Singapore's opportunity to lead in urban innovation

So I've finally read through the much maligned Singapore Population White Paper. Much of the commentary, not surprisingly, has been on the headline 6.9Mn population 2030 forecast number and the huge challenges: infrastructure sufficiency, greying population and the integration of immigrants.

My main takeaway from the paper and the subsequent discussions is more optimistic though. I think the circumstances make Singapore an ideal place to incubate innovative design and technology solutions for urban cities. Done right, this city could be the model for other burgeoning metropolises globally in time to come.

The white paper as it stands, has too much emphasis on linear solutions, of the "build more, build earlier" kind. To be fair the word 'innovative' appears 8 times. However, beyond stating "we will explore innovative solutions", it lacks the specifics on the potential set of innovations. I highlight here a few existing collaborative-consumption examples, but the possibilities go far beyond this category:

More car rides, without more cars 
Getaround allows anyone to rent out their vehicle by the hour to people nearby. Ever noticed the large number of cars parked around you while you're desperately trying to hail a taxi? There's also services like Uber for the times when you just need your own chauffeur, while Lyft lets anyone provide rides to others with their own car.

More personal help, without more helpers
Companies like TaskRabbit allow people to be "part-time-anything", and lets anyone get help with errands - anything from grocery shopping to technical help. Sounds like a good way avoid importing more foreign labour. Plus 'Taskrabbitter' sounds a lot better than 'cleaner', hence opening such 'jobs' to a broader pool of people that otherwise would not have done this type of work.

More education, without more classrooms
Skillshare lets you learn directly from experts on specific topics. And if you prefer more established professors, you can also learn from the best at Coursera, which offer the gamut from algorithms (by a Princeton professor) to physiology (by a Duke professor)




The list goes on, including Airbnb* (more tourism, without more tourism labour) and OpenDesks (more office space, without more offices). So there's a bunch of innovations already out there.

Now, why is Singapore great place to incubate them?

1. Infrastructure is already in place
Key technology enablers are already in place for a lot of these innovations. Singapore has one of the highest smartphone penetration globally, at 90% of population. Broadband penetration is at over 100% of households, and there are ready tools like online identification (SingPass) and mapping (onemap.sg).

2. Minimal price distortion 
Singapore's economy has minimal distortions through government interventions, e.g. fuel subsidies. The economics for participants in such innovations (e.g. a person renting out his car), as well as the companies involved would likely be attractive. Put simply, high prices in Singapore make it worthwhile for people to consider sharing their car/room/time.

3. Burning platform
Most importantly, Singapore is a resource-constrained island, and its residents are feeling those constraints now more than ever before. The need to experiment and encourage such non-linear ideas should be stronger here than anywhere else.

Still, there are significant hurdles to overcome. First among many is whether there is recognition of point 3 above by the government and regulators. New startups with non-linear ideas are often disruptive and in many cases aren't welcome by industry incumbents. Case in point - Uber's regulatory challenges.

The government and regulators here can do one of three things: (i) get in the way by trying to over-regulate at early stages of these innovations, (ii) do nothing and slow innovation through regulatory ambiguity, or (iii) work towards a regulatory framework that supports such experimentation and innovation. There's only one answer here that puts Singapore in the best position to succeed.


*Disclosure: I work at Airbnb

Monitor Group and consulting: Scale matters

Anyone that is remotely familiar with the consulting industry would have heard of Monitor Group filing bankruptcy by now.  I found it quite surprising that the firm had left things so late that it had to end up with bankruptcy (I'd have expected an earlier recognition of the need for some sort of merger). Still, some sort of shakeup has always been on the cards for the mid-sized management consulting firms. More than ever, service companies need to achieve scale at a global level. At 1,000+ employees and 27 offices, Monitor was sizable, but ultimately not nearly the scale required to become a sustainable business in the long term.

The idea of economies of scale (and scope) dates much earlier than Porter's five forces, and has it's roots more in manufacturing than in modern-day service industries. However, I think scale plays a much bigger role in today's businesses than most would imagine, and increasingly so in the business of management consulting. Some thoughts of why I believe so:

1. Business is international, even if revenues come from one specific country/region
5-10 years back, you could imagine large companies only needing to think about business and competitors within one country or region. Telecommunications is one example. Starhub, when launched in 2000, only needed to contend with two competitors SingTel and M1 in Singapore, and this was the case for years. StarHub today generates almost all it's revenues from Singapore, but it has to deal with business threats that are international: YouTube, Viber, Line to name a few. A management consulting firm now needs to be able to articulate the business environment of these competitors (in the US, Israel and Japan respectively) to comprehensively understand strategic options.

2. Blurring of lines across industries
Management consulting firms now also need expertise in multiple sectors as industries converge. It's challenging to be a telecommunications-specialised consulting outfit, if a telecommunication company's business, say Vodafone as an example, now spans everything from media to financial services to healthcare.

3. MBAs, experts and knowledge are easily accessible
The US churns out some 160k MBAs per year. At the same time, expert networks are flourishing, allowing anyone to get in touch with an expert in just about any topic. Further, startups like Quora are making it increasingly easier to find specific knowledge (Want a view of how long a fish would survive in orange juice? or for the more practical,  perspectives from real entrepreneurs on how to stay ahead of startup trends ).
The combination of these factors imply that the demands on management consulting firms are ever higher. They can't just deliver a typical b-school five-forces analysis, or just provide technical 'how-to' recommendations. They now need to deliver -both- in tandem: strategy, plus specific implications to the business, right down to 'how it will happen in practice'. A management consulting firm needs to be able to pick from a large pool of talent to assemble a team that can pull this off.

4. Recruiting and building "T-shaped" talent
The other consequence of the above point is that management consulting firms need to attract and recruit 'T-shape' talent. Folks who are specialized in one area, but also have the broad toolkit for business management. To attract and retain such talent, firms need to provide regular opportunities in the area of specialization and sufficient diversity to build general business skills (e.g. a stream of projects in emerging-market healthcare and also options for pharmaceutical or hospital business ). Only the largest of the management consulting firms can offer this.

5. Exogenous shocks more frequent
The Libya case clearly hit Monitor group hard. But plenty of these happen - unplanned, exogenous events that disrupt a significant part of a business. Everything from regime changes to regional financial crises can cripple a business that's heavily project-based and indexed to business growth. Global scale, and some level of business diversity helps cushion such blows.

So, implications? My guess is that there'll be much more consolidation in the management consulting industry, particularly among the mid-tier outfits. Both between firms, as well as acquisitions by larger multi-business professional firms.