Frederic Ong is AVP of Terminals Infrastructure for PSA Singapore and has been a member of four teams that placed highly in the PSA Group Innovation Awards.

Frederic believes that innovation begins with the willingness to question the status quo. Even from childhood, where he grew up helping out at his dad’s business, Frederic remembers always asking, “Why must this be done this way?” A simple question and a powerful motivator to experiment with different and perhaps improved solutions to getting the job done well; this continues to positively influence the way Frederic lives out his professional life.

As part of several PSA Group Innovation Award-winning teams to date, Frederic is modest about the projects and credits teamwork for being able to bring these ideas to fruition for PSA. When pressed, he shared that the one thing he would have told his younger self would be to put in much more effort to communicate to the end-user the benefits of the new solutions proposed. While it is tempting to think that good ideas will speak for themselves, coming up with a good solution is only half the battle. The key to implementing a new solution is being able to communicate and to convince people of the need to change, and the benefits to them of taking on something new.

To shake things up, we asked him: “You are a strawberry about to be thrown into a blender. You have one chance to solve this dilemma, what would you do?” Frederic’s response was sharp and philosophical – he would change his mindset and accept his impending newly blended state as preferable to being left alone, eventually to rot and be of no use to anyone. In his soon-to-be newly blended state, his nutrients – or knowledge – would be absorbed by another, and he will, in an altered state, continue to be part of the cycle of learning and growth. His hidden message? No one person can outdo the combined efforts of a team!