Chen Zenglin is a Quay Crane Engineer in the Mechanical Engineering department of Guangzhou Container Terminal (GCT) in Southern China. He has garnered praise for being one of the Top Ideators on PSA’s iCAN platform in 2019.

Is it nature or nurture that creates innovators? For Zenglin, perhaps both apply. He recalls watching his father, an electrical engineer, tinkering away at home with their household appliances to modify them for new uses. He credits his father for inspiring him to create and to explore things with a hands-on attitude. Today he enjoys utilising his knowledge from his mechanical engineering studies to test and apply concepts when experimenting.

One of his first experiments was to try to fix a USB port into a wall socket in order to eliminate the need for a separate device charger. At the time, this was a novelty whereas nowadays, it has become the norm. He regrets not filing a patent for his novel experiment!

In an age of no ordinary disruption, Zenglin contends that the ability to continuously learn and improve is crucial for both individuals and the company. He believes that the key to being a good innovator is to be consistently dissatisfied with the status quo, to have the ability to foresee a problem and visualise an answer, and be daring enough to try. Teamwork and the inputs of colleagues and friends are also valuable when refining ideas, as they could uncover details one may have missed alone. To Zenglin, innovation can be summed up by the Chinese characters “创意,” which translates to “opening up our mindset”. Only by breaking down our usual patterns of thinking can we find solutions.

In the spirit of creative thinking, we asked Zenglin: “You wake up one day and find yourself the size of a pencil. What would you do today?” His first thought was a positive one – that his favourite slice of cake for breakfast would last him for a long while – Yay! Our interpretation: Creativity is fuelled by play – you need to maintain a cheerful determined optimism that today shall be the day where you can find a new solution!