Singapore Day #3
By: William Woska, MBA Candidate 2018
On the third day in Singapore, students visited two companies striving to impact global business in their own unique way. The first, Impact Hub Singapore, builds ecosystems which support companies at the early start-up stage. This is just the beginning of the relationship however. As the start-up expands and matures, Impact Hub Singapore continues to provide support through its diverse network of 700+ entrepreneurs, 50 corporate, university, and government partners, and 9 venture capital funds and investors-in-residence. The second, GE Healthcare, the multi-billion dollar subsidiary of General Electric is developing a line of low cost, but certainly not low quality medtech products for distribution in Africa and southeast Asia
Our visit to Impact Hub started with a walkthrough of the firm’s value proposition: provide the resources small, growing companies need such as real estate, contacts, marketing support, and advice in a hassle-free manner. Pat Savoy, an MBA student in the DC Evening program said “I continue to be impressed with the organization and efficiency that is present throughout Singapore and within their start-up ecosystem. Everything is well supported and collaboration seems to be a consistent theme throughout our sessions.”
At GE Healthcare collaboration continued to be in focus. Just a few years ago GE would have spent millions of dollars developing a ground-up solution to issues with its portal applications in areas with slower networks. What students learned however was that instead of creating an entirely new interface, GE worked with WhatsApp, a cross-platform instant messaging and Voice over IP service that performs at speeds as low as 2G, to devise a solution. Not only was this a better option financially for GE, but practically superior as well since WhatsApp’s platform is proven by its one billion users.
Tomorrow will be the last day for the program in Singapore before travelling onward to Tokyo, Japan. Nonetheless the day will be busy with a visit to LumenLab, a MetLife innovation center as well as in-person client presentations.
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