SGS Seminar on “How Sustainability Sparks Innovation”

Innovation is critical to every organization in competitive market and sustainability is a key driver of innovation.  Therefore, SGS Academy organized a seminar named “How Sustainability Sparks Innovation?” to give a grasp of the importance of incorporating sustainability into innovation processes within an organization as well as effective way to evaluate and to foster innovative process and thinking respectively.  I took a photo with two speakers for memory.

(Left: Mr. David T.W. Chung (Principal Consultant, InnoEdge Consulting Ltd.), I and Mr. Jacky S.F. Yeung (Project Manager, SGS))

 Mr. Jacky S.F. Yeung (Project Manager, SGS) was the first speaker and his topic was the theme of today’s seminar.  Firstly, he explained that there were many gaps among different level of executive and front line employee and he asked us any solution to close the innovation gap to transform from today’s problems.

The different obstacles in different level of organization were discussed as below diagram.  Then Mr. Jack Yeung briefed some cases to study how important of innovation such as Nokia and Apple. 

Then he pointed out innovation was part of Corporate Sustainability (CSR) that Responsibility plus Accountability equal to Sustainability and Ability. 

After that Mr. Jacky Yeung quoted Delottie report (2013) that sustainability driven innovation harnessing sustainability’s ability to spark innovation.  And then he briefed some business opportunities / trends such as AI, VR, Shared Economy, Big Data, One Belt One Road, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area Development, Hong Kong/Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park, CEPA and Green Finance, etc. 

Finally, he employed Hung Fong Tong as case study and discussed how their innovation transformation to produce different close market products.  He also demonstrated the good management element and cause analysis based on Entrepreneurs’ spirit, Flexible management, One mind, Innovative thinking and Sales strategy.  Management elements included Leadership, HR management, Policy and strategy, Resources, Workflow, Innovation and learning.

Lastly, Mr. Jacky Yeung said business innovation management system acted as compass and introduced the CEN/TS 16555-1: 2013 Innovation Management System.  SGS would provide 1 day on-site audit for diagnosis of business innovation.  After the assessment, a comprehensive executive summary report would be provided for continuous improvement.

Mr. David T.W. Chung (Principal Consultant, InnoEdge Consulting Ltd.) was the second speaker and his presentation title named “Fostering Innovative Thinking and Culture for Sustainable Business Growth”.  Mr. David Chung’s talk included three parts and they were Innovation Thinking Approach, Innovation Process Formation and Innovation Culture Transformation.

Firstly, Mr. David Chung asked us what was the different between Creativity and Innovation thinking and then he quoted the definition from CEN/TS 16555-1: 2013 that “Innovation thinking is an iterative, repeatable approach to explore problem and opportunities in order to identify significantly better solution and anticipate future needs.  There were four key words and they were “Problem”, “Opportunities”, “Better Solution” and “Future Needs”. 

Then Mr. David Chung raised different innovation cases in Hong Kong to explain problem and opportunity such as Molala company’s Floral Balloon Surprise Box, Fashion app, mobile to take photo for black people. After that he used the CEN/TS 16555-1: 2013 innovation management standard’s idea funnel to demonstrate how idea from innovation thinking transferred to innovation management process. 

He added that the first step should be started at Innovation Result and then back to the Idea Management.  There were many tools for ideas management which showed in the following diagram.

After that he mentioned to assess the result of the innovation process.  There were two types of KPIs that one was financial indicators and the other was non-financial indicators. For non-financial indicators could include “No. of ideas through the innovation process”, “Efficiency of processes”, “Impact in the number of employees”, “IP, HR relationship” and “Ecological and social sustainability”, etc. 

Lastly, Mr. David Chung said the conversion rate of innovation management process was very important.  However, some hidden factors affected the conversion rate such as staff mindset and culture.  So that he suggested top management to support the innovation culture through “Idea support”, “Communication”, “Collaboration Encouragement”, “Conflict Consciousness” and “Failure Tolerance”.  He also warned us that two words usually killed innovation were “Prove It” (from HBR).  The last factor was failure tolerance that “failure” did not equal to “wrong”.

After the seminar, we chatted with speakers.  I encouraged them to promote more about Innovation Management System to the industry.  I was the first one to provide one speech on CEN/TS 16555-1: 2013 in Hong Kong since Jan 2015 and then presented the integrated quality and innovation management system, as well as, different innovation tools (e.g. TRIZ and Extenics) in different international conference worldwide.  Moreover, I was the first one and only one Hong Kong observer to ISO/TC 279 Innovation Management for ISO 50501 and its series.

Reference:

SGS Academy – http://www.sgs.com/en/solutions/sgs-academy

My relevant talk about CEN/TS 16555-1: 2013 in HK:

20150124: HKSTP & HKSQ Seminar on System Approach to Innovative Management - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2015/01/hkstp-hksq-seminar-on-system-approach.html

20150730: Towngas CPD Seminar - Quality & Innovation Management System - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2015/07/towngas-cpd-seminar-quality-innovation.html

20160618: CityU EngD Society Discovery & Innovation Seminar and AGM 2016 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2016/06/cityu-engd-society-discovery-innovation.html

20160722: IIE(HK) Innovation Talk on CIEDH & IISEAsia 2016 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2016/07/iiehk-innovation-talk-on-ciedh-iiseasia.html

20160728: TRIZfest 2016 – Day 1 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2016/07/trizfest-2016-day-1.html (In Beijing)

20161007: CUHK Guest Lecture for Innovation Management and HKSQ Membership Drive - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2016/10/cuhk-guest-lecture-for-innovation.html