Experimenting to innovate successfully

APAC organizations leverage AWS Builder Studio to accelerate innovation and drive culture of experimentation

What do you do when you have an innovative idea you want to bring to fruition, but time and cost is a challenge?

How do you build an organizational culture of innovation and experimentation, without investing too much resources to get the buy-in you need all across the organization?

These are real-life questions and challenges organizations of all sizes in Asia Pacific face.

Which is one big reason Amazon Web Services (AWS) has opened the first AWS Builder Studio in Asia Pacific to help customers across the region accelerate the development of industry-specific solutions that leverage new and emerging technologies such as generative AI and machine learning (ML).

Spanning 350sqm and located within Amazon’s new Melbourne office at 555 Collins Street in Australia, the AWS Builder Studio is a facility open to customers and AWS Partners of all sizes, and from all industries, to build with AWS technologies in an immersive environment, accelerate experimentation, and develop new solutions faster and most cost effectively.

While organizations recognize the need to innovate quickly, they often lack the skills, methods, and willingness to shoulder the risk of experimentation.

According to a report by Gallup and AWS, around three-quarters (76%) of organizations in Asia-Pacific that have workers with advanced digital skills have introduced new, innovative products in the last two years, compared with 45% of organizations with lower levels of digital skills.

Prototypes and demos

Through the AWS Builder Studio, customers can connect with AWS’s Prototyping and Cloud Engineering Team over a three-to-six-week engagement centred around Amazon’s culture of innovation methodology. Working backwards from customers’ needs, this approach helps organisations identify a business opportunity or challenge and use AWS technologies, skills, and methodologies to rapidly experiment with new solutions.

The aim is for customers to leave the engagement with a working prototype – an early sample of a product or application – enabling them to validate and test ideas before spending valuable resources launching solutions into real-world production.

Customers are encouraged to draw inspiration from AWS’s Innovation Showroom, which hosts physical demonstrations representing real-world use cases across industries such as retail, construction, and financial services. Demonstrations include the Intelligent Welcome, which uses AWS generative AI technology to greet customers at the door and personalise their AWS Builder Studio engagement based on their industry; the Smart Space, which uses spatial computing and digital twin technologies to provide 3D rendered spaces for architects and designers to experiment with building design.

The AWS Builder Studio features a dedicated workshop area for developers and engineers to work on complex electronic projects such as custom Internet of Things (IoT) controllers and industrial interfaces, enabling them to construct and assemble their prototypes on-site. Customers can also visit the server room, which houses AWS infrastructure such as AWS Outpost racks that support applications that have low latency or local processing requirements.

They did it!

“Over 10 weeks, we immersed ourselves in Amazon’s culture, which included a working backwards session to understand how farmers engage with our application and design workshops to ensure our platform was built to scale. Today, FarmPro is operated by over 100 staff members who support more than 30,000 farmers in Thailand and Vietnam. We plan to expand to additional external users in countries such as Myanmar and India this year and are quickly delivering on our vision to build a more sustainable agricultural industry using digital technologies.”

Bandai is a Japanese multinational toy manufacturer and distributor of some of the most popular brands in collectibles, children’s toys, and entertainment such as Tamagotchi, and DragonBall. “In 2023, we engaged the AWS Prototyping team and cloud development partner, Phoenisys to accelerate the development of the Tamagotchi Uni, the first model in the Tamagotchi series to feature wi-fi connectivity,” said Daisuke Sakamoto, technical design leader in Global Toy Product Development at Bandai.

“Together with AWS, we were able to quickly experiment with the newest IoT technologies, enabling us to connect and manage millions of Tamagotchi devices, perform remote updates, and distribute the latest firmware across all devices without interrupting customers. With wi-fi connectivity, Tamagotchi users now connect and compete with users around the world and are directly connected to the cloud to download new events and items for distribution.”

KomplyAi is an Australian technology company that helps businesses and governments build, acquire, and deploy AI technologies with greater confidence by enabling them to identify and meet global regulatory responsibilities.

“KomplyAi differentiates itself by supporting higher risk sectors where there are a number of complex and intersecting regulatory requirements for AI use,” said Kristen Migliorini, founder and chief executive officer of KomplyAi.

“Our Enterprise GRC platform is an exciting fusion of KomplyAi’s decades of legal, risk, and compliance experience with the forward-thinking mindset of the AWS Prototyping Team. Through close collaboration with AWS, we were able to de-risk the initial process of iterative and agile technology development, enabling us to better leverage resources, research, and technical support to iterate and improve KomplyAi beyond the original prototype.”

V2 Digital, an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, is a data and digital consultancy with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. It helps clients reinvent their customer experiences, build intelligent platforms, and modernise legacy systems using cloud technologies.

“Leveraging the AWS Builder Studio, we are thrilled to launch Builders After Dark, a community initiative that brings together technology enthusiasts to share ideas, learn from one another, and collaborate on projects,” said Dr Pete Stanski, chief technology officer at V2 Digital.

“V2 Digital has always been at the forefront of supporting technological advancement through community engagement such as BeerOps and Sustainability in Tech. Collaborating with AWS to launch Builders After Dark is a natural extension of our commitment to the tech community. Through monthly events, we offer a platform for builders of all skillsets to learn about emerging cloud technologies, hardware selection, 3D printing, software development, and much more. By bringing together diverse minds and skills, we believe we can help organisations of all sizes to overcome challenges and accelerate Australian innovation.”

Woodside is a global energy company founded in Australia, which provides energy the world needs to heat and cool homes, keep lights on, and support industry. “Innovate Everyday is a core value of Woodside, which encourages our teams to experiment rapidly and try new ways of doing things to provide the energy the world needs today and low cost, lower carbon energy for tomorrow,” said Ben Wilkinson, chief digital officer at Woodside.

“Since 2014, we have collaborated with AWS, bringing together our shared culture of innovation coupled with a passion for emerging technology to rapidly build and test new prototypes. For example, Woodside recently integrated AWS Supply Chain to more easily and efficiently track materials required for maintenance activities – from planning the work to delivering the materials when work commences. This technology is currently being piloted by staff who maintain our equipment, procurement professionals, and logisticians. By first piloting the technology, we are able gather feedback from the field to enhance it over time and effectively scale to match the size and global footprint of Woodside’s operations.”

Adrian De Luca, director of Cloud Acceleration, Asia-Pacific and Japan, AWS, said: “With breakthroughs in generative AI, robotics, IoT, and other emerging technologies, our goal is to apply these technologies directly to customer use cases and make them more tangible, accessible, and engaging for companies of all sizes. By combining Amazon’s unique culture of innovation and our world-leading technologies in this new facility, we’re giving customers the confidence to experiment and speed up the product development cycle.”