Singapore: the land of “no ingenuity”?

Not if my trawl through the net had anything to say about it.

My research for this week’s posts on Asian inventions and Asian inventors at UCreateChange.com turned up an amazing revelation: Singaporeans are as inventive as Koreans, Japanese, or Silicon Valley types.

A little history, we have plenty of firsts – Sim Wong Hoo for PC sound cards (to better listen to MP3), Trek Technology for thumbdrives (to better carry data around), and X-mini for mini subwoofers (to better blast emo-punk music).

We know them cause they made it to the top. So are there inventors who aren’t on our collective Wikipedia entry?

Hell, yeah.

IMHO our students create the best inventions. They could belong to primary, secondary, JC, the polytechnics, or universities. It doesn’t matter. They come up with the best and most thought-provoking stuff.

Take the GDome for example.

The Create 2010 winners designed it to…

…reduce world hunger and secure our food for the future. We developed a greenhouse that could transform coastal regions into arable land and enable sustainable farming. Read it at Scrib 

Src: Create2010.com

Here’s the kicker, the inventors are just 18 year-olds studying in a local junior college. It’s amazing that they came up with a solution to tackle our growing food shortage woes just by working hard and researching the heck out of it.

They’re not alone either.

There are byteloads of examples out there.

Like Edwin Siew’s improved dishwasher that uses “ultrasonic waves to clean utensils and consumes 80 per cent less energy and gets the job done in eight minutes instead of the usual 15”. (Src: Today Online).

Or Jointtech, a 2009 finalist at Idea’s Inc, by several engineering students is a real-time pressure-mapping system that surgeons can use to align prosthetic knees more easily and accurately during total knee replacement surgeries.

Or the Vehicle Side Mirror Cleaner by students from ITE College West (Silver medalists at the Tan Kah Kee Young Inventor’s Award 2009) which puts a chamber above car side view mirrors to channel air when it’s moving onto the mirror’s surface. The air then pushes away water droplets which might have obscured the reflection.

Or The Jacket that Holds Things by Raffles Girl’s School (also at Tan Kah Kee Young Inventor’s Award 2009). The lassies made a jacket that zips and velcros up into a sling bag. Just in case, you’re caught out without a bag to hold things.

Some of these inventions are simple, others not so. And they cover diverse areas from healthcare to waste management, safety to convenience, agriculture and more.

But they are the same in many respects: they solve problems, use simple engineering principles in unusual ways, and they’re all blindingly ingenious.

So who says that Singapore students aren’t ingenious enough to be inventors? If these guys (and more) can do it with little brain grease, anyone of us can.

Inventor Competitions in Singapore

Create 20xx

The competition hosted by Creators of Tomorrow to experience what it is like to be an engineer who’s guided by instinct, curiosity and a passion to save the world.
Create2010 (soon to be Create 2011).

Idea’s Inc

A business challenge competition that brings together a powerful combination of funding support and expert mentorship for aspiring young entrepreneurs in Singapore.
Idea’s Inc

Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award

The grand daddy of local inventor awards was proposed by Nobel Laureate Professor C.N. Yang to inspire students to think and invent things that would bring economic benefit to the country.
Tan Kah Kee Young Inventor’s Award

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