The Thales Group has inaugurated a multi-discipline innovation hub in Singapore, its first innovation center outside Europe.

Thales Innovation Hub Singapore is to bring "Asian concepts, Asian innovation and Asian thinking," for understanding of the operational needs of regional clients and do design new products and services to meet those needs and concerns.

"Innovation is in our DNA," said Jean-Bernard Levy, chairman and chief executive officer of the Thales Group. "Thales invests more in research and technology than most other industrial groups and with this inauguration we reaffirm this commitment to innovation.

"By leveraging the multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary Thales teams in Asia and across the world, the entire technology and research portfolio of the group can be accessed by local clients to meet their needs in each of our strategic countries like Singapore."

Thales said the innovation team in Singapore has been trained by the Design Thinking and Innovation Academy from the Design Singapore Council in order to apply the concept of Design Thinking innovation.

Design Thinking Innovation is a new problem solving approach developed to look at all potential alternatives of a particular design problem. Thales said the approach identifies and investigates both known and ambiguous aspects of a problem or situation to discover hidden parameters and open alternative solution paths.

The Thales team, which will interact with regional customers, will bring that approach to the co-designing, prototyping and testing of new ideas and concepts in the areas of defense, maritime security, aerospace, air traffic management and smart cities.