Week in Review: Make innovation rock for you

By Karamjit Singh March 13, 2015

Frost & Sullivan ‘productises’ the best innovative practices
DNA reader points to innovation being key in Big Three telco battle

Week in Review: Make innovation rock for you THE theme of innovation strikes me as being a key undercurrent in some of the stories Digital News Asia (DNA) brought you this week.

It started with my article on Frost & Sullivan opening its new office in Iskandar Malaysia, which houses its Global Innovation Centre (GIC). I spoke to a very excited Aroop Zutchi, Frost & Sullivan global partner and managing director, who flew in from the United States for the event.

Above all the things we spoke of, Aroop was excited most about the fact that the GIC was producing innovative work that was new within Frost & Sullivan.

In my story, I highlighted how its Best Practices unit has a product that is, in essence, the distillation of some of the most innovative practices from the most innovative companies in the world.

Frost has productised this and offers it to its customers which want to drive more innovation in their business.

Why is this important? “Because innovation drives growth and CEOs (chief executive officers) know this and want to embed this in their own companies,” says Aroop.

You can read more about that in the story itself, and I do urge you to also read the comment on Goh Thean Eu’s recap of how Malaysia’s ‘Big Three’ telcos – Celcom, Digi and Maxis – fared in 2014.

Highlighting a point made in the article about how Celcom, with a higher prepaid customer base than Digi, recorded lower revenue, a DNA reader commented that innovative plans are what attract customers to sign up and spend.

I found it interesting that a DNA reader attributed Digi’s higher revenue to its plans being more innovative. If he is right, this saw Digi enjoying RM300 million more in revenue than Celcom, despite having a smaller base. Innovation does lead to growth then, as Aroop contends.

By the way, Goh’s article is a great reference point for readers should they ever want to know how the Big Three in Malaysia stack up against each other in the various categories. Bookmark it!

Another highlight of the week is on the unstoppable Patrick Grove making yet another long-term bet on South-East Asia, this time in entertainment, with his video on demand service iflix to be unleashed in the region by April or May.

While we wanted to know how innovative the business model will be, Patrick was coy over a number of key details in his email interview with my cofounder and DNA executive editor A. Asohan.

But the story still makes for interesting reading, and for those of you who are looking forward to uncensored content, do check out the last para of that article. And do watch out for our interview with Patrick and the CEO of iflix, Mark Britt, in a few weeks!

Finally, please also bear with us and our suddenly unstable site as we work on a redesign, which has led to a very stressful few days for me and the team.

Editor’s Picks:

TM positioning itself to capture IoT, smart city growth

Frost & Sullivan believes bet on Iskandar Malaysia will pay off

Slugfest: Malaysia’s Big 3 mobile operators’ FY 2014 performance

Netflix-type wars: Grove’s Catcha takes on Singtel’s Hooq with iflix

The incredible strangeness of being Serguei Beloussov

MWC 2015: Operator vs OTT row remains in spotlight

Apple Watch: Analysts predict 10mil units to be sold in 2015

Previous Instalments:

Week in Review: Bridging ‘big tech’ and ‘little tech’