An Interview with a Grab Inventor - Renrong Weng

At Grab, our deep understanding of the Southeast Asia landscape has helped us evolve into the region’s leading superapp, designed to empower everyday entrepreneurs while continuously innovating to provide our users with delightful experiences. In our series ‘An Interview with a Grab Inventor’, we shine a light on our Grabbers pursuing innovations driven by their passion. To foster the culture of innovation, inventors at Grab are rewarded for their creations and efforts contributing to our growth and expanding patent portfolio.

Today, we delve into the life and mind of one of the key inventors at Grab, Renrong Weng, Head of Data Science (Pricing) from the Fulfilment team. A trailblazer who has reached the pinnacle of innovation at Grab, Renrong has been recognised as a first 'Grab Master Inventor'. This interview offers a unique perspective on his personal journey and the creative process.

How does it feel to be the first recipient of the highest patent award at Grab, and how has this journey shaped your perspective on innovation?

It is my honour to be the first to unlock the tier 10 patent award at Grab. This recognition provides a strong sense of validation for the hard work and innovative thinking invested. It has been an extraordinarily fulfilling and inspiring journey, which has cemented my belief in innovation as an ongoing process centred around exploration, learning, questioning, and refining. Receiving this award motivates me to push the boundaries further, encouraging continued dedication to shaping our product and improving our user experience through innovation.

How do you think your personal traits have contributed to your success as a Grab Master Inventor?

The top personal traits that contribute to my success as a Grab Master Inventor:

• My inherent curiosity has driven me to continually ask questions and invest time in researching and seeking robust solutions to the problems
• My adaptability ensures I can think out of box, challenge the existing constraint and bound, and embrace changes.
• My readiness to engage collaboratively has allowed me to cultivate solid connections with my peers, driving productive discourse and brainstorming that leads to diverse insights and effective problem resolution.

Can you share an instance where your invention significantly influenced Grab's operations or customer experience?

Take driver-effort-based pricing as an example. Our previous model for food delivery pricing solely considered order distance. This would often lead to the cancellation or rejection of jobs involving long pickups.

In the new model, we estimate the job's attractiveness to drivers using a range of parameters like pick-up/drop-off distance and time, drop-off location, restaurant business volume, weather conditions, among others. This approach enables us to calculate a fare that compensates the driver based on a comprehensive assessment of their effort.

As allocation of jobs can be done more seamlessly with the new model, this innovative methodology not only creates greater opportunities for driver-partners, but also improves our consumers’ experience.

How do you strike a balance between the need for innovation and the practicalities of implementation within Grab?

At a strategic level, I typically begin by discussing and aligning with my peers on the key principle for tackling the problem. With this guiding principle, we then decide on the appropriate approach, even if it might be challenging and require significant effort. Fortunately, our leaders are supportive and understand that innovative solutions often demand considerable resources, as long as we agree that it's the right course of action for the benefit of our users. 

After finalising the strategy, principle and right approach, when we implement the solution, I usually prefer to build a Proof-Of-Concept (POC) model to verify the idea with some assumptions. This allows for quick iterations and continuous improvement of the solution.

Could you share an experience where an invention didn't go as planned, and the lessons you gleaned from it?

It is very common to have an invention implementation not go as smoothly as planned. For example, in a model where we use predictive control-based surges for mobility pricing, we take into account future forecasting supply and demand information to inform current surge control computation. In the experiment of the first POC version, we received feedback related to poor performance caused by inaccurate signals and so on. Nonetheless, we then verified that the main idea worked as designed. Hence, we doubled down to investigate the issues and quickly iterated the algorithm by fixing the signals. 

How do you encourage a culture of innovation within your own team, and how has this contributed to your success?

I have fostered an environment where team members are encouraged to ask questions and explore new ideas. These new ideas will be brought to the table for discussion and debate. Sometimes it might take a long time for us to get aligned on the right solution, which could be very different from the original idea, but everyone learns from the discussion journey.

We celebrate failures as learning opportunities, understanding that every attempt brings us one step closer to a successful solution. This culture of innovation has significantly contributed to our success by allowing us to continuously push boundaries, come up with novel solutions, and add value to our organisation. 

Grab has cultivated a patent-friendly environment that encourages innovation. Can you share how this environment has supported and influenced your journey as an inventor?

The Grab Patent Office has made notable strides in accelerating the patent application process. They have developed an IDF template that simplifies the drafting process for innovative ideas, and have also assisted in conducting prior art searches, saving the team significant effort.

Furthermore, they have instituted a reward system that includes both a monetary bonus and a physical award. This system has proven effective in stimulating more innovative solutions from Grabbers. We greatly appreciate their efforts in streamlining the patent filing process and reducing friction, which motivates inventors to submit more invention disclosures and eventually get some of them patented.

Could you share a personal anecdote or hobby that has influenced your approach to innovation?

One of my favourite mottos is “Do what is right, not what is easy”. It always inspires me to think from the first principle what is the right thing to do when encountering a problem. And consequently, it leads to innovative solutions most of the time.

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