Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are the heartbeat of Singapore’s economy—, creating jobs, and contributing about 48% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Yet behind every thriving SME lies a story of hard work, resilience, and the daily battle against business challenges.
From developing the right products to scaling operations, optimising processes, or expanding into new markets, the journey to growth can be daunting for many SMEs. While every business is unique, common hurdles often emerge—whether due to limited resources, evolving market demands, or the need for specialised expertise. These challenges may differ based on a company’s size, industry, or stage of growth, but when approached with the right mindset and support, they can become stepping stones to growth.
At the heart of Singapore’s innovation ecosystem, IPI plays a vital role in helping enterprises transform these obstacles into opportunities. Through strategic advisory, technology partnerships, and access to global innovation networks, IPI empowers enterprises to unlock new possibilities and achieve sustainable growth.
This article explores some of the common business challenges that SMEs in Singapore face today, along with how IPI has helped SMEs in overcoming these challenges as these SMEs seek sustainable growth locally and regionally. Real-life success stories of how IPI has guided four SMEs at various stages of growth, steering towards business transformation, are also shared here.
1. Building a Clear Product Roadmap & Technology Development
The Challenge:
In an increasingly fast-paced market, SMEs must constantly innovate to keep pace with shifting consumer expectations, competition and emerging technologies. Yet, charting a clear product/service roadmap — one that ensures that the product is addressing customers’ pain-point, developed with available resources, in compliance to standards and still meet the product rolled out timeline — can be a complex and daunting task. Limited resources, lack of technical know-how, and uncertainty about where and how to start often make the product development journey a daunting one for many, especially for those who are doing it for the first time.
How IPI Helped: Strategic Product Development
IPI supports SMEs in overcoming product development hurdles by providing expert advisory services, industry insights, and access to technology partners. Through strategic guidance, IPI helps businesses align their product visions with market opportunities, ensuring they build sustainable and competitive offerings.
One such example is sustainable energy startup Little Green Ranger (LGR), which needed to refine its product direction while addressing sustainability and industry needs. Through IPI's Innovation Advisory service, LGR worked closely with Innovation Advisor Wong Hong Wai, a global executive with over 35 years of working experience in business strategy, sales & marketing and product portfolio planning, who guided them in shaping their product portfolio to meet untapped market needs.
This strategic guidance enabled the company to sharpen its identity and streamline its offerings, paving the way for business growth and also successful collaborations. Besides innovation advisory, tapping into IPI’s other core service - technology matching, LGR was matched by IPI with Calumino and ConcreteAI, integrating real-time environmental monitoring technology into construction safety solutions and developing sustainable, battery-powered energy options for remote sites to further improve LGR’s offerings. These collaborations positioned the startup as an emerging player in the sustainable innovation space, helping it extend its market reach to new opportunities that by itself, LGR may not be able to access within a short timeframe. Through IPI’s advisory and technology matching services, LGR shared that upon completion of these projects they anticipate a potential increase in its revenue by 10 times.
2. Achieving Product-Market Fit & Business Scaling
The Challenge:
After developing a product, many SMEs struggle to scale their operations and ensure their solutions meet the needs of a broader market. Securing product-market fit while expanding can be complex, with risks of misalignment and resource strain.
How IPI Helped: Scaling and Optimising for Product-Market Fit
To help SMEs scale effectively, IPI provides strategic insights, business advisory, and business modelling expertise. Through close collaboration, IPI supports enterprises in refining their value propositions, prioritising high-potential sectors and markets, strengthening their go-to-market strategies, and enhancing overall business scalability.
Take Innowave Tech, a company specialising in AI-driven solutions for the manufacturing industry, as an example. The company had established strong product-market fit within the semiconductor industry, deploying its suite of sensor and analytics solutions that address fault detection and predictive maintenance use cases. Looking to enter into adjacent verticals, Innowave Tech needed a more structured approach to assess new market opportunities, sharpen its positioning and scale delivery effectively.
IPI stepped in to support Innowave Tech’s in this growth phase and business scaling journey. With guidance from IPI’s Innovation Advisor, Dr. Maren Celine Schweizer, an industry veteran with over two decades of experience in leading global electronics companies, Innowave Tech embarked on a strategic review to extend its product-market fit beyond semiconductor domain. Through a series of focused workshops, the team co-developed a robust market model that mapped target industries, key customer segments and Innowave’s technology relevance to each use case. This clarified how well their current capabilities matched market needs and where refinements were necessary.
To support scalable growth, modularity was introduced into the product roadmap, enabling the company to adapt its solutions in a plug-and-play format for different customer profiles. Leveraging insights and experience of IPI’s Innovation Advisor, Innowave Tech formulated a prioritised go-to-market plan with tailored messaging for each sector and a structured execution framework to support Innowave Tech’s expansion into new industries and regions while still scaling their business development efforts in Singapore and Germany. With a sharpened strategy and clear market priorities, Innowave Tech was well-positioned to scale with confidence and is projected to increase its revenue by 300%.
3. Optimising Operations for Efficiency
The Challenge:
Every business must scale its operations for revenue growth. This fundamental need is well understood. However, the way to execute it without compromising on quality, ensuring consistency in delivery and managing cost is an undertaking that many SMEs needed help in. Some will face hurdles in streamlining processes, adopting automation, and building a workforce that is trained and aligned with their long-term business objectives. Having an experienced industry practitioner that can offer guidance, and advice is what many SMEs needed.
How IPI Helped: Streamlined Operations & Technological Integration
IPI’s pool of innovation advisors work closely with SMEs to identify operational bottlenecks and design tailored strategies that improve productivity, reduce manual workloads, and enable adoption of scalable, tech-integrated systems. By leveraging the experiences of these innovation advisors, SMEs can gain insights and technology know-hows, to strengthen their operational foundation and position themselves for sustainable expansion.
One such example is food service company Superrise, which sought to optimise its central kitchen operations to meet growing demand. The company faced challenges in setting up a more efficient, cost-effective production line while maintaining strict hygiene and quality standards. In addition, they also needed a strategic roadmap to evolve from being a food service operator to managing a fully functional central kitchen.
Drawing on his 35 years of experience at Nestlé, IPI’s Innovation Advisor, Toh Tian Seng, guided the Superrise team through the transition. He provided strategic advice on selecting appropriate machinery, redesigning kitchen workflows, and implementing automation—such as a rotary mixer line for sauce production. As a result, Superrise significantly achieved operational efficiency, increased production capacity, and improved quality consistency across its outlets. By automating key processes, the company optimised resource allocation, improved productivity, and expanded its production capabilities—laying the foundation for long-term growth. Through this project Superrise is anticipating a growth of 30% in their revenue.
4. Expanding into Overseas Markets
The Challenge:
As businesses grow and face issue with market saturation, the next step to explore is often international expansion—one that comes with complex challenges. From identifying the right markets to enter and understanding local consumer behaviours to navigating regulatory requirements and devising market-specific strategies, overseas expansion can seem to be overwhelming.
How IPI Helped: Effective Marketing & Overseas Expansion Support
IPI helps SME product/service owners enter new markets with confidence by offering guidance on market entry strategies which include areas pertaining to regulatory and compliance, branding, and marketing localisation. Through structured planning and access to experienced advisors, businesses can adapt their existing business operating models to new environments, strengthen their branding across borders and mitigate risks, and when entering new territories.
One such example is Crème Concepts, a premium ice cream company with ambitions to grow beyond Singapore and establish a stronger foothold in regional markets. While they had initial plans to enter Malaysia and Hong Kong, they required deeper insights into local market dynamics and a tailored strategic marketing plan to support its expansion.
IPI’s Innovation Advisor, Mike Amour—a seasoned leader with experience heading global advertising and media networks,provided strategic guidance across key areas. With his advice, Crème Concepts refined its brand identity, developed a cohesive marketing strategy, and rolled out the actionable market expansion plan. This included optimising its marketing framework, hiring dedicated marketing teams in Hong Kong, and launching a new concept store in Hong Kong to anchor their brand presence there.
Following a successful rebranding exercise, Crème Concepts now maintains a consistent and compelling brand across markets. Building on its presence in Malaysia and Hong Kong, the company has expanded into Taiwan and Macau, with retail outlets already established in both locations. Crème Concept continues to explore further international growth, supported by IPI’s expertise in structured market entry strategies.
Driving SME Growth Through Innovation
From product development and business scaling to operational excellence and market expansion, the challenges SMEs face are real—but they are not insurmountable. IPI Singapore offers innovation advisory, technology sourcing, and access to global innovation networks to support SMEs in transforming business hurdles into growth opportunities.
IPI’s role is clear: To empower Singapore’s SMEs with the best-fit technologies, advice on innovation transformation, expertise and connections to accelerate their innovation journeys. Whether an SME is at the start of their innovation journey or is ready to expand globally, local enterprises can rely on IPI to provide the support they need to succeed in today’s dynamic business landscape.
Reach out to us today and take the first step towards solving your business challenges and unlocking new opportunities for your company.
