Singapore Develops Innovation And Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
Speech by Dr. Tony Tan Keng Yam, Chairman of the National Research Foundation at Techventure 2010 on 6 October 2010 at Marina Bay Sands.
This Techventure event serves to bring together the various players of the entrepreneurial eco-system.
Among us today are high-tech entrepreneurs who work in exciting young companies at the frontiers of technology, making new products and services that may well change the way we live, work and play.
Other participants are business angels and experienced technology incubator managers, who provide the seed capital for startup companies and, more important, the valuable guidance and mentorship to help these
risky ventures grow.
And finally, we have among us also, the venture capitalists and private equity investors who play a catalytic role in bringing these companies to the next stage of growth.
The whole process of creating a technology company with new products and services, starting from the idea stage and bringing it all the way to the marketplace, scaling it to become a profitable and sustainable enterprise works well when the players in this innovation and enterprise eco-system carry out their respective roles effectively.
I am pleased that Techventure has resumed in 2010 after a hiatus during the past few years. Techventure is an excellent platform to bring together all the players in the innovation and enterprise network here in
Singapore to interact with each other as well as members of the global high tech community.
In my speech today, I will first make some remarks about why encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E for short) is important for Singapore, and then share with you what the Singapore government has done to strengthen the entrepreneurial eco-system in Singapore.
Why I&E is important for Singapore The core of the knowledge economy is innovation. It is well-accepted that wealth and economic growth are created by innovation – the process of bringing new knowledge, technologies and processes into the market. Modern economists have argued that technological change due to innovation is the key to high economic growth.
This is often referred to as ‘smart growth’. Singapore has always strived to seek ‘smart growth’ by pursuing high value-added, knowledge-based industries. The innovative capability and intellectual assets that help to generate new ideas plus the entrepreneurial abilities to bring these ideas to market are the new building blocks of a competitive economic system.
The Prime Minister has recently announced that the Singapore government will invest $16.1b to support research, innovation and enterprise activities over the next 5 years. This represents an increase of more than 20% over the current 5 year period, underscoring the sustained commitment of Singapore to R&D and innovation.
In order to achieve ‘smart growth’, we have to ensure that the results
of research are commercialised effectively and translated into economic
outcomes.
Unfortunately, the commercialisation of research does not happen naturally. A lot of good research results remain in the form of publications in technical and scientific journals. The impact on society and the economy is therefore not maximised.
For effective translation of research into useful products and services, we need an entire eco-system that supports and reinforces the growth of innovative high tech and high growth companies. Such an ecosystem has many components – a high level of R&D, good technology infrastructure, a pro-enterprise regulatory environment, strong Intellectual Property regime, healthy industry structure and the availability of venture financing.
And most important, a critical mass of entrepreneurial talent – people who can create opportunities and wealth from these factors.
Recognising the need for Singapore to have a strong and vibrant technopreneurial sector to bring the research to fruition, we launched the Technopreneurship 21 initiative (or T21 for short) more than a decade ago in 1999.
Through this initiative, we embarked on a systematic and comprehensive plan to develop an ecosystem for technopreneurship to flourish, T21 helped to build up the hardware and software for the commercialisation of R&D, creating a strong base to encourage the formation of high-tech startups. But developing an entrepreneurial ecosystem takes time and perseverance. The Government is prepared to sustain our efforts to continue to nurture this development by widening the engagement of more participants in this eco-system.
Building on T21, NRF introduced the $360m National Framework for Innovation and Enterprise (NFIE) in March 2008. The various schemes under this framework sought to eencourage academic entrepreneurship and strengthen the support structures between research bodies and industry as well as catalyse creation of high-tech start-ups.
National Framework for Innovation and Enterprise NRF has rolled out a number of schemes under NFIE. I will cite some examples. A sum of $75 million has been allocated for Proof-of-Concept (POC) grants. This provides funding of up to $250,000 for researchers to demonstrate the technical feasibility of their ideas. Four grant calls have been made under the NRF POC scheme so far, with 51 projects awarded in areas such as electronics, medical devices, nanotechnology and telecommunications. One notable grant recipient is Steven Zhou, an NUS academic who spun off MXR Corp, a mixed reality 3D technology company recently featured in international media.
A sum of $50 million was allocated to support University Innovation Funds (UIF) in NUS, NTU and SMU. The UIF will help the universities strengthen their innovation eco-system on campus. All three universities
have set up high-level Enterprise Boards comprising members of their respective boards of trustees to oversee the use of the UIF to develop a more entrepreneurial university.
Both NUS and NTU started entrepreneurship education programmes with an experiential leaning emphasis. NTU’s Technopreneurship and Innovation Program saw consistently a third of its students joining startups or starting new businesses upon completing the course. NUS has a successful Overseas College programme for students to intern at start-ups in the US, India, China and Sweden, to experience firsthand the exhilaration and challenges of participating in start-up companies.
A National Framework for IP Policies has been developed to facilitate the flow of IP created from publicly-funded research. This was intended to speed up the process of technology transfer at the universities and research institutes.
NRF also supported eight incubators to provide systematic management guidance, mentorship and networking to turn innovative ideas into commercial businesses. They include incubators led by local experienced and energetic serial entrepreneurs.
There are also four incubators from overseas: Innosight Ventures, which adopts Clayton Christenson’s disruptive innovation model, the successful Silicon Valley Plug N Play Tech Center, founded by Saeed Amidi, Social Slingshot, driven by the co-founder of MySpace, Brad Greenspan, and Neoteny Labs, managed by Creative Commons’ CEO Joichi Ito, a globally recognised angel investor who has invested in companies like Twitter and Technorati. Eleven investments have been made so far by the incubators.
One of the investee companies is an NUS spin-off company, Clearbridge Nanomedics which has developed a low-cost nanofibre mesh with applications in the cosmetic and wound management industries. Another investee company, Versonics, is creating a disruptive, low cost sound console technology using PC hardware. Start-ups can benefit from the mentors’ contacts & advice, thereby improving their odds of becoming
successful “home-runs”.
Another initiative, the Early Stage Venture Fund scheme seeded six early stage venture funds to provide startups in Singapore access to needed venture capital. All six funds have completed fundraising and five funds have started investing. Four investments have been made in Singapore based high-tech early-stage companies.
One of them is Biomers, an NUS spin-off which produces the world’s only completely translucent braces system for orthodontic treatment.
Another is Brandtology, which offers sentiment analysis in more than nine different languages.
Announcement of Global Entrepreneurial Executives Scheme New discoveries and technologies translated into beneficial products and services will have a great impact on society. However, this would not be possible if there were no entrepreneurs to innovate and think up new products to exploit new technologies from the labs. The driver of innovation is the entrepreneur, the one who provides the creative force that enables capitalism to function. The entrepreneurial process has been famously described as the ‘norm’ for a healthy economy.
An important driving force for an active and vibrant I&E eco-system is the presence in sufficient numbers of what may be called Global Entrepreneur Executives or GEEs.
These are experienced serial entrepreneurs who have built successful companies (in Singapore, Silicon Valley, Israel and elsewhere) before and continue to do so, or who may have become angel investors, venture capitalists and mentors able to guide promising startup companies to success.
In the domain of fostering high-growth high-tech start-ups, entrepreneurial managerial experience is needed to complement brilliant technology. Without a strong pool of people with entrepreneurial management experience, commercialization efforts are hemmed in.
To create Singapore’s own Google, we need the Eric Schmidts who have the broad executive managerial experience to complement the technologically-brilliant founders like Larry Page and Sergey Brin. We need a critical mass of such ‘rainmakers’ to build global high tech companies in Singapore.
GEEs will add depth to our enterprise eco-system. To attract GEEs to bring their quality high-growth, high-tech companies and to base their high value-added activities in Singapore, the NRF has set aside a budget of $50million to achieve this objective.
With the addition of these GEEs into the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, local high tech companies and university spinoffs can also leverage on the experience of these GEEs as board members and mentors. The GEE will play a positive value-adding role in our country, generate entrepreneurial activities with high multiplier effects and contribute to strengthening our innovation and enterprise ecosystem.
Entrepreneurs for Innovation and Enterprise The Government will persevere in its efforts to foster a pervasive technopreneurial culture in Singapore. The National Research Foundation (NRF), in supporting the high-level Research, Innovation & Enterprise Council (RIEC) chaired by the Prime Minister, will continue to oversee schemes to encourage innovation and enterprise in Singapore.
Towards this end, NRF will develop a national innovation and enterprise institute to better understand the characteristics of and how we can strengthen Singapore’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, as well as to deepen and broaden the nexus between academia and the technopreneurial community of start-ups and VCs.
With these efforts, I am confident that we will succeed in building a sustainable and vibrant innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem in Singapore.
I wish all participants a fruitful conference.
Topics: 2010, business, economic development, economic growth, economic recovery, Economy, employers, employment, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, Governance, government, innovation, investment, job creation, jobs, Marina Bay Sands, market, moniter, monitor, news, non employer firms, self employment, skills, Smart Growth, startup companies, technology, Techventure 2010, workers
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