Speech by Minister Chan Chun Sing at L'Oreal Innovation Runway Finals 2018

DELIVERED SPEECH BY MR CHAN CHUN SING, MINISTER FOR TRADE AND INDUSTRY, AT L’ORÉAL INNOVATION RUNWAY FINALS 2018 ON TUESDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER 2018 AT 10AM AT MARINA BAY SANDS EXPO AND CONVENTION CENTRE

​1                A very good morning to all of you. I’m sure you are most excited and eagerly waiting for the results.

2              But first, let me welcome my good friend, Mr Mounir Mahjoubi, Minister of State for the Digital Sector. Unfortunately, he’s only going to be with us for 24 hours and then he is off again. But he promises that he will come back here and join us once again.

3              Let me on behalf of the organisers congratulate all the winners. For most of you who are not going to take away the top two prizes today, I want to say that you are also the winners. Because I’m sure with your pitching, many of the judges would have been impressed by your ideas. And I think many of them would have made you an offer even if you don’t win the top two prizes today.

4              I would also like to thank L’Oréal for partnering us in organising this event this year. It is always exciting to see the new startups in Singapore and the region. If there’s anything that Singapore wants to be, it is that in the coming years, we are determined to make sure that we are the place of choice, environment of choice for startups to locate in Singapore, and for scale-ups to locate in Singapore.

5               We perfectly understand that given the size of your market, not all startups will originate from Singapore. But I think in the region and beyond, we would like to see ourselves as a place of choice.

6               And to do this, we are determined to make sure that we get five things right. It’s never an easy environment, never easy for startups to get going. And it’s not the business of Governments to do business. But it is the business of Governments to have an enabling environment for businesses to flourish.

7              And this is why the Singapore Government would like to do five things, to make sure that we create an even more enabling environment for our startups and the scale-up community.

8              Now first and foremost I think nobody in the world will develop startups in isolation. And this is why Singapore is growing our network and alliances with other innovative cities such as Paris, London and San Francisco, and many others.

9                 For us to do the startup business well, we need to make sure that we have the linkages and connections with other countries. This year, we are happy that we are able to partner France in the Year of Innovation, to strengthen our partnership between the two communities, both in terms of business, established businesses and also the startup community, through the launch of the 1st France-Singapore Call for Joint Innovation Projects.

10             I am also excited to hear that ESSEC Business School is going to have a programme to help partners in Singapore and in France to come together to strengthen their partnerships. Now beyond connecting with other cities, we also know that for startups to thrive, talent is key. And it is not just about talent from any one particular sphere or realm, or any particular country.

11          In fact, we need a global talent network to come together. In today’s environment, it is often teams of people from cross-disciplines, people from different countries, different backgrounds coming together and pulling their ideas together that makes things work.

12                 And it is on this basis that Singapore today would like to announce that we will start a new Startup SG Entrepass Partners’ initiative to encourage Singaporeans to partner with foreign partners to base their startups here, or to have their scale-ups here. This scheme will allow Singaporeans, talented Singaporeans and talented overseas people to come together and work together on projects of common interest. Not just to build it in Singapore, but to build it in Singapore for the rest of the world. So we are excited by this prospect, and we took a leaf from many other startup communities in different parts of the world, whereby we welcome such talent and partnerships across different disciplines from different countries.

13                 Of course the third element for any startup community to succeed is finance. In Singapore over the last five years, the scale of financing has grown about ten times. I think in 2012, we were only at about $130 million of startup capital. Today, we are about ten times that.

14                  And I think that there is tremendous scope for us to grow this even more. But what is required is for us to have even more varied financing options for our startup communities so that we don’t have just the conventional options, or a one-size-fits-all option for our startup community.

15                The fourth thing that I would like to do is something I learnt from France on my recent visit. When people talk about the startup community, people just imagine that the startup community is working in isolation. It’s all little small companies or small groups of people working in some backyard. In fact, in France, what I saw in Station F was this: That there were many small companies partnering established companies, using and leveraging the resources of established companies to help the startup to scale up even faster. This benefits the startup, this also benefits the big companies because as we all know, as a company gets bigger, it is more established, it is more rigid. And it is very difficult for it to break out of its conventional thinking.

16                 So this combination of big companies and small companies, this combination of established companies with new companies is also another ingredient, the fourth ingredient that we would like to build on. Which is why this morning, we are also very happy to see many established companies like L’Oréal and others who are here to look for new ideas from the new companies.

17                Last but not least, the fifth element that will be required for our success, which Singapore is very keen to do, to position ourselves and to make sure that we entrench our position, is what we call regulatory agility. When I mentioned this phrase “regulatory agility” to some friends over the F1 weekend, they thought that this was an oxymoron. We can’t have regulations and be agile.

18               But our approach to regulations in Singapore is not just to prevent bad things from happening. Because if it’s just to prevent bad things from happening, regulations will just be restrictive. But the way we want to look at regulations is to see how we can enable good things to happen, not just prevent bad things from happening.

19                  Regulations can be an enabling factor for many new industries and new startups. And indeed today we know that many of the new ideas that we have in the market today are not just single domain issues, they are not just conventional issues that can be regulated by the old rules.

20              For example, if tomorrow the ICT industry combines with the financial industry, we need new rules. We cannot be regulated by the old financial rules nor the old rules that govern telecommunications. Just like the new industries, as regulators, the onus is on us to keep pace with this. And this is another lesson I took from Station F when I visited them sometime back.

21                     Mounir told me a very interesting story. They used to put the Government officials into Station F thinking that the Government officials will be able to help the new startups to grow their businesses and navigate the current rules. But very soon, the Government regulators in Station F realised that they too need to be a startup. They too need to innovate and update their rules. And this is what we would like to see in Singapore as well.

22                 And this is why as Minister in charge of the public service, I also challenge my public servants to go and sit down with the startups in their community, not just to help them to navigate the current rules, but to figure out from them how we can create new rules to enable them to thrive and succeed in the new world.

23                  So these are five things on the Government side that we promise to make sure to do in order to we create a more enabling environment for our startup and scale-up community in Singapore, making sure that we have the global connections, making sure that we continue to build global talent teams in Singapore and beyond, making sure that we continue to have more and more innovative financing models for our people, making sure that we connect the established companies with the new companies, the established ideas with the new ideas.

24             And last but not least, and most importantly, to create that enabling environment where we achieve what some people might jokingly say is an oxymoron. But what we need is a critical enabler to our success or regulatory agility.                      Keep evolving our rules to enable our new businesses to work better, rather than just applying their existing rules to see whether they fit into the existing model.

25                      So on that note, I wish you all the very best. I would like to congratulate all the winners once again, and I would like to thank L’Oréal for partnering us.

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