Vice President, Venture Building, ST Engineering

Alexander Lau

A veteran design professional with 30 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 2014, Alexander joined Public Service Division of the Prime Minister’s Office. He assumed the role of Principal Design Lead (Innovation Lab) in 2016. He advocated for human-centric, collaborative and experimental mindsets in the design of government policies and services. He applied 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.

Alexander was instrumental in applying his methodology to bring different government stakeholders to collaborate and co-create inter-ministry/agency solutions. Inter-ministerial projects successfully led by Alexander include: rethinking of Public Healthcare processes, reimagining and integrating Social Services for vulnerable families, harmonising government procedures for organising of complex large events in Singapore, making registration processes for new born seamless, adopting technology and redesigning processes to integrate Municipal Services, etc.

In his current role, Alexander aims to nurture a culture of Innovation within ST Engineering, to enable more new ideas for products and services, as well as more new ventures to tap into new opportunities and markets.