Building innovative start-up partnerships

My role is to identify and scope digital capabilities that are outside of the four walls of Rolls-Royce. My focus is to seek connections with start-ups for opportunities to co-create solutions in industrial IoT, A.I. and analytics, autonomous sensing and blockchain and quantum computing.

With today’s pace of change, we can no longer look at things in a segmented way, such as verticals or skillsets. We need to innovate rapidly together with technology firms, digital start-ups and regional innovation support agencies. That way, we can create, integrate, develop and deploy effective solutions that drive value for customers quickly.

Being a child at heart, I’ve always been fascinated with engines, trains, cars, planes, fighter jets and submarines. Rolls-Royce’s technology pretty much cuts across all these amazing machines.

Coming to the company, I was particularly motivated in helping solve tomorrow’s challenges in delivering the future of power. It was a great chance to make an impact on the world while fulfilling my childhood dream of working on some incredible projects.

There are a wide variety of opportunities to innovate here in Singapore and Asia Pacific. The industries Rolls-Royce contributes to play in the space of advanced and high-value technology. There are so many pathways to explore in terms of innovation, enhancements and efficiency gains.

It’s also great to work with people who are extremely smart. As Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." It’s the same principle when it comes to working together to bring about technological change. It’s important to listen and learn from other people to discover new fascinating ways to do things better.

More immediately, I’m currently involved in driving some projects to create cloud-based technologies to monitor engine health in real time. This means our customers can predict and avoid potential component failures. It’s an interesting daily challenge that keeps me going.

With the world of technology changing rapidly, an agile mentality is absolutely crucial. It’s no longer enough to have a “check the boxes” approach when it comes to solving problems or meeting complex customer needs. We have to become more flexible and find the right balance with existing processes.

Being knowledgeable and able to bring together professionals across multiple disciplines is also important. In Rolls-Royce, technology innovations must meet business needs, which means that you have to speak to different stakeholders with different goals. Building up an ecosystem also means you have to understand start-up’s challenges and connect with them at their level.

Another trait would be attention to detail. As we are dealing with engines that power aeroplanes, trains and other forms of transportation, one minor error could be detrimental to safety. 

Digital transformation remains one of the biggest developments that cut across a wide range of business needs. How organisations discover insights from data and produce actionable plans that lead to results is a huge factor that determines competitive advantage.

Consequently, the field of A.I. offers a huge pool of potential for greater innovation. This also means that we have to get creative when it comes to assessing digital capabilities that fit our objectives. For instance, are there hidden partnership opportunities in a start-up that is developing A.I. technology for e-commerce? This is just one of many questions we have to constantly ask ourselves, reflect upon and adjust our strategy with.

We launched our partnership programmes in Singapore and recently in India, trying to deepen existing relationships to create solutions that drive value for the industry and Rolls-Royce.  

For example, in India, the team is looking to expand Rolls-Royce’s capabilities by incubating and mentoring start-ups in their part of the world.  With Singapore, we want to continue the traction with our ecosystem partners to help unlock their talent and capabilities. Our focus is also potentially on even edge cases, companies with services that play a more supporting role. They really get overlooked quite a bit. So, working closely and understanding the pain points of our customers, supply chains and support network is something that we are building on.

We are expanding across more countries this year. This entails forging strong relationships with local start-up or government agencies and similar ecosystem partners within China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the rest of South East Asia. This further reinforces Rolls-Royce’s global strategy of forging global partnerships and bringing innovation closer to the markets we serve.

I believe attitude is one of the best indicators if a partnership is going to work out. We want partners with go-getter spirits and are not afraid of learning and figuring things out together. Therefore, a company that is not too hung up about processes and is nimble and agile enough to reach our end game together would fit the profile.

In terms of technical capabilities, we are looking for technology and innovation leadership that is out of the box. We are also in it for the long run. So, we do not want to build partnerships on money alone. We want partners that are driven to shape the future of power, not just those that are looking for funding or a pay-out.

We are in the midst of developing a platform to attract the current and next wave of skilled talent. We’ve launched public challenges like hackathons and incubator-like programmes, which should hopefully be great channels to attract the cream of the crop. For instance, we organised the Rolls-Royce Data Innovation Challenge – Asia that encourages start-up teams to pitch fresh new ideas that solves problems in the aviation industry.

Family is my priority. Hence, spending quality time with my loved ones is extremely important. We live to eat so food is a constant focus. We will travel for hours if there is a great treat at the end of the road. It’s all about making every meal count.