Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Overview

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Department helps all TP students build their enterprising skills such as overcoming the fear of failure, pushing boundaries, solving problems creatively, capitalizing on opportunities and persevering to fruition. This entrepreneurial and innovative mindset will benefit the students in life and in any career that they choose.

The department’s vision is to nurture, groom and grow successful entrepreneurs and innovators. For those with aspirations to start up, we will help them refine their innovations to fit target consumers’ wants and achieve their entrepreneurship dreams in the marketplace.

The department’s mission:

Provide high-quality entrepreneurship and innovation training programs:
- ‘Innova’ core module on innovation and entrepreneurship for all students.
- ‘Guided Learning’ program to kick-start students’ startup planning under an experienced lecturer.
- Accelerator Bootcamp, an intense immersion camp on starting up fundamentals.
- Business Growth Workshop Series on topics such as consumer research, sales, and marketing.
- Pitch training for various startup funding schemes.
Offer cutting-edge facilities to support students’ entrepreneurship and innovation ventures:
- Hot desking, offices, meeting rooms and ideation rooms.
- MakerSpace+ (digital media, sound/music room, metal/wood works, electronics, digital and software development, fabric/paper/leather/plastics fabrication, tailoring, laser cutting, 3D printing)
- Event spaces (seminars, pitching, networking, performances, fashion shows).
Give professional entrepreneurship and innovation guidance, inspiration and networking:
- Business guidance by experienced mentors with many years of experience on management, ideation, commercialization, funding, business launch, operations, and exits.
- Networking with alumni entrepreneurs, SME network, and industry experts.
- Inspiring Entrepreneurs Sharing Series.
- Overseas partners link up.

Do visit our Facebook for updates on our activities and tips on entrepreneurship and innovation.

If you have the aspiration to innovate, commercialize your innovations or startup, write to i&e@tp.edu.sg for an appointment.

Be on our email list: We will update you on future exciting innovation and entrepreneurship events, programs and facilities in TP’s Temasek Launchpad. We don’t send spam emails.

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Education

In TP, we want our students to be future-oriented, ready for forthcoming challenges and changing needs of the workplace. Regardless of whether students are looking for employment or starting their businesses, it is essential that we equip them with the fundamentals of innovation and the entrepreneurship mindset.

1) TPFun - Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Innova):

This subject is for students from all disciplines, to motivate them towards innovation in their chosen field or beyond. Students will leverage the ‘LEAN Startup’ methodology to validate customer feedbacks on their innovations before commercializing them. The course covers the fundamental building blocks of a successful startup ranging from ideation, prototype building, customer validation, business model canvas testing, and crowdfunding.

Aims:

Learners will develop an innovative mindset in exploring opportunities and solving real-life challenges with Design Thinking, a human-centric innovation approach.
Students will sharpen their skills in building simple prototypes to test and validate their ideas.
Students will gain an entrepreneurial mindset, and work in teams to turn their ideas into commercially viable offerings.

2) Guided Learning in Innovation and Entrepreneurship:

This advanced module develops students’ entrepreneurship and innovation skills further, where they will work on refining their prototype and do a deeper market feasibility study using the LEAN startup methodology.

Aims:

This module trains students to improve their innovations further to fit target consumers’ wants.
Students will develop a robust business plan that prepares for market launch.

3) Hackathons:

Students will participate in Hackathon competitions, where they will craft and pitch creative solutions to actual challenges faced by various industries and companies.

Global Exposure

Global Internship Programme with IED

The Global Entrepreneurial Internship Programme (GEIP) was introduced to Temasek Polytechnic in 2019. GEIP aims to expose students to a diverse range of innovation and startup activities overseas. For this round, eight students were selected for this programme.

Ong Wei Lun
Diploma in Financial Business Informatics
Infofed, Bangkok

It was the best learning journey and an eye-opening experience for me. The working culture here is very different, and the company places a lot of trust in us. As a newbie, I was assigned an important project, which is the creation of a website. I must have impressed them with my work that they extended my internship. I ended up a more independent, driven, and responsible person.

Amber Xin
Diploma in Marketing/BUS
Chinaccelerator, Shanghai

GEIP had provided me with the opportunity to intern abroad and gave me the support I needed when I was in Shanghai. There were orientation programmes for us to get familiar with the city and settle down.
People here are so warm and willing to impart skills.
It was eye-opening to witness how China is at the forefront of technology. This internship has broadened my horizons and opened new doors for me!

Dominic Tan
Diploma in Business
Hubba, Bangkok

Having the opportunity to pull off a mega-event together with my teammates is something I had never thought I could achieve. The team entrusted me to do the event planning, marketing, travelling arrangement, and even as emcee for the event. It brings out the best in me and makes me more confident.

Industry Collaboration

600 students were partnered with a total of 21 companies and agencies to solve real-life industry challenges as part of their reading of the INNOVA module.

These companies came from a wide range of industries: retail, digital solutions, consumer products, e-commerce, health care, professional services, engineering, F&B, logistics, entertainment, social enterprises, and government agencies. The students were matched to problem statements that were relevant to their diplomas of study so that they get to understand and work on real issues related to their potential future careers. The industry partners exposed these students to how their company operates via visits to their premises. They also shared valuable experiences, the detailed background to the problem statements, and useful feedback to the students at the end of the course. The feedback from the industry partners was positive, and some have even expressed interest in hiring TP interns or take on the Earn and Learn programme with TP.

Here are some of the industry partners and their Innova projects:

A visit to Seah Spices Company

Seah Spices Pte Ltd

Problem Statement: How might we reach out to new customers and further differentiates us vs. competitors?
Solutions generated: modern twists to local delights that will appeal to youths, packaging revamps, and innovative social media ads.

A prototype for an innovative vending machine

Fastflex Pte Ltd

Problem Statement: How might we enable vending machine retail to be a more popular retail option?
Solutions generated: Innovative vending machine configurations, new retail combinations for vending machines, and impulse purchase location for vending machine placements.

Factory visit and sharing by Maintech employees

Maintech Engineering and Supplies Pte Ltd

Problem Statement: How might we improve the monitoring, performance, and productivity of our employees?
Solutions generated: Innovative process tracking and a mobile app with a productivity dashboard.

Achievements

The three winning teams in the anti-scam Makeathon, all from TP

Anti-Scam Makeathon 2019

I&ED led eight teams of TP students to participate in a Makeathon jointly organised by the Singapore Police Force (SPF) and the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC). A total of sixteen teams joined the competition, which was open to all students in Singapore IHLs. The TP teams were made up of students from various schools and interest groups in TP: the Engineering School, the Business School, the Humanities and Social Sciences School, the Entrepreneurship Club, and the Enactus Club. The event, which was held in September and October 2019, focused on preventing e-commerce scam crimes in Singapore.

TP's teams swept all the top three prizes in the anti-scam Makeathon. Both organisations were impressed by TP students' presentation and have offered them internship opportunities.

1st Prize ($5,000) – HSS (Psychology Diploma) team. Idea: leveraging AI and behavioural insights to sieve out scammers and remind users.
2nd Prize ($3,000) – ENG team. Idea: a three-prong strategy using education, reminders, and incentives for users to adopt anti-scam behaviours.
3rd Prize ($2,000) – TP Entrepreneurship Club (TPEC. Idea: a warning system that utilises big data from police reports, Google, and ScamAlert websites.

Tikkun Olam Makers (TOM) Makeathon

The Embassy of Israel organised a series of events in 2019 to highlight the deep ties and collaborations between the Israeli and Singaporean communities. One of the flagship events is the inaugural Tikkun Olam Makers (TOM) Makeathon. This Makeathon helps create and share affordable solutions to the often-overlooked challenges of people living with special needs. Special guests included the Second Minister for Education, Ms. Indranee Rajah, Her Excellency Simona Halperin, Ambassador of Israel to Singapore, Mr. Gidi Grinstein, Founder of Tikkun Olam Makers (TOM), Ms. Dalia Feldheim, TOM Singapore Team Leader and Mr. Mike Pegg, Global Head of Google Maps Developer Relations.

TOM kicked off on 16 May 2019 in partnership with SGEnable, Google Singapore, Temasek Polytechnic and the Singapore Kindness Movement. IED and MakerSpace+ teams led the event coordination for TP, where groups of student ambassadors and mentors were marshalled to support the event. The MakerSpace+ team also opened up its 3D printing facility for the participants' prototyping.

TP went on to sweep the top three prizes in the TOM Makeathon.

The champion team testing the cane's mechanism

The champion team consists of three students from HSS, Gerontology Management Studies. They innovated on the cane to make it more user friendly and durable.

The second-place winning team with Ms. Indranee Rajah, Second Minister for Education (second from right), and Her Excellency Simona Halperin, Ambassador of Israel to Singapore (rightmost)

The second-place winner consists of three students from ENG (Mechatronics, Computer Engineering, and Industrial Design). They produced a creative idea on how to help wheelchair users move around the house freely and easily.

The third-place winner with the innovative induction hob for visually impaired people

The third-place winner is a mix of a student from ENG (Computer Engineering) and three students from HSS (Gerontology Management Studies). They created a ground-breaking induction hob with voice activation and feedback to enable visually impaired persons to cook independently.

Makethon 2019

IED and SQD conducted the second round of Makeathon competition from March to June 2019. The competition was open to all TP staff, and a total of fifteen teams from various schools and departments took part in it.

The objective of Makeathon 2019 was to drive the innovation spirit among TP staff and implement useful and innovative ideas to enhance TP's working and learning environment. The participants went through intensive training on Design Thinking and Innovation initially, followed by consultations with IED for the rest of the duration. The participants applied the Design Thinking concepts learned in their projects with problem refinement, empathy for the users, creative ideation followed testing of shortlisted solutions.

Members from the TP senior management team consisting of Ms. Chia Li Hwei, Mr. Gary Png, Mr. Tang Ming Fai, and Mr. Daniel Yeow judged the final pitching from the shortlisted six teams on 4 June 2019. Three groups emerged as the winners of Makeathon 2019.

The champion team from BUS school

The champion team came up with an idea to streamline the Early Admission System to improve the efficiency of the process: reduce mistakes and duplicates, automate and reduce manual steps and enhance communication between the stakeholders.

They are tapping on the Makeathon 2019 fund to implement a pilot test of the system for the new batch of admissions in mid-June 2020. Once the system is reliably tested, it can be extended to the other schools.

The new and improved EAE system pitched by the champion team

Most Innovative Award: Team SG B2B from TP (from left: Tan Wei Jie, Wayne Ang, and Winson Lee)

River Hongbao Hacks 2020 Competition

Temasek Polytechnic team, SG B2B, comprising Wayne Ang, a current student from Diploma in Hospitality & Tourism, and two TP graduates, Tan Wei Jie and Winson Lee, clinched the Most Innovative Award and was one of the top 3 finalists at the River Hongbao Hacks 2020 (RHBHacks) competition.

This hackathon is organised and sponsored by Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd and supported by the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry. It was hosted at Mapletree Business City from 23-30 Jan 2020. RHBHacks 2020 is a competition where entrepreneur-minded youths from various tertiary institutions were invited to pitch their business proposals to a panel of judges.

In line with the theme "Go local with a twist," the SG B2B team came up with the idea of a Singapore-themed card game that featured local hawker favorites from six major Chinese dialects and five local ethnic communities. The team won $7,000 seed money, and the opportunity to set up a stall at RHB. Part of the proceeds of the sales was donated to Pathlight School.

Success Stories

Over the years, TP’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Department has produced many successful entrepreneurs. We are confident that future TP entrepreneurs will continue to keep this entrepreneurial culture alive.

Discover some of these entrepreneurs.

View stories of 20 successful entrepreneurs in the 'BOLD' online flip book.

Refer to our new ‘BOLD 2’ book for even more inspiring stories of successful TP entrepreneurs.

Notable Startups

Temasek Launchpad was officially launched in Sep 2018 to provide comprehensive programmes and facilities to support innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) in TP. There is a MakerSpace+ studio for prototyping of new products, incubation and co-working spaces for new entrepreneurs, and spaces for networking events and seminars. In startups' guidance and support, there are rigorous programmes for entrepreneurs on areas such as starting up, market access, networking with industries, and fundraising.

20 startups have incubated at Temasek Launchpad. Below are two of them:

Marcus Ong (left) with his core team

Horizon Collectives Pte Ltd

Horizon Collectives Pte Ltd was founded by Marcus Ong Jun Ji, an alumnus from the Diploma of Media & Communications Technology, providing pest control services. The tale of how this gutsy young gentleman turned his fear of cockroaches into a lucrative business is truly an astounding one. Marcus achieved profitability in just one year of launching his business. To Marcus, though pest control is a business shunned by most people, he was able to see through the creepiness for its growth potential.

Marcus later received offers to enter into cleaning services and facility services partnerships. His business has then grown by leaps and bounds: his pest control team of 3 expanded to a 12-man team, and his cleaning services team flourished from nil to a group of 100! As the industries mentioned had a high attrition rate, Marcus crafted an effective workforce retention programme to gain employees' loyalty. The pest control company is also developing an app to provide data analytics of pest-infested sites to facilitate pest control.

Recently Horizon Collectives launched new disinfectant services such as V-stop, a walk-through tent that provides instantaneous disinfecting to crowded places. The sanitizer used in V-stop has received approval from relevant authorities and certification from Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine@NUS that it is 99.9% effective against viruses and bacteria.

Marcus has affirmed that he has made the right choice by going against all the odds to embark on entrepreneurship. It is a competitive trade, but he likes that it is an essential business. Marcus is continuously looking for new business opportunities to diversify his risks. He listed the critical success factors to his business as have good foresight, be in the right partnership to achieve synergy, be innovative, and, most importantly, be humble.

Pinda (left) and Ramesh with their award winning range of health drinks

NU3X Asmara Pte Ltd

NU3X Asmara Pte Ltd is co-founded by Ramesh Kumar, an alumnus from the School of Applied Sciences and Tho Pin Da, his university mate. Both are certified Food Scientists.

Asmara is proudly a Singapore-owned brand that leverages food science and nutrition. It harnesses the scientific elements from TCM, Ayurveda, and Jamu (traditional Indonesia medicine) along with clinical breakthroughs to curate a unique range of beverages, powders, and teas using herbs, flowers, roots, fruits, probiotics, and prebiotics. Many of these products have won awards from various organisations, such as "CLEO Best Product 2018" and "CLEO Hall of Fame 2018" awards. The startup has also attracted S$1,000,000 seed funding from investors.

As food scientists, they are motivated to revolutionise the way consumers see food, nutrition, and traditional medicine in Singapore. Asmara's main concern is that 90% of food and beverages in Singapore are imported - making food security a prime concern. Therefore, Ramesh and Pin Da started Asmara R&D consultancy and Asmara® product brand line to spearhead and pioneer the development of high-quality and cutting-edge functional health products for Singaporeans and the global consumer market.

Ramesh oversees Asmara's product development, marketing, and business development. As a food scientist, he has worked for more than seven years in the area of product development, herbalism, and nutrition research while developing more than 40 functional food products. Pin Da oversees Asmara's operations, logistics, quality, & safety. His area of research is in packaging technology, meat science, meat-alternatives, shelf life, food safety, and food processing.

New Milestones

SPROUT Food and Beverage (F&B) Incubator

SPROUT F&B incubator is an extension of Temasek Launchpad's incubation facilities catered specially for alumni and students to incubate on F&B startups. Currently, we have four F&B entrepreneurs' stalls in SPROUT.

SPROUT also functions as a hip student lounge with a trendy, fresh, and vibrant atmosphere. It is a vibrant social nexus for TP communal events such as startup fairs, bazaars, and open-mic performances.

The vibrant SPROUT ambience with students mingling for discussions and having meals together.

SPROUT also organizes events such as open-mike performances (left) and startup fairs (right) regularly.

Temasek Launchpad Support

The Temasek Launchpad building contains various facilities to support I&E activities.

The Makerspace+ facility contains equipment for prototyping or product development including digital media, electronics, digital & software development, fabric/paper/leather/plastics fabrication, wood/metal work, tailoring, music production, laser cutting, and 3D printing.
18 Incubation rooms can be taken up as offices by TP entrepreneurs.
There are also event spaces, hot desking co-work facilities, meeting and ideation rooms for networking and collaboration opportunities.

Click here for directions on how to find us on the campus map.

Incubation Programmes

If you are a startup or aspiring startup looking for training and support, join our incubation programmes to have a head-start in your entrepreneurship journey. Click here for details on TP’s Innovation Programme and Startup Programme.

Facilities Support

Incubation Facilities

Hotdesking Facilties

Event Spaces

Mentorship Support

We guide you step-by-step towards creating your very own small business. No matter which stage you are in, from newbie to experienced, we have programs and facilities to meet your needs.

There are five stages that we can help entrepreneurs and innovators:

We have a growing list of esteemed and experienced Mentors to advise you:

Email i&e@tp.edu.sg with your business idea and needs.

Funding Support

The StartupSG Founder Grant by Enterprise Singapore enables startups with innovative ideas for funding support based on the uniqueness of business concept, feasibility of business model, strength of management team, and potential market value. Successful applicant will be provided a startup capital grant of $50,000 with S$10,000 as co-matching fund to the grant by the startup.

Check here for more details.

To apply, email i&e@tp.edu.sg for help.

The VentureForGood (VFG) fund is an initiative by the Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise (raiSE) to raise awareness on social entrepreneurship and increase support for social enterprises in Singapore.

raiSE will provide a range of services to help social enterprises in early to mature stages, such as funding, business advisory, training, relevant resources, and network contacts.

We have other funds available to suit different types of entrepreneurship and startups at various stages of development.

Email i&e@tp.edu.sg to find out more.

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