 On 27th November 2020, our Innovation Strategist Azim Pawanchik was invited to speak at the 30th Malaysian Association of Clinical Biochemists Conference 2020. The theme of this year’s conference is “Innovative Solutions: The Way Forward in Laboratory Medicine”. Fittingly, Azim took the opportunity to share some insights on what to expect for the medical labs in the years to come. Titled “The Future of Laboratory Medicine: The Impact of Exponential Technologies & Platform Economy”, the talk explores recent consumer and technology trends, and the opportunities they present to industry players. The talk starts off by exploring exponential technologies, defined as disruptive technologies that potentially generate an exponential growth. This concept is best illustrated by Moore’s Law, which states that the price to performance ratio of computation improves at an exponential rate, doubling every 2 years. In fact, this law applies to any industry where technology is applied, including energy (solar cells), entertainment (online music streaming) and healthcare (online health services).  One of the most prevalent exponential technologies set to disrupt the scene is the rise of wearable tech, such as the Fitbit that tracks your vitals, and prompts you to seek medical advice as required. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), coupled with the wealth of health data already available, will allow quicker and more accurate medical diagnosis. Also in the pipeline are 3D printed medical tools and robot assisted surgery. Gaining access to these technologies means consumers are increasingly taking ownership and making decisions for their own health. With increased access to personal health data, they can now self-diagnose at the comfort of their own homes, bypassing the need for testing at medical labs altogether. Increased shift in focus to prevention and wellness also means that consumers will be acting to seek proactive solutions rather than seeking medical advice only when they fall ill.  Another rising trend is the platform economy. This is best illustrated by the ride hailing service Grab, which allows anyone with a car to work on-demand and earn a living. The service is enabled by technology. For example, it utilises complex algorithms to match drivers with users and calculate the fee for each ride. How should medical labs act to adapt to these changes? A platform approach will need to be adopted, where the relationship among every player in the ecosystem, from policymakers to clinical biochemists to consumers, are managed to ensure mutual benefit. Transformation begins with the government and policymakers. As technology advances at a breakneck speed, new regulations will need to adopt an anticipatory model. They will be developed iteratively to gain a better understanding of technology’s impact on the economy and society. As data traffic increases among doctors, labs and patients, increased focus will be needed on data protection and safeguards of intellectual property.  Medical labs will leverage technologies to help doctors make faster and more data driven decisions. Automation can be adopted to speed up the testing process to help labs combat rising operating costs. Labs can even partner with hospitals and consumer technology in a digital ecosystem to offer holistic solutions to consumers. As the future of work changes, clinical biochemists can adopt the platform economy to bring flexibility to their work. Company leaders will need to lead the charge in adopting innovation into their existing business models. Trust and direction must be given to employees to tap into the collective creativity of the organisation. Implementing data-driven processes and digital tools into current work will help break down bureaucracies and silos to further drive collaboration, while uncovering cognitive biases that impede innovation. Alpha Catalyst would like to thank MACB for providing the opportunity to share our insights and ideas. To keep up to date on innovation, follow us on LinkedIn. To learn more about the future of healthcare, refer to this report by Future Agenda. TechFest Live 2020 is a 3-day digital festival held in Georgetown, Penang from 18-19th November 2020. Held both physically and virtually, the event celebrates technology and its promise to bring good to humanity. This year, Alpha Catalyst’s Founder and Innovation Strategist Azim Pawanchik, along with former CEO of General Electric Malaysia, Datuk Mark Rozario were invited to speak at a forum titled “Proactive Intelligence for Industrial Transformation”. The session was moderated by Ng Sai Kit, the Chief Executive of Captii Ventures. Captii Ventures is a venture capital firm with portfolios spanning industries including IT and finance across Southeast Asia.  Proactive Intelligence refers to Artificial Intelligence (AI) that proactively acts once a certain input is received. Users of Google’s Gmail will rightly recognise the Smart Compose function (which offers suggestions as you type) as an application of Proactive Intelligence. Mark shared that at AirAsia, utilising AI for performance-based navigation made it possible to predict optimal take-off and landing patterns. This yielded a cost saving of MYR 50 million over 5 years. There is undoubtedly much value to be captured by harnessing the power of Predictive Intelligence. When asked about what is holding Malaysian industries back from fully embracing AI, the progress of national policy making was brought up. “The readiness of the government is still at a stage of infancy,” said Azim. Comprehensive policies and regulations need to be developed, especially in terms of data sharing and accountability to enable a full-blown adoption of AI in the nation. The benefits of embracing Proactive Intelligence were driven home by one of Datuk Mark’s successful transformation efforts at General Electric. The company currently houses 2 remote monitoring centres in Kuala Lumpur. One of which monitors over 90 power stations in Asia Pacific. Utilising a range of sensors, GE was able to collect data to build a digital twin for each of its turbines, which is a replica of its physical counterpart, allowing accurate, real-time simulations to be made. Leveraging this wealth of data, Proactive Intelligence is then utilised to predict the need for any human intervention. As a result, The centre only requires 3 operators to run. The next step is for Actionable Intelligence to intervene and avoid breakdowns, removing the need for any human response altogether.  A swift transformation into digitisation is no easy feat. In a separate survey conducted by Alpha Catalyst Consulting, the main barriers to innovation in Malaysia can be attributed to the roles of top management. Lack of trust and clear innovation direction were found to be the largest challenges impeding innovation. Clearly, a paradigm shift is required for companies to fully embrace innovation. Leaders must learn to adopt new mindsets and learn to embrace uncertainty in order to topple the walls surrounding corporate creativity. Drawing an example of a large local company, Azim warned about changes in how organisations will be run in the future. As more roles become automated, managers will need to address employees’ fears of being displaced by technology. Real-time data will become widely available, creating transparency to employees performance. “We are moving from having middle managers to measure performance, to having this done by algorithms,” added Azim. New management approaches will need to be developed to deal with this zero latency, data-driven environment.  Despite fears of disruption, companies will need to embrace digitisation by breaking down traditional organisational structures. As opposed to the layers of hierarchy we have today, companies of the future will implement a flatter, cross-functional platform approach, allowing collaboration and agility within the organisation. Combining this with a data-driven mindset, corporations will find more success in adopting Proactive Intelligence within their business. In the final segment, the panel explored a few industries that can be revolutionised by Proactive Intelligence. These include the media industry, where it can be used by local companies to redefine its revenue model to better compete against disruptors like Netflix. The risk-averse insurance industry will also have much to gain if it uses of AI to develop more efficient ways of pricing insurance premiums. In industry with the most to benefit from, perhaps, is the healthcare industry, especially in terms of preventive healthcare. In fact, the use of AI and online health services is already prevalent abroad. For example, Chinese regulators have already approved formed regulations to allow the use of AI to perform diagnosis for both conventional and traditional medicine. As policymakers work to develop policies regarding the use of AI and Proactive Intelligence, there will be much to look forward to as industries continue to grow and transform.  Alpha Catalyst Consulting would like to thank TechFest 2020 for this opportunity to share our views at this forum. We would also like to thank Sai Kit and Datuk Mark for their thoughts and insights.
Follow us on LinkedIn, and refer to this article to learn more about digitising innovation management.  New on digital disruption, digital economy, platform economy and digital transformation is ubiquitous in the media today, much more than ever before. There is plenty of hype and debate on how Blockchain technologies, algorithms, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) would transform industries and create new growth opportunities. In Southeast Asia, the digital wave is dominated by technology start-ups such as Lazada, Traveloka, Tokopedia, Grab and Go-jek, where the latter two have morphed from ride-hailing companies to ‘super apps’ that offer everything from food, transport, delivery, payment and insurance services in a single experience. Other than providing income opportunities and delivering value to millions of customers, they were able to come this far by fully embracing the digital and platform economy, coupled with their customers’ readiness and ecosystem infrastructure and support. They derive their competitive edge from customer data, algorithms, network of partners, brand and innovation. The fact that business media brand, Fast Company, crowned Grab as the second most innovative company in the world in 2019 is a testament to this. Founded in 2012, Grab has established their presence in 500 cities across 8 countries in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines and Myanmar. While much of the spotlight appears to be on the arena of start-ups and purely digital companies, many large corporates and traditional industries are also harnessing the benefits of digital operating models. There are many approaches and techniques to innovation, such as design thinking, lean start-up, business model canvas and stage gate. Regardless of the approach, every innovation effort should focus on the following four key outcomes:
 Generating these outcomes in large organisations is different from doing it in start-ups. Other than the involvement range of functions and stakeholders with a company’s strategic direction and risk appetite, a recent survey highlighted the key obstacles for innovation are the lack of trust and empowerment, and lack of clear direction from management. These barriers stem from the human factors, relating to bureaucracy, silos and cognitive biases. Bureaucracy refers to the complex and multi-layered systems and processes within an organisation. Although these are in place to maintain uniformity and control within an organisation, it fuels power distance, leading to an authority gap and decision making delays. Business unit silos present themselves in conflicting agendas, limited leadership, lack of collaboration and an enhanced overconfidence gap. On top of that, cognitive biases are inevitable, where as individuals, we are unable to process all information objectively and resort to mental shortcuts when making decisions. The convergence between digital transformation and innovation management thus presents an opportunity to revolutionise what is still largely managed in a traditional manner: through emails, instant messages, spreadsheets, presentations, post-its, and an endless schedule of meetings. Digitising the innovation endeavour through the use of platforms provides for safe storage in the cloud, increased efficiency, reduced operational costs, and eases data analysis. Additionally, a digital platform provides scalability, structure, and repeatability for the innovation process. This allows organisations to carefully plan, manage and monitor their innovation efforts in real time whilst tracking the process and aligning it with intended goals and objectives. More importantly, digital platforms can help overcome the many barriers to innovation stated earlier, whilst encouraging collaboration. An example of a successful internal collaboration can be found at the Kuala Lumpur office of Nestle, the multinational food and beverage company. In 2016, the company held its inaugural Innovation Awards, aimed at promoting idea generation amongst its employees. The results were momentous- 6,000 participating employees generated 50,000 fresh ideas, which in turn translated into a 10% increase in sales revenue in that same year. Digitising collaboration has made innovation continuous, relentless and fast. As we move towards a digital business paradigm, machine and human decision-making increasingly coalesce. Blending technology-enabled insights with a thorough understanding of human judgement, reasoning, and choice will allow organisations to create and sustain a competitive edge in this increasingly complex world. The crucial step is not the technology itself, but the current digital behaviour of employees and management that need to embrace the digital and platform economy. In conclusion, the digitisation of innovation management allows organisations to spend less time managing innovation and more time on things that really matter- like uncovering insights and opportunities, working on prototypes and pilots and most importantly, creating value for customers and the company. More recently, our Innovation Strategist, Azim Pawanchik, spoke on this at ISPIM Bangkok March 2020. To learn more about what we do, visit alphacatalyst.com.   Introduction to the ISO 56000-series: Guiding standards for innovation management The need for systematic innovation activities is increasing in all types of organisations. To guide these efforts, the first international standard for Innovation Management System (ISO 56002) has recently been published. A keynote presentation by Magnus Karlsson, the National expert & Chairman of SIS Swedish Institute for Standards and RISE Research Institutes of Sweden provides an overview of an innovation management system, the systems approach used, the principles and definitions behind it, how it can be implemented, and how it has been developed by ISO. Based on McKinsey’s Global Innovation Survey 2010, 84% of global executives believe and say that innovation is extremely important, however, 94% are dissatisfied with their innovation performance. This addresses the urgent need to provide guidance for organisations, both private and public, by giving a common language and credible framework. With this in place, innovation capabilities in organisations can be boosted! The ISO TC 279 started in 2013, coordinated by the French National Organisation for Standardisation (AFNOR) through an international collaborative effort- their first publications were in 2019, the ISO 56000-series:
For the ISO, innovation is defined as a new or changed entity, realising or redistributing value. Whilst an innovation management system is defined as a set of interrelated and interacting elements, aiming for the realisation of value. The ISO 56002 Innovation Management System is a guiding framework for top-management to lead and organise innovation efforts, it should be viewed as a check-list to enable systematic and systemic innovation activities; from developing and deploying innovation capabilities, evaluating performance to achieving intended outcomes. Other than using this as a guidance, organisations can also use the standards to evaluate their current ability to innovate. From the ISO, they focus on eight core innovation management principles:
 With the ISO in place, organisations are able to harness the benefits from it. The organisation’s reputation and valuation are enhanced, making them more likely to stay relevant and competitive.
Global Body of Knowledge for Innovation Management Professionals With that, innovation management is an emerging profession and a common job description and Body of Knowledge is taking shape. Innovation Management Professionals are responsible for or actively contributing to, leading and organising innovation efforts and increasing innovation capability in a company or an organisation. Creating this profession will not only increase the credibility, but it will also strengthen the profession, career advancement and employability & assurance. For this profession (ideally from different divisions/departments to have different views), the main roles would be:
To be certified, an individual would need to i) have at least 3 years of relevant work; ii) performed at least three of the six responsibilities above; iii) at least 50% of their work is related to innovation management full-time. In preparation for the personal certification, programs based on the Body of Knowledge can be attended, delivered by an open market of certified training providers. For the personal certification program, the key principles are:
Get your organisation ready, by keeping up to date with what is currently happening! Visit these websites for more information: https://innovationmanagementsystem.com/ https://www.sis.se/ https://www.ri.se  Most Western countries perceive Asian markets as fascinating innovation hubs, where technologies are leapfrogged and where people are open to new digital innovations and transformations. But is it a reality for all Southeast Asian countries, and what is still necessary to get there? At the ISPIM Conference Bangkok 2020, a panel discussion was held with Theresa Mathawaphan (Deputy Executive Director of National Innovation Agency of Thailand), Dr. Suraya Sulaiman (Innovation Provocateur of Alpha Catalyst), Detlef Reis (Founding Director of Thinkergy) and James Engel (Chief Learning Architect of SEAC Thailand), chaired by Vincent Ribiere (Managing Director of Institute for Knowledge and Innovation Southeast Asia of Bangkok University). The panellists shared what they have personally experienced and saw as successful solutions to stimulate various forms of innovation in Southeast Asia. This is an excerpt from the conversation which took place.  Starting off the conversation, the speakers discussed the current state of innovation in the Southeast Asian region. Innovation within the Southeast Asia region varies dramatically in terms of maturity, and can be roughly divided into three categories: the advanced (Singapore), the intermediate (Malaysian-Thailand-Indonesia) and the emerging (Laos-Cambodia-Myanmar). Malaysia tended to produce more product or service-oriented innovations, while Singapore developed more tech innovation. Other than the variation between innovation focus; cultural diversity, regulations, availability of sandboxes/testbeds also played a part in distinguishing the level of innovation maturity. Moving into examples of innovative companies emerging from the region, Grab and Go-jek was top most in mind. Grab, a technology company which started off offering ride-hailing transport services have now ventured into: online food delivery, insurance, courier service, prepaid and payment solutions, all on a single seamless platform. Suraya quoted Grab’s impeccable exponential growth- visible through their downloads, number of rides and revenue. Within 5 years, their app downloads increased from 600,000 to 100 million (across the Southeast Asia region). Their annual revenue grew from 0.5 billion to 2.3 billion within three years (as of 2019). She highlighted that the key success she’s observed was how they leverage on attributes associated with the exponential organisation (ExO) model such as leveraging assets, usage of algorithms and utilising staff-on-demand. Theresa brought up another similar Indonesian startup, Go-Jek. With a social mission to improve the welfare and livelihood of the Indonesian people, Go-Jek is an app for transportation, food delivery, logistics, payment and daily services. Due to their drive to fulfil their social mission, Go-Jek has been commended for their approach to localisation. Other panellists also highlighted other startups such as QQ, a Tencent’s eCommerce app which also integrates online social games, music, microblogging and group & voice chat software; and HotelManagement.Asia, a one-stop app for event management. Apart from being successful, these startups have two common themes between them: the identification and solving a specific issue or problem; and are platform providers by aggregating solutions and leveraging on assets. Other than being different from one another, Southeast Asia also varies internationally. Detlef highlighted that the main difference between the European ecosystem and Asia’s is the culture. The culture has influenced the behaviour of employers and employees, and the interactions between them. Asian organisations tend to have higher levels of hierarchy, leading to a higher power distance. With Asians being collectivists rather than individualists, they are less verbal and outspoken with their thoughts and ideas. Hence, the main barrier towards innovation is the mindset. Taking into consideration the culture, they agreed that innovations worked best when it is initiated top-down, however, the top must also walk the talk rather than giving mere commands. Another barrier discussed was the retirement issue within the older generation workforce. As they approached their retirement age, the observation was that they tended to opt for less risky or tedious projects- possibly due to the high responsibility or energy investment needed. In addition, risk and failure acceptance was seen to be low overall, and is comparatively lower internationally. However, the panellists have all witnessed that there is a positive shift in the mindset- whereby employees are becoming more open to being involved with the organisation’s future and their innovative efforts- displaying a promising future. Due to the culture where Asian tend to not voice out their ideas and thoughts, interfaces such as digital tools and digital innovation management softwares can provide the avenue for expression and sharing of ideas. Through these platforms, organisations will be able to tap on the collective insights from their employees, as well as minimising the effect of hierarchy. Due to the cultural difference, most innovation management system theories from the Western part of the world are less applicable to the Asian ecosystem. Coming from an innovation management consulting firm specialised in the Asian perspective, Dr Suraya discloses that the systems are well designed, however is not possible to use entirely, and would need to be adapted to suit the context and culture. The discussion has highlighted the cultural difference, however, that may be Southeast Asia’s strongest point. With the positive mindset transition, the future for innovation is definitely promising and worth looking out for!  |
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