve a cleaner environment by targeting zero carbon emissions.
“The next 10 years would be driven partly by our response to the global mega trends such as Future of Energy, Urbanisation, Social Trends, Bricks & Clicks and Future of Mobility amongst others,” Mr Bhat said.
The convergence of different technologies, especially automation, data exchange and connectivity will transform and disrupt industries. Jobs will be affected with many skills becoming obsolete. The impact of automation and robotics is expected to require a person to have substantially different skills. Many jobs right now are expected to be automated in the future.
“There could be redundancies of certain jobs due to automation. The importance of digital skills will be much more pronounced due to digital technology,” Mr Bhat added.
