Innovation that’s hot and cool, all at once

Every now and then, our little island throws us a curveball – this time round, the curveball came in the form of a simple innovation that completely bowled me over.

You might have heard about Mr. Philip Lee, founder of local start-up Omega Thermal, who recently won the Singapore Environment Council-Senoko Power Green Innovations Award at the Green Summit Awards. If you have not, pop by Channelnewsasia for the full article.

Mr. Philip Lee began his business installing solar panels for residential and industrial clients. Three years on, the company releases the S$2,500 Heating Ventilation and Aircon (HVAC) system, a product that uses waste heat from any chiller system (air-conditioning, ice chiller) to make hot water. How very simple but effective.

For the purpose of evaluating Omega Thermal and HVAC for my HOT or NOT category of posts, here are my comments and observations:

• 8/10 for realising that his previous market (landed houses and industrial buildings) would have presented serious growth challenges to his sales – countless other ‘entrepreneurs’ would be perfectly happy to own a business and pocket the steady cashflow that it brings in.
• 8/10 for having the foresight to change strategy and target the air-conditioning in high-rise apartments instead.
• 10/10 for coming up with such a simple but elegant innovation that recycles waste heat, and actually pulling off the engineering.
• 9/10 for winning the award – the award can be a multiplier to his marketing efforts, and help Omega Thermal build mindshare among their potential clients and channel partners.
• 1/10 for taking 3 years to refine the product. I don’t know if HVAC has competing products elsewhere in the world, but heck, a lot can happen in 3 years!
• 3/10 for the existing high cost of the unit. With most high-rise apartments being public HDB flats, and S$2,500 per HVAC versus S$400 for a conventional heater, Mr. Lee will probably need to undertake more R&D to lower costs, while at the same time work out a flexible financing or leasing scheme for apartment owners.
• 2/10 for what I think is a not-too-high barrier to entry. Unless Omega Thermal can file a patent for HVAC while continuing to improve upon its cost and efficiency, as well as diversify its product line AND expand into the regional, if not global market, equivalent competitors can easily emerge and grab market share (globally or regionally, not so much in Singapore).

The verdict? Omega Thermal and HVAC shows promise in capturing the local market, but will need to work a lot harder to gain a foothold overseas. Averaging the above scores gives us…

HOT or NOT
Official rating: 5.85/10

IconnectE: S’pore’s very own LinkedIn?

I am both happy and sad, for the existence of this weblog has been validated once again by the lacklustre performance of our entrepreneurs.

On first glance, IconnectE (create your possibilities) appears to be Singapore’s very own LinkedIn. Yet, the more I toyed with it, the sadder I felt. Here’s why:

1. Site usability sucks. Registration takes way too long. Unlike LinkedIn (which allows phases of information input by the user), IconnectE forces you to go through the entire 3-page process of filling in your details and establishing your profile. It’s also a pain to have to press ctrl while scrolling down the long list of countries whose markets I have an interest in. Oops, an errant mouse click and I lose my previous selection. Layout and design still feels kinda dingy. Last but not quite the least, the site feels extremely sluggish *wants to strangle the site*.
2. Revenue model is suspect. With most netizens having gained immunity to online advertising, ads will bring in next-to-nothing in terms of bling. When I saw the cost of premium membership, I almost fell off my chair – S$180/year in exchange for extra events listings and gawd knows what other useless stuff (I can’t find the gawd-damn pricing page post-registration!). Who are they trying to kid man?
3. It’s a portal, stupid. How very…Singaporean, to do anything and everything in the form of portals. Don’t we have enough of those already, in the form of government portals? Must even our entrepreneurs join the government in the Incredible Portal Race, and create 6.5 million portals, one for every future citizen of Singapore? Har-de-har-har. Maybe then, we’ll have more portals than New Zealand has cows – 1 more item to go into the Guiness Book of Records eh?
4. It could have been so much more. The brainchild behind IconnectE does not appear to be in tune with the possibilities that can be offered by Web 2.0 (and beyond). Let me take this one step further and postulate that founder Jesse Ting is probably past 35, even 40 years of age. Some say we were created in the image of God. Others say within each of us are imprints of our parents. I say, IconnectE = good idea, sub-par execution. And don’t anyone give me the ‘it’s a beta’ excuse~
5. IconnectE is a Frankenstein - the baby of Jesse Ting (brains), Muu Consulting (advisory) and yolk design (grunt work). HMMMMMM…some digging into what Muu Consulting does, and I have the following hypothesis:

Jesse: I want to do a website to connect people and businesses, but I don’t know how or what!
Muu Consulting: Build a portal!
yolk design: *slogs and slogs*

IconnectE might still resonate with the local community who have yet to use LinkedIn…but I seriously doubt it’ll go very far regionally, much less globally.

The verdict?

HOT or NOT
Official rating: 1.0/10 (for effort)