Open for Innovation

Yvonne Chan: Welcome to futurepulse, a podcast series brought to you by IPI, your innovation partner for impact. Together, we will explore how ideas, creativity and collaboration drive impactful innovation.

Welcome to our first episode of futurepulse - Open for Innovation. I'm Yvonne Chan and I'm joined by Dr Sze Tiam Lin, the Head of Innovation and Technology at IPI, and David Jakubovic, Senior Director R&D, Open Innovation Asia at Procter and Gamble.

Welcome Dr Sze and David. Collaboration and innovation. The must haves for businesses to move forward and grow. So, let's look at the opportunities that open innovation provides to enterprises and we also want to find out more about what IPI has done to help enterprises innovate to become industry game changers. So first question - what does open innovation mean to you and what does it entail?

I want to come to you first, Dr Sze, because you've mentioned before that IPI hopes to drive more open innovation, the idea that companies should leverage on external ideas to fuel their growth. So has that definition changed in the past year?

Dr David Jakubovic: Great question. Connect and develop is our brand of open innovation. So I'll use the term open innovation from now on. And really over that time, I think there have been three evolutions. The first one is, and it comes back to what Dr Sze was saying, it's now become part of our mindset, a part of our culture that we look outside, we embrace the possibilities of going outside. And it's the role of every individual, it's not just a few specialists in the organisation who are doing that. 

Second piece is, we're then focusing and bringing open innovation to help us on our ever more challenging and demanding innovation problems that we're trying to solve, such that all of our brands, all of our big innovations have external partners they can work with to help solve them.

And thirdly, I think we've evolved from relationships, which are one-on-one - so P&G with one partner, now into P&G working with networks and ecosystems.

Dr David Jakubovic: Great question, and I could probably give you many, so I hope I didn't bore you. But let me pick one here, which has maybe got several facets to it. Not necessarily to suggest that you need to look at one with so many facets, but just to give insights into different types of open innovation that can exist. And the example here is our laundry pods, Ariel or Tide pods, where you've got a single unit dose laundry product you put in your washing machine takes care of the load for you, brings it up beautifully clean, and it's a very simple and convenient way to do that. So to achieve that, there were three challenges we had.

One was we needed to get to this super concentrated surfactant in the pod. There, we then worked with academia to help us better understand how do these very concentrated surfactants work. So we had to collaborate with academia. We also then had to make sure that the consumer would adopt this new habit and that we could design for them, so we wanted consumer-centric design. Then we went off and actually did crowdsourcing; working with consumers and agencies that enabled us to use this new way of engaging with consumers through crowdsourcing. So it's a different type of example. And the third one would be in the films that we've designed to hold this liquid, which have to work through the manufacturing process, but then rupture in use in the washing machine, so it breaks very quickly and washes your clothes. And then we had to do a lot of work developing with the film manufacturers, and the engineering suppliers, who made the equipment to let us make the pods. So sort of different levels of innovation depending on the type of need, you pick a different partner.

Dr David Jakubovic: I can bring it to life maybe in the context of what we do with A*STAR. So let me start maybe with P&G, and what we can bring, because if we don't bring anything to the partner, they're not going to want to work with us. But I think what we can bring is, and this is what industry brings, is real-life tough problems, really challenging complex problems, that if solved could make a difference. Because if we solve them, then we can serve the consumers. And through serving consumers, P&G then creates some growth. But we can also serve the consumers and the communities in which they work and the ecosystems which within they play and where we're making the product. So that's what we can bring to it, along with the capabilities we have. 

So as we work with A*STAR, we've got an innovation centre. And I'm very fortunate as Dr Sze was saying to be part of almost a 500 strong innovation centre that we have here in Singapore, almost 500 scientists and engineers, tremendous capability across our beauty care, oral care, personal healthcare, and some other categories. And then we can bring that capability then to A*STAR and the problems and then see what they've got that's complementary. And they have tremendous research, talent, equipment, and capability that they can bring to help us better understand our problems, and then better solve those problems. And they also share the mutual goal where they want to use in effect the taxpayers money, because they're a government entity, then to get a return on the research investment they're making and have some impact from that, for society. So that's where the mutual goals come in, and the complementary capabilities, and we've gotten tremendous successes we've been having with A*STAR across a range of areas that are important to them - on sustainability, health and wellness, the application of digital technologies, manufacturing, supply chain innovation, just to name a few.

Dr David Jakubovic: I think Dr Sze was talking about one piece where they've really got a unique role to play and that's what I think Singapore is lucky with IPI and some other agencies focused on innovation is that it's the 'how to'. Because while you need the right mindset, and leadership needs to then be setting expectations, and rewarding and sharing the risk of doing it because innovation always has risks, so there is a risk associated with (OI). So while leadership can do that, and individuals can take that on board and want to do it, you also need to equip them with the tools and the approaches so that they know how to go about doing it. The coach if you like, if you make that analogy to kind of sporting, so IPI’s, our tremendous coach. 

And then the other piece, I think that's important is to get some early wins. So you don't want to be if we take this analogy, but you don't want to keep running in the races and always coming last, you want to get some early wins. So enter some races where you can get some early success, build your confidence, get some return on that investment that your leadership has had the confidence to put into you. And then it starts to grow. And others also start to see the success you're having, and they want more of it, and then it starts to snowball.

Dr David Jakubovic: And I would argue that's what open innovation can enable you to do. Because by bringing in other parties, you've got these complementary capabilities, you can accelerate your path to market. If I take a reasonably trivial example, but if you've got a new technology that's working in the lab, but you haven't got the manufacturing capability and assets and capital installed, to enable you to make it. Well, rather than build it yourself, when you see who has got something that can do it or something similar, that could do it much more quickly, with lower capital when you can, so it accelerates you to market. 

Or if you've got a technology, but you haven't got a brand. You haven't got the sales capability, the scale to do that. Could you license that? In P&G will and then in-license technologies that we're able to bring some of our assets and capabilities too. So I think actually, if you view open innovation as an accelerator, by bringing in those capabilities and assets from others, it enables you to get the return more quickly. Albeit you share that with the partners. But then you're together, you're looking to make the size of the prize even bigger, so that you both get a win out of this. And by bringing those complementary capabilities, you can dream even bigger get-to-market, you can consider geographies you couldn't consider trade channels, you couldn't have considered alone.

Dr David Jakubovic: Yes, we talked on that earlier. To share that risk, set the expectation, but also share the risk. Give the reassurance that the learning you generate from this is valuable. And when you do stumble, pick up. Don't keep stumbling at the same hurdle, that would be crazy. 

So find a different way how to go around it reset. But you need leadership and you need that sort of capabilities that IPI have had on how to, so that you're not making the mistakes others have made in the past. You've got the ability of IPI to come and say, well, actually, based upon what we know, here's the best practice, here's what to avoid doing, and if you do this, you're more likely to succeed.

Yvonne Chan: I think it's also very reassuring for SMEs and enterprises, to have that little bit of hand-holding and for those SMEs and enterprises who are listening in today. Well, you've heard from Dr Sze himself, do take the first step, have that conversation with IPI and also have a look at the open Innovation Marketplace and see what facets of what IPI can offer you, could work for your company. 

So thank you so much, Dr Sze and David for outlining the parameters of open innovation as well as setting the scene for the rest of the episodes in this futurepulse podcast series. I think the elements of good open innovation include and are not limited to finding complementary capabilities. That's what we've been hearing a lot about today and also finding those common goals between your partners and your company. And for those who are still contemplating whether this is the right journey or the process for you? Well, it's time to view open innovation as an accelerator for your innovation journey. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure speaking to you both Dr Sze and David.