Mr Lee Yi Shyan at the Spring Enterprise Conference

SPEECH BY MR LEE YI SHYAN, MINISTER OF STATE FOR TRADE AND INDUSTRY AND MINISTER-IN-CHARGE-OF-ENTREPRENEURSHIP, AT THE SPRING ENTERPRISE CONFERENCE AT 9 AM ON THURSDAY, 5 APRIL 2007, AT THE GRAND COPTHORNE WATERFRONT HOTEL 

Mr Philip Yeo, Chairman of SPRING Singapore

Ladies and Gentlemen

A very good morning to all of you

It is my great pleasure to join you this morning at the inaugural SPRING Enterprise Conference. Let me also welcome Mr Philip Yeo onboard as Chairman of SPRING, an appointment he took up just five days ago. We look forward to his leadership of SPRING, and I’m sure many SMEs are also looking forward to how he will be able to share his myriad experiences and vision to fulfill the mission of SPRING as the champion of SMEs.

Need for Continual Training

Singapore has approximately 130,000 SMEs, all of which are at different stages of development. Unlike multinationals however, SMEs are smaller and most have a shorter corporate history to deal with the entire range of complex business issues as multinationals do. For many SMEs, especially in its formative stage, the founder would have to be not only the CEO. He would have to be the MD, the CFO, the R&D engineer, the marketing manager, and even the debt collector, all rolled into one! Some would go so far as to say that an SME’s growth is limited by the expertise of the CEO himself.

Well, as an SME grows, the founder CEO can hire more expertise to beef up the depth of his management team. Many CEOs also learn along the way and become more sophisticated. I think continual learning, acquiring new skills, benchmarking against industry and learning from the competition, are all critical in helping SMEs grow, adapt and stay competitive. A learning CEO is one that builds capacity for his SME.

In the 2006 SME Development Survey conducted by DP Information, ‘Better Management of Cash flow’ for instance, was ranked as one of the top 3 business operation areas that are most difficult for SMEs to deal with. The other two areas are Competition and Manpower. The Survey also highlighted a lack of technology management expertise among SMEs. While about two-thirds of the SMEs recognized that technology could help drive business growth, more than 60% were uncertain about how to strengthen their technological capabilities and effectively deploy technology to enhance their business competitiveness.

Furthermore, whilst many of our SMEs clearly need these business competencies, not enough of them could find appropriate formal training opportunities to help address the gaps. One key reason has been that training courses that are currently available in the local market are not customized to meet the needs of SMEs, either in terms of content, delivery mode or duration.

Management Development Programme

To meet the needs of our SMEs, I am delighted to announce that SPRING is launching a Management Development Programme to help more SME leaders go for management training and upgrade their skills. SPRING has partnered the three tertiary institutions of NUS, NTU and SMU to develop customized Executive MBA and Executive Development courses to address the training needs of SMEs.

These customized courses will contain modules that are more relevant to SMEs. These include Financing and Valuation of SMEs, Strategic Financial Management and Creating Strategic Advantage through Technology & Innovation. These modules will specifically address the needs of SMEs I mentioned earlier, namely, financial management and technology management.

Other customized modules will deal with issues that are typically inherent in SMEs. These include Management and Growth Dynamics of a Family Business, Exit & Harvesting Strategies for SMEs and Competitive Strategy for Start-ups & SMEs. These are issues which many SME leaders often struggle with on their own.

Relevant Case Studies

The plus point of these customized courses is that they will use local and regional cases for analysis, rather than case studies of US and European MNCs, which are harder for SMEs to relate to. These customized courses will also have experienced industry practitioners as lecturers, so as to enhance the practicality and relevance to SME leaders.

The duration of the courses is also flexible, ranging from one to two weeks every few months to longer term studies. This is to ensure that the courses suit the busy schedules of the SME leaders.

To ensure maximum learning from each other, SPRING will also work with the institutions to design the course programs to be interactive, with a cross-section of businesses, and even foreign participation. Such diversity will benefit the SME participants, allowing them to view issues from a different angle.

Funding for Programme

To make the program even more attractive, SPRING is setting aside $20 million over the next 5 years to help defray the costs incurred by the institutions in customizing and operating the courses. Hopefully, the lower fees will encourage more SMEs to participate in the program. Over this 5-year period, SPRING hopes to see 1,000 SME CEOs and their key managers coming through the Management Development Programme.

All the three IHLs will be launching a customized course each this year, with the first intakes planned for July. I therefore strongly encourage all of you to quickly get in touch with the respective institutions on the different courses offered and to sign up quickly, so as to start your SME on the road to capability development.

Conclusion

Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric (GE), once said: “An organization's ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage. "I would add that the speed of learning in an organization depends on the learning speed of the CEO himself/ herself.

Today’s Conference too, is one such learning opportunity. SPRING has organized this inaugural conference to enable SMEs to share B to B best practices, as well as to provide an additional networking platform across the various industries. This Conference is also meant to be an effective platform for public-private sector collaboration. I am heartened to see so many of you here today, which goes to show that all of you do not need any persuading to know the true value of building capabilities and networks for your organization.

With that, let me wish all of you a very fruitful and successful Conference.

Thank you.