概況

An innovative but low-cost mobile phone-based mechanism for e-payment, e-ticketing, and e-identity documents was proposed in an earlier article by Chan [1], who also discussed the business and technical rationales behind the innovation. Albeit it is still yet to see to what extent the mechanism will benefit the real world, it is no doubt an example of a mechanism developed with very minimal funding. In fact, the highest cost was related to its patent applications. Therefore, its development is a typical illustration of inexpensive innovation of ideas as opposed to costly experimentation and instrumentation. Specifically, this innovation, be it substantial or not, was initiated by and founded on multiple-perspective thinking, which had been popularized in educational systems and communities worldwide in recent years despite such thinking’s somewhat arcane philosophical origin. Being a qualitative, applied, industrial article instead of a piece of theoretical work, this article further elucidates the multiple-perspective model underlying the aforementioned innovation in order to exemplify the application of multiple-perspective thinking to innovation management in general. The model explores multiple perspectives as subsumed under the categories of objectives, time, locations, roles, and incidents. Further refining these categories by translating them into individual requirements of the mechanism, it ends up with what it is today. This case study underscores how multiple-perspective thinking can be leveraged as an integral and instrumental part of innovation management.