How Singaporeans can think differently in this competitive time

Our landscape is changing.
We have to think differently.
A question is: can we?

Skilled professionals, key industry practitioners and leading advocates of sustainability from governments, non-profits and private corporations gathered for one week this September at the luxurious Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre in Singapore in several co-located international events. They chatted on how to build green communities in response to global climate change consequences.

Now they are all back home.
They are likely back to business as usual.
A question is: are they thinking any differently?

A different thinking folder in our mental drawer would lead to feeling differently, then to taking different actions which will lead to different results. We certainly want to stay away from insanity, as Albert Einstein defined it - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Do we?

As I butterflied from one session to the next across events, I learned, mainly from international teams, about their emotional, intellectual and mental investment to disrupt their status quo thinking patterns to meet customers’ needs innovatively and beautifully.

Thomas Heatherwick, Founder & Principal of Heatherwick Studio deconstructed his thinking approach on how his team converges design, technology and business. He shared that there is a difference between a client’s brief and what is really behind a brief. He keeps questioning constantly and profoundly: “Why do you do something?” Thomas Heatherwick does what matters to people.

He thinks differently for the New Bus for London by looking at the bus not as a single piece, but part of the architecture of the city. He sees architecture and infrastructure with the same eyes and gravity. He moves from thinking about to feeling the human experiences of bus passengers. He then designs, admirably. His result - more business contracts.

Further down, Dr. Nick Fleming, Chief Sustainability Officer at Sinclair Knight Merz in Australia in his eye-opening talk on ‘Unleashing Business & Social Value through Sustainable Capital Projects’ looked at thinking differently, this time together in groups. He too made excellent use of questions, to capitalise on the imagination and creativity of team members.

In his attempt to integrate value by design and delivery, Nick asks: “What systems are we interacting with?”, “What will success look like for our clients?”, and “What assumptions have we not tested yet?”. He keeps reframing the problems, as he knows that he gets a different answer when he asks a different question, e.g. “Is moving the goods from A to B at the lowest cost the problem we want to solve?” v/s “How do we move the goods from A to B?”.

Finally, Adrien Desbaillets, Co-Founder and President of SaladStop! walks a different talk. He is connecting customers to the food sources. He cooks an experience for hungry eaters, seasons it with learning about raw ingredients, decorates it with opportunities for them to engage with one another and serves with a spirit of social responsibility.

Thomas, Nick and Adrien do not have to do what they are doing. They are doing it because they believe in the value they are offering. They dared step outside the beaten path, risked a little and marched on. The recipe for thinking differently is an open source and is there for us to make use of as and when we desire.

These co-located events, namely the World Engineers Summit, World Federation of Engineers Organisations General Assembly, Build Eco Xpo Asia, and the International Green Building Conference will give way to future gatherings attempting to diminish the consequences of the tragedy of the commons. This means more opportunities to learn from experts like Thomas, Nick and Adrien and from one another.

Our landscape is changing.
We have to think differently.
A question is: will we?