The trip we made to IDEO has impressed many of us with their incredible range of inspirational innovations, driven by the company’s cultures and values. Their unique culture and values seen in every part of IDEO’s operations, ranging from their flat organization hierachy structure to the architectural design of the office space, reflects their strong belief in the positive correlations among productivity, space, flexibility and freedom of expression. The big question in our mind is: will the open concept of sharing and brainstorming culture, 70-20-10 productivity rule, as well as the flat hierarchy structure we see in IDEO viable in Singapore’s start ups? To some of us who were at the discussion session, it is a chicken and egg problem.

From our internship experiences in local start ups, a fair share of the interns including myself have experienced how a hierarchical organization structure is correlated with the degree of freedom in expression and the level of innovation progress in the start up. It all boils down to the management of the start up, who is largely responsible in shaping the culture and values of the start up. So, this is the chicken theory.

The egg theory is more related to the nature of start up in their ways of hiring employees. Many start ups in Singapore largely operate based on their P & L sheets, which forms the basis of how they “stretch” the use of every dollar in their initial funding. In hiring, they often expect their employee to perform their allocated tasks to their best ability, which is also often pegged to the salary that they are receiving. Therefore, the employees are often either too overwhelmed by the amount of tasks that were allocated to them, or simply, they are the low-cost labour that would only perform a specific task in the start up, eg. a 45 year old logistics operation personnel. Will these two groups of people be the right ingredients for a open concept of sharing and brainstorming culture, or be enticed to adopt the 70-20-10 productivity rule? Very unlikely. The reason why this works in IDEO and Google is their people, who are the hand-picked elites who are intelligent, young, hungry, innovative and current. Their existence in IDEO and Google is on the basis of their “want” for the job, not their “need” for the job. Unless the start ups in Singapore would revamp their hiring strategies and adopt the mantras from Google and IDEO in employing their people, this egg problem would remain.

After the discussion, most of us would agree that the “chicken” poses a heavier weightage in the problem. After giving some thoughts to it, I realized that the Asian culture and mindsets in Singapore, among the working adults, is actually an separate subset and the root of the problems to the both “chicken” and “egg” - the “nest”. From primary school education to tertiary education, the population in Singapore grew up with the various ”prestige tags” in the titles of “prefects, student councilors, class monitors” and instilled with them the authoratative image of “leaders”. This is consequentially reflected in the grown up adults, whether you are an enterpreneur/boss or an employee in the hierarchical structure of an organization. For bosses, it could be the “That’s a good idea but mine is better, so follow me” syndrome; for employees, it could be the “i would follow whatever you say/suck thumb” syndrome. On top of that, the spoonfeeding teaching methodology in education institutions of all levels during the developmental years of these students have instilled an unspoken culture of “be silent even if you have a brilliant idea or else be ready to be stigmatised” in the classrooms. All these reasons could spell out the consequential shaping of the mindset when these students become parts of the workforce, which collectively explains why it impedes the possibility of having an open concept of sharing and brainstorming culture, lets not even mention how would they react to the 70-20-10 productivity rule.

At the end of the day, the “nest” might have won. Fortunately, mindsets can be changed. Thats the reason why we are all here in the Valley, to be inspired by what we see and experienced. Well, I guess I will have to conclude what we are doing here with something cheesey but true: To fix the nest, we must learn from the best.

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