In 2021, IPI celebrated its tenth anniversary since its inception as a public-funded innovation intermediary in Singapore, a city-state with a strong focus on innovation as an economic growth strategy. Among the many initiatives promoted by the government agencies is open innovation - an approach that enables firms, both large and small, to pursue innovation with the help of external expertise or partners, as few could innovate effectively on their own. As a neutral party facilitating collaboration between the local SME community and technology innovators in developing new products, services, and processes, IPI is the missing element that plugs the gap in the local innovation ecosystem. Its value proposition includes reaching a wider network of partners, acquiring industry-specific knowledge insights, and identifying and catalysing new market opportunities for licensing technology by a multidisciplinary team. Over the past decade, IPI has grown into a trusted intermediary for thousands of companies that are either seeking or offering innovative solutions. However, IPI is still unknown to many among the 300,000 plus SME community in Singapore. Wong Lup Wai, who took the helm as CEO in 2019, has set out to rebrand IPI's identity and strengthen its service offerings. He concedes there is still much work to be done. What factors will help IPI succeed in the next decade? How can IPI scale its key services to create an even more vibrant innovation community for SMEs?

Co-founded by Raghav Kapoor in Singapore in 2014, Smartkarma was an innovative e-commerce-based independent platform for providing investment research - conceived in response to changes in banking industry regulations post the 2008 financial crisis. New industry regulations required investment research to be a separate entity from sales in banks and financial institutions. Consequently, large investment banks looking to slash cost centres had started to outsource investment research. Smartkarma used a Subscription based business model. Independent analysts could publish research content on the platform and client organisations brought monthly subscriptions to access all content. Analysts were paid based on revenues generated from their content, determined by quantified value add (QVA) calculation model. By the end of 2017, Smartkarma had established itself as Asia's largest investment research platform with more than 14,000 insights across several verticals. It had also expanded geographically, establishing offices in Hong Kong, Frankfurt, and London. Smartkarma's CEO and co-founder, Kapoor, however, was aware that the firm's business model was susceptible to several risk factors, including very short-term client commitment, economic downturns and industry regulations. Kapoor chose a strategy of quickly acquiring as many clients as possible, as well as continuously building a pool of insight providers to create an early mover market advantage. Would Smartkarma be able to scale from being an Asian leader to dominate globally? Ease of entry, informational efficiency, and simplicity in replicating an independent investment platform, made it extremely difficult for such a business to beat the market on a sustained basis. Would focusing on the quality of research and transparent payment be enough to make Smartkarma the choice for asset managers in large banks? Could the company's subscription-based business model stand the test of time?

In 2011, Alexis Horowitz Burdick founded Luxola, an e-commerce platform selling branded cosmetics online in Singapore. By 2015, Burdick was able to expand her venture across 12 markets in Asia Pacific region and was acquired by Louis Vuitton Moet Hennesey (LVMH) under its cosmetics arm of Sephora. However, the initial years of Luxola had been fraught with several challenges. The primary challenge for Luxola had been attracting funding from venture capitalists. Luxola had been established by a solo woman founder, and typically venture capitalists avoided investing in start-ups established by women. Another unexpected challenge for the company was the 'lack of trust' reputed cosmetic brands had on e-commerce platforms. Burdick used a lean business model and customer centric strategies to cope with these challenges. After the acquisition, Sephora retained the senior staff including its founder. Burdick now focussed her attention on more sophisticated channels of marketing and implemented digital analytic tools and behavioural messaging to drive customer conversion ratios. These strategies had begun to produce results, and Burdick was hopeful that she could further grow the company in the region fairly quickly. Luxola had tapped on an unmet user need of women in Southeast Asia - sourcing branded cosmetics from an online platform. The unmet user need had stemmed from a demographic transformation wherein the young women in the region were becoming increasingly independent and liked to splurge on themselves. Other than demographics, what other sources of innovative opportunity had Luxola satisfied? Was exiting through acquisition the right strategy for Luxola?

Zilingo, a play on the word 'Zillions', is an online e-commerce platform for selling fashion products and was founded by Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor in Bangkok in 2015. Established with the vision of providing the small seller in South East Asia with an efficient online platform to sell their products, Zilingo had grown 25% month-on-month in its second year of operation. The Zilingo e-commerce platform is driven by data analytics-driven research tools to enable small sellers to target demand from customers and drive sales efficiently. Reports generated by the platform encompass buyer statistics, supplier statistics, fashion trends and buyer preferences. Suppliers can manage logistics through third-party logistics partners available on the platform, and better sell their products by using the myriad tools available on the mobile-friendly app to upload images of their products, manage inventory, schedule pickups, track orders, consult on price-setting, and even liaise with third-party loan providers. Zilingo had also built a significant consumer base by December 2017, with seller hubs in Hong Kong, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and China. The company had also proved to be one of the fastest growing e-commerce businesses in South East Asia and had been able to raise substantial funding (US$27 million) within its first two years of operation. In April 2018, the company had raised US$ 54 million in funding, making it among the top ten funded startup companies in Singapore. The company has also launched its B2B product in the US market in line with its market strategy of quickly growing its customer base as well as its geographic base.

Structo is a technology start-up conceived by Huub van Esbroeck and six other mechanical engineering undergraduates from National University Singapore (NUS) in 2014. The founding team at Structo had built a prototype of a 3D printer which could print four times faster than the 3D printers available in the market within the same price bracket. After building their proof-of-concept machine, the team had approached 3D printing service bureaus to sell their product. They discovered that their printer had to be heavily customised to meet the diverse needs of various printing jobs performed by service bureaus. Structo was a small start-up with limited funding and resources, and hence building customised printers was a nonviable business model for the firm. The company had to either find a new target customer base or identify large funding partners to sustain its business. Coincidently, the Structo team received a phone call from a dental practitioner in Singapore and discovered that their printer could meet the needs of dental practitioners with virtually no customisation. The 'Eureka' moment provided a new burst of enthusiasm. However, Structo soon discovered that unlike its first customer, most dental practitioners approached dental labs for their 3D printing needs. The Structo team pivoted their business model to suit the needs of dental labs, and the business took flight. By 2018, Structo's business had grown significantly. The company had also forayed into 3D printing materials business and started building its material. However, the company's medium-term goal and primary focus were to grow in the dental market. Structo was gradually transitioning from start-up phase to a growth phase in its entrepreneurial journey. Van Esbroeck now wondered how Structo could scale its business rapidly. How could Structo prepare itself as an organisation for the next stage of growth?

Commercial success with a new technology usually depends on the exclusive ownership of a critical asset or capability. But to create the technology, an innovator draws on knowledge from many different sources. Inventors who mismanage that tension often fail to successfully commercialize their innovations. To understand how to manage the tension, the authors carried out a comprehensive analysis of more than 1,000 inventions from the University of Wisconsin's Technology Transfer Office. They interviewed the TTO's senior leadership, IP managers, licensing and contract managers, legal counsel, and other staff to get firsthand knowledge of how inventions were evaluated for commercial potential. From this research they identified seven IP traps that unwary inventors (individuals and companies alike) fall into when developing scientific discoveries and inventions for the commercial market. The traps include publicly disclosing information prematurely, neglecting to enforce patent infringements, failing to demonstrate sufficient originality, overrelying on known science, failing to stake out the best territory for applications of the technology, mismanaging attribution of contributors, and ceding too much control over IP to funders. Drawing on examples encountered in their research, the authors describe these traps and offer advice on how to avoid them.

This case is set in August 2012 about ten months after the 'Ready for the Future' (RTF) Transformation Programme was implemented at Singapore Post Limited (SingPost). The programme came in response to new challenges and opportunities that had arisen in the postal industry. The results have so far been encouraging. However, will the roadmap laid out by the RTF programme empower SingPost to become a leader in delivery solutions? Is the programme comprehensive and effective enough to grow the company? And has the organisation picked the right sectors for expansion?