Design Innovation
The Design Innovation strategy entails providing designers, design practices and design clients with an environment that is supportive of innovation and design IP creation.
Design Thinking & Innovation Academy
The Design Thinking & Innovation Academy (DTIA) was established in 2010 to infuse design thinking and develop design-driven innovation capabilities in the private and public sectors for productivity, competitiveness and sustainable growth.
A three-pronged approach is adopted to increase awareness, adoption and achieve sustainable innovation:
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At the awareness level, DTIA focuses on promoting design thinking and design-driven innovation as a key enabler for productivity, competitiveness and sustainable growth, and educating private industry and public sector about the relevant methodologies.
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At the adoption level, DTIA facilitates the adoption of design thinking and design-driven innovation in private industry and public sector through master classes and workshops.
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The sustainable innovation level then fosters the escalation of design-driven innovation towards managerial and strategic levels in the private industry and public sector, and the development of new design-driven innovation services for designers, such as service design and experience design.
DTIA collaborates with relevant government agencies such as SPRING Singapore and Singapore Workforce Development Agency to review and formulate policies on design-driven education.
DTIA also supports the ManyWaysofSeeing (MWOS) programme for primary and secondary schools. The goals of the programme are to inspire creativity, provide opportunities for teachers and students to work with designers, and to help students appreciate design and design thinking.
Asian Insights & Design Innovation
Asia's economic growth has offered tremendous business opportunities for Singapore enterprises, inviting them to bring to market new offers of innovative products, services and experiences for Asian consumers that are culturally contextualised.
The Asian Insights & Design Innovation (AIDI) programme aims to help Singapore enterprises sharpen their existing competitive edge of Asian cultural affinity and benefit from Asia's growth by:
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Encouraging them to adopt a user-driven design innovation approach,
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Deepening their cultural understanding of Asian consumers, and
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Applying their deep knowledge of Asian culture in creating new products and services for Asian consumers and beyond.
AIDI will be rolling out a series of sector-specific design ethnographic studies in various parts of Asia and beyond. When completed, AIDI will develop the findings from these studies into design concepts and share them with Singapore enterprises in immersion workshops thereafter. Singapore enterprises will be able to learn how the Asian culture can be leveraged for product and service innovation opportunities in specific industry sectors through user-driven innovation.
AIDI views user-driven design innovation as a design innovation process that systematically gains deep insights into users' latent needs, and uses these insights to develop and design a sustainable pipeline of radical yet meaningful products, services and experiences. Design ethnography is employed in order to gain a deep understanding of the user of the design outcomes, particularly at the level of cultural meaning.