Speech by Minister Lawrence Wong at the Launch of 'Cool Ideas for Better HDB Living' Exhibition
Nov 19, 2016
I am very happy to join today at the launch of the 2016 Cool Ideas Exhibition.
HDB living is now an integral part of our Singaporean way of life. Over the years, HDB has been designing, planning and building many new towns. Each time they build a new one, the town looks better – physically, the buildings are more attractive and the living environment is more appealing.
But HDB living goes far beyond just the physical infrastructure. It is more than just the hardware. It is fundamentally about the people around us, our neighbours and friends that make up our community.
That’s why we have been doing a lot more in HDB and MND to foster stronger community bonds within HDB estates. One example is this ‘Cool Ideas for Better HDB Living’ initiative. When residents themselves come up with solutions and take responsibility and ownership to develop new ideas, that sense of bonding is much stronger. We launched the ‘Cool Ideas for Better HDB Living’ five years ago to tap on the collective creativity of Singaporeans to solve problems in their communities and strengthen the sense of ownership and responsibility in our homes. Ultimately, we want to bring residents together. When you have a good idea and you share it around with your neighbours and friends, everyone benefit and that sense of ‘gotong royong’, that sense of kampong spirit is much stronger.
Since we launched this initiative we have generated more than 600 ideas. This year, we also held our first ever Cool Ideas Hack in June. More than 200 participants came together to develop IT-related for better community living. I was there and I was very inspired by their passion and energy.
Today, we showcase the ideas from the winning entries from the last two years of the competition. I am very happy that some of these ideas have taken off and have been put into practice. For example, students from Republic Polytechnic and Anglo-Chinese Junior College had suggested gas hobs with safety features like a digital timer that cuts off the gas supply at a set time, and a flame failure device that cuts off the gas supply when the flame goes out. Citygas and Aerogaz have now included these innovative features, which will make homes safer and avoid fire incidents, while reducing gas and energy wastage. This is a good example of how something that is generated from this process has now been implemented and commercialized.
Another team of participants developed a mobile application called “Suburb” to provide a private and secured network that allows residents to chat with others in the same estate. I know you can use SMS and Whatsapp, but this app allows you to verify the users to ensure that only people in the same estate are allowed in. The app also has a feature to allow agencies to broadcast notifications to the community. In fact, HDB used this feature to share about today’s exhibition.
These success stories are encouraging and show that there is a lot more potential for Cool Ideas to be realised. We want to do more to translate ideas into actual solutions on the ground. Ideas are good but let’s make sure that they don’t just stay as ideas.
So we will be doing several things to enhance this translation process. First, we will enhance the Cool Ideas Fund, which was introduced in 2014 to enable winning teams to turn their ideas into workable prototypes to test in HDB estates. Each team can apply for a grant of up to $10,000. However, there is a requirement for the team to match the grant amount dollar-for-dollar. We have received feedback that this requirement is a bit of a burden, especially for students and retirees.
Because we want more ideas to reach prototyping stage and take off, we will now remove this co-funding requirement. The grant cap will remain at $10,000 for each successful application. We hope this will encourage more teams to use the fund to translate their ideas into workable prototypes and actually roll them out in our HDB estates to benefit residents.
Second, we have identified eight organisations as our official ‘Cool Ideas Partners’ who will join us on the Cool Ideas journey. This is not something new - HDB has already been working with government agencies and industry partners to develop some ideas further. We find that the participation of subject matter experts and their sharing of knowledge and resources have been valuable. Thus, we want to formalise these partnerships, to help inventors fine-tune their ideas, apply their ideas beyond HDB living, and even commercialise them, if possible.
I am very glad that companies like City Developments Limited, 3M, IBM, Microsoft and Singtel Innov8, as well as organisations like the Singapore Furniture Industries Council, People’s Association, and SPRING Singapore have decided to participate as “Cool Ideas Partners”. Our partners will be more involved during the competitions, to provide mentorship and also participate in the judging process. They can also work with inventors to refine their ideas for implementation and potentially, for commercialisation.
Finally, let me thank all of you once again for your support and enthusiastic participation in the Cool Ideas series of events. We’ve had a good start since the initiative was launched in 2014. Let’s keep the momentum going – to roll out more innovative ideas and make a tangible difference in the lives of Singaporeans in our HDB estates. Thank you and I wish all of you an enjoyable weekend ahead.