I would look at Under Armour. When I sat down with Changi Airport and trying to work with them on this, I say, "Look at the Under Armour model," because their aim is 6 million. Under Armour’s 180 million.

It’s good to get that, because I think most of the funding today is anywhere on the engineering, on the hard skills, so the designer part will really be a good one.

Exactly, so design is not your traditional DNA in this country.

Your idea of having designer, I feel, is very unconventional for Taiwan, because Taiwan is a very engineering mentality, too. Forget about administration everywhere.

Exactly, so if now the X‑Road is connected to Finland, then it doesn’t stop them to connect to Denmark, and Sweden, and whatever.

Yes, exactly, and then you have that community that you can collaborate. I don’t know whether you know the most recent story about Estonia is they just connected with Finland, because they want to go big into EU, and all this.

Exactly, I was just going to go there.

If you follow that concept, then your design thinking works. If, from a ministry standpoint, from a government standpoint, you say, "Creating this platform of users," which will include your citizens, your foreigners, but they are residents in Taiwan, so they have their PR status here, as well as other ...

It’s not just only their own customer, but the CEO, Kevin Plank, belief in that is because having a user community will allow them to get a lot of insights about sports apparel users, not necessarily just Under Armour.

Exactly, but you can look at their database of 180 million users. Some of them are Under Armour customers. Others are Nike, Adidas, New Balance, whatever.

One of the things that they are working on right now is the whole Under Armour concept, so they want to build this user community. A lot of companies have customer database. We all have our own customer database, but the Under Armour example, it’s not about customer. It’s about ...

For example, one thing that I know, in Singapore Changi Airport, which is obviously our airport. Changi Airport is, as we all know, the world’s number one airport. It’s very well known, and things like that, so they’re always trying to look for new things and new creativeness.

Government is definitely not at the forefront of this. Clearly you are familiar, like you say, because of your Apple background and Silicon Valley background. Then I would say Under Armour, the whole connected fitness user communities.

It takes a while, right?

I’m sure.

They’re actually leading the Smart Nation program. That’s what they do. From a government standpoint, this is the one. It’s difficult because it’s self‑conditioned. Basically, if you look at this design thinking, it’s self‑managed team. You don’t have to make it perfect, and then you just keep on reiterating and ...

I would say these are the only two that we have actually seen that agile thinking, because they don’t really have a digital minister. They have a department now, which is under the Prime Minister office that is representing digital.

A*STAR is basically their research and engineering. One is it’s a lot of focus on true R&D. The agile thinking is somewhat, you have to in doing that, right?

For that group, this design thinking is where I’ve seen take place, but it’s not widespread. It’s only in one place. As a government, this is not a top thing that they say and focus. If I would say of all, GovTech would be the one.

GovTech is the main implementer for the Smart Nation program in Singapore. One big part of the initiative is around innovation, which is why they a bought a lot of startups.

It’s the Ministry of Communications, and then IDA is basically the Infocomm Development Authority. Because first they combined with the media, so IDA combined with the media, IMDA. They then have now, GovTech, and then IMDA.

The only department that I’ve seen that is directly linked to the government that actually implement this is GovTech, G‑O‑V T‑E‑C‑H, because GovTech and IMDA came from IDA.

They actually don’t list designers as a pool of talent that they need. They talk about engineers. It’s true that the emphasis is less on that.

They try to place more emphasis on that. In fact, when they look at the talent, they actually don’t list designers as one...

You are right there, if you look at within the Singapore government, the administration, that this is not something that they have really placed a lot of emphasis, because they are putting more into open data economy, AI, robotics, and industry use case and technology.

Something that they don’t have to do that. That’s what we have done. What else do you want to cover? There are other examples I can talk about.

This is a very new trend that I’ve seen. Some have worked, and then there are ones that after six months cannot change their mind. Then they know that these are the ones to phase out, because they say you either have to embrace it, or you have to leave. ...

Correct.

Some of the brands that tell me, say, "After six months they still don’t get it, then it’s time to churn them out." I don’t know about government, but private sector they can do that. They say it’s time to churn them out.

Maybe you want to try this, because if you rotate enough, over a period of time you would have exposed them. Every group is actually at least a six month, because we believe that, at least the large branding, you need six months.

Maybe this is what you’re going to do. Once a week may not be enough. They may also see it as just an excursion.

The big brands are actually beginning to do that. You see something like P&G, Marriott, they all go into this. Typically, they say they will bring the most traditional, the most conservative, the ones that have the most difficult mindset to change. They will bring them first. They are telling ...

They want to immerse them in that environment until they become like, "Oh, actually, it is not that bad. It is quite good, and I see all the benefits."

Correct. It’s not attaching to the startup company. They are not attaching to the startup. They do exactly what they do...

Yes, minimum of six months.

Some of these big brand companies, they actually bring the traditional people, and they rent space there, and say, "Every day, instead of coming to this, our office, now you go to that office. You still do exactly the same thing, but now you are doing it in a different ...

They select these people, and they rotate them. Every six months, it’s a minimum of six months, they bring these people into a environment whereby this environment has a lot of startups. I don’t know in Taipei, but in China you have the SOHO offices whereby it’s a building and ...

The other thing that we have also learned, and this is more private sector, so I don’t know how from a security and how does it apply. We have also seen companies where they have exactly this traditional model, and then it changes people mindset.

Singapore Smart Nation plan, a lot of the other Southeast Asian countries, like Indonesia, and Malaysia, and Thailand, they typically come to Singapore and try to learn. They try to bring their people.

One idea that we have worked with some of the companies is, like in this B2B environment, which is internal, you bring people have gone through that process outside of government, in the community, private sector or other government, and then bring and show them. Or you bring your people ...

They are actually quite good at going to big conferences to talk about it, and they’re also very open to working with other governments and other ministries to collaborate and to do sharing. In this digital world, that’s what you need to do.

They are very big into going out and promoting it. They go and talk about it, because sometimes when I talk about Estonia, people will be like, "What are you talking about? Which country are we talking about here?"

You need to actually bring that into the environment. That’s what we have seen. Have you come across the Estonia case study?

For you, you are very familiar with agile and design thinking, right?

Your style, where you talk about where you, through whatever Slack‑like collaboration platform, or equivalent, and then you collaborate. Then every Friday you have a meeting, so it’s a weekly...

You have to change the process. What we have seen is changing the internal process.

They go around, right?

Some companies actually bring in a pool of young talent to just do that. Their job is to go to this different ministry or department to just do that.

Of course, if you manage to bring in the young talent into the company, and they are so used to that, then these other people will see this, "Yeah, it’s going to be business as usual," they become more and more comfortable.

All these different platforms make the other people feel more comfortable. It’s like, "Actually, it is fine. This is the new way."