Alexander Lau

at NUS Institute of Systems Science

Biography

NUS Institute of Systems Science

A veteran design professional with more than 25 years’ experience, Alexander owned and led award-winning multi-disciplinary design consultancies, working with international clients in the transportation, military, healthcare, security, hospitality, wellness, food and beverage and retail industries. The projects range from strategy and conceptualization for value creation, all the way through to production optimisation and project management. Today, it is unlikely for anyone out and about in Singapore not to encounter something designed by Alexander.

In 2011, he went on to head the Design Excellence Centre at the Institute of Technical Education College Central, where he refined the Design Thinking curriculum and developed Continuing Education Training Workshops for adult learners. Since 2012, more than 3,000 adult and student learners have been trained/coached by Alexander.

In his current role as Principal Design Lead (Innovation Lab), Alexander advocates for human-centric, collaborative and experimental mindsets in the design of government policies and services. He is applying his skills and experience to build capabilities and capacity in design-led public sector innovation. From 2015, Alexander experimented with blending principles from Design Thinking, Behavioural Insights, Data Science, Business Process Re-engineering and Organisational Development into Public Service Innovation. The method gained traction after a few successful projects, and has evolved into a framework to guide the innovation process in the Singapore Public Service.

The projects in which Alexander played an instrumental role at Public Service Division include:

  • Moments of Life – Families: Ethnographic studies to understand the needs of parents with children aged 0-6 years, generating insights and design principles to guide the app design, creating citizen narratives to help a 15-agency committee align on common goals for the citizen, and facilitating a 4-agency Business Process Re-engineering to align processes to the new app

  • War on Diabetes: Conducted training for a Ministry of Health/Health Promotion Board project team to do ethnographic studies to uncover insights and design principles. Designed and led a series of co-creation sessions to engage health cluster professionals, patients and care-givers to generate ideas for the Patient Empowerment for Self-care Framework.

  • Model Warehouse: Coached a multi-agency team from Economic Development Board, Infocomm Media Development Agency and Jurong Town Cooperation, to explore the needs of the logistic sector and align the value proposition of the Industry Transformation Map Model Warehouse concept.

Alexander has been invited to speak about Public Sector Innovation at many international platforms including Commonwealth Association for Public Administration (CAPAM), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), GovInsider Innovation Labs World, Knowledge of Design Week (KODW), etc. in various countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Bhutan, Australia and Northern Ireland.

Courses Taught

Read about executive education

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