On 07 March 2019, P&G celebrated the 5th anniversary of its Singapore Innovation Center (SgIC), further reinforcing its commitment to advance Research, Development, and Innovation across its leadership brands from Singapore. DPM Tharman graced the event as the guest of honour. He was also the guest of honour when the SgIC first launched in 2014 with an initial investment of S$250 million.
As part of the celebration event, P&G announced that they will be investing $12 million to develop next Billion Dollar Opportunities in partnership with EDB. An intrapreneurship development and venture-building unit known as GrowthWorks will be set up in Singapore to transform P&G’s innovation approach to strengthen business growth and create new sources of competitive advantage. It will enable new brands, new technology platforms and new business models with a dedicated team of ‘intrapreneurs’. Of the $12 million, a seed fund of $8 million will be for these intrapreneurs to run lean experiments and closely collaborate with Singapore-based enterprises. Through GrowthWorks, P&G aims to grow at least three new businesses with billion-dollar opportunities, which are created, validated, incubated, scaled and globally-headquartered in Singapore.
Deputy Prime Minister Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam said that “P&G’s partnerships with smaller local firms are already helping to build Singapore’s innovation capacity. GrowthWorks is a move to internalise disruption – not just innovating for existing businesses, but also growing new ones and scaling them up through Singapore.”
Ms Thien Kwee Eng, Assistant Managing Director, Singapore Economic Development Board, said that “The P&G SgIC has been a strategic partner in our efforts to place Singapore at the forefront of innovation and creating diverse jobs for Singaporeans. We are pleased that SgIC will be extending its capabilities with GrowthWorks to accelerate and enable greater commercialization success from its research & development and innovation efforts. We are excited by the new ventures that P&G will create and grow from Singapore as a result, and welcome more corporates to undertake such efforts in Singapore to create new growth opportunities for their global business.”
GrowthWorks makes P&G one of the first large corporations in Singapore to commit significant resources and build critical capabilities toward developing new businesses from Singapore. It will also be P&G’s largest commitment towards its GrowthWorks programme outside of the United States.
