Innovation & Enterprise Centre
Introduction
The Centre for Innovation and Enterprise (CIE) advocates innovation and entrepreneurial development among staff and students through partnerships with industry partners, skills development, mentoring and resource support.
For AY06-07, in addition to providing the Foundation courses in Enterprise Skills for all first year students, CIE also took over the Diploma in Integrated Events Management (DIEM) and became the first Centre in RP to offer a diploma. Originally offered by the School of Sports, Health and Leisure (SHL), the move recognised CIE’s expertise in melding diverse business skillsets and industry applications, as required in developing the DIEM curriculum. Three outstanding students from the DIEM programme were awarded the STB scholarships. This marks the first time that STB is awarding such industry-based scholarships.
For AY07-08, CIE will be offering a new diploma – the Diploma in Customer Relationship and Service Management (DCRSM). The diploma aims to groom a generation of service-driven graduates equipped with relevant soft and hard skills to fulfil the demands of service industries by raising the standards of service delivery in tandem with the organisation’s goals. It seeks to inculcate in graduates a customer-centric mindset and the ability to create business opportunities for organisations with use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) techniques.
Developing Entrepreneurial Skills
JIVE, DIEM’s new diploma-linked IG has gained increasing prominence. Despite its short history, JIVE students have already made their mark in major local events such as the Singapore Fashion Festival 2007 and the Opening Festival of National Museum. They also helped to organise events with organisations such as Triumph International and Singapore Disability Sports Council.
In January 2007, SUI! - RP’s in-campus retail outlet – was set up as a student-run live-lab environment through the student IG, also named SUI! IG. Short for Student Urbane Initiative, SUI! aims to provide the opportunity for students to cultivate their entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen, and hone their customer service attributes by managing the shop and serving customers.
CIE organised a couple of major business-related events this AY. These included a campus-wide youth entrepreneurship forum organised by Business Climate IG, graced by special guests - Mr Teo Ser Luck, Parliamentary Secretary for MCYS and Mr Sean Wong, Director of Popular IG’s Heaven. CIE’s Finance Resource Services (FRS) Portfolio also hosted three key finance-related programmes during the year, namely the MAS MoneySENSE Roadshow, CPF Voyage of Life Competition, and NTUC BEST Entrepreneurial Challenge 2006.
CIE encouraged student entrepreneurship through pushcart businesses that required low start-up costs. Project Youthépreneur, a three-year joint collaboration between RP and the National Library Board (NLB) was launched to allow budding student entrepreneurs to rent a pushcart at The Events Plaza of the NLB Building at a fraction of the price of one in the heart of town. The costs were kept low as part of a safety net for inexperienced students to test their business ideas and gauge market response. To spur sales, Youth Entrepreneurship IG also helped to run quarterly-themed bazaars for Project Youthépreneur. Examples of themes included “Season of Love”, “World on Wheels” and “Heritage with a Different Touch”. Complementing these efforts, Bazaar IG spearheaded the campus-wide entrepreneurial competition, “The World in RP” where each competing team had to sell items or services characteristic of a particular country.
Going one step further, the Project Youthépreneur team collaborated with the Youth Entrepreneurship IG to initiate a series of Entrepreneurship Education Programmes (EEP), aimed at educating and exposing students to key entrepreneurial skill sets needed to set up a successful business. The EEP is structured into interactive classroom sessions on viable business ideas, visual merchandising and finance. The students then put their skills to test by setting up their own pushcart business at the NLB. Serving as mentors, RP students from the Youth Entrepreneurship IG were invited to participate in this programme to share their experiences.
CIE encourages RP students to participate in prominent island-wide business competitions to develop their expertise. Students mentored by our CIE staff have achieved important victories in Synergy 2006 Patent Commercialization Competition (Gold award, Innovation Award Category), Chartered Institute of Marketing Singapore National Marketing Competition 2006 (Champion) and SIFE Singapore National Championship (Runner-up).
Encouraging Student Creativity and Interaction
Besides empowering our students through competitions, CIE also spurred RP students to exercise their creativity by launching the “Art of Innovation”, arguably the first pictorial book on innovation in Singapore. Officially launched in May 2006, the book contained the best collections selected from 4,000 drawings contributed by RP students. Since its publication, “Art of Innovation” has been distributed to local universities, organisations, schools and libraries.
RP students also enriched their learning experiences through overseas trips. Students from the International Business IG made a cross-cultural exchange trip to Hyderabad, India, following an online project initiative by Office of Planning & International Office (OPI) with students from IBIG and Gaming.Republic. The research focused on the Cinematic Industry and Electronic Gaming Industry in the two countries using secondary data. RP students worked closely with the students from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Public School, Hyderabad. Riding on their expertise in gaming, the students also attended the three-day ASEAN Peers Convention II in March 2007. The RP team had the privilege to present their research on “Segmentation of Gamers and its Relationship with Personality” to an audience from Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Nurturing Social Responsibility
In addition to academic excellence, CIE supports RP’s efforts to promote a sense of civic-mindedness in our students. JIVE IG answered the call for social responsibility by organising the campus-wide event, “8 to AIDS”. This event was also RP’s entry for the StompAIDS Challenge 2006 sponsored by the Health Promotion Board (HPB) in support of Action For AIDS. In celebration of the Christmas season, Business Climate IG facilitated a campus-wide pledging drive titled “Christmas Wish” to fulfil simple Christmas wishes of less fortunate children from the Melrose Children’s Aid Home.
Besides students, CIE staff also had a role to play in giving to charity. Riding on the 2006 FIFA World Cup craze, a team of CIE staff launched “Bridging Lives” - a community project to raise funds for Project Bridge, a youth centre which provides early school leavers with proper guidance and direction. The event was supported by Citibank-YMCA Youth For Causes, People’s Association (PA) Youth Movement and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) of Singapore.