Innovating Solutions to Smart Cities through Shared Knowledge
With participants from Myanmar to Indonesia and all of ASEAN between, this unique programme provided a networking opportunity and educational framework to build strong connections, shared knowledge and deliver cultural understanding.
This year’s fantastic event began with an address from Wouter Van Wersch, President and CEO of GE ASEAN. As the headline sponsor and an organisation firmly committed to the ideals of the ASEAN Leaders Programme, GE ASEAN’s CEO offered his own enthusiastic support of the opportunities to be explored, and highlighted his own belief in the importance of nurturing cultural understanding and shared knowledge networks throughout ASEAN.
Each year a specific challenge is thrown down to participants of the programme to work together using their unique skills and understanding in order to innovate solutions, and the 2016 ASEAN Leaders Programme was no exception.
Participants were tasked to work together to investigate and understand the future of ‘smart cities’. What makes these cities smart? What can our shared knowledge offer in understanding this? How can we deliver these solutions to ASEAN?
Tackling such challenging topics requires a great deal of work, which began with a six week course designed to deliver an informed participant to the event in Singapore. The event itself began by addressing one of the most important elements of the programme – shared understanding. Participants had the opportunity to meet, discuss and get to know each other, an opportunity embraced with great enthusiasm by all in attendance. Gabe Tse, Head of Marketing for GE in ASEAN, remarked of his own experiences “the diversity of the group, not only representing different sectors, business and points of view, but the regional element was fantastic. “ After the all-important ice-breakers, participants were eager to get started on the programme content in depth. Study tours were undertaken to provide an insight into a range of organisations, exploring varied ways of working. Participants were immersed in the running of an individual smart city, exploring the particulars of Singapore’s own solution, and then discussing how this knowledge can be applied to their own leadership opportunities.
A key element of the success of the programme was the enthusiasm and willingness to share and explore each other’s ideas. This sentiment was one echoed by Singapore Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan in his own talk
delivered to participants, which touched on how ASEAN can flourish with an understanding of the right plan to move forward, and appreciation of the pace and expectations in which those changes can be made. This was just one of many impassioned speeches that touched on the importance of this concept in enabling leaders to understand how to empower a future for a better ASEAN.
The culmination of the week’s programme and the hard work of participants came in delivering group reflections and solutions to the challenges of smart cities. Day 5 of the programme was spent sharing learning experiences, offering insight from participants’ varied perspectives, and using shared knowledge to build the framework of a solution to the challenge at hand.
On the final day of the event, participants delivered some truly insightful presentations on their own shared solutions to the challenges of delivering smart cities, and their benefits, to ASEAN. Many were eager to point out that the ASEAN Leaders Programme had highlighted some important aspects of smart cities which hadn’t gained prominence before. Smart cities are about communities as much as technology, and participants were keen to note the value of this understanding in the solutions they discussed. Presentations made it clear that understanding the value and benefits of smart cities also meant understanding the environment of their delivery. Not every part of ASEAN was on the same point of the journey, and appreciating the individual needs of nations, and the communities they consist of, would be crucial to addressing the challenges which they face.
Participants were enthusiastic about their experiences of this programme, and clearly valued the strong networks and benefits of shared knowledge which they had built over the week-long event. It was clear that the ASEAN Leaders Programme had delivered in its aim, not simply to build networks, but to support cultural understanding, and in doing so highlight the key role that leaders play in steering that understanding for the benefit of the whole ASEAN region.