Mr Sam Tan at the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition Awards Dinner, 8 July 2010

SPEECH BY MR SAM TAN, PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY FOR TRADE AND INDUSTRY AND INFORMATION, COMMUNICATIONS AND THE ARTS, AT THE LEE KUAN YEW GLOBAL BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION AWARDS DINNER, 08 JULY 2010, 7:45 PM AT THE RAFFLES HOTEL

Professor Howard Hunter, President of the Singapore Management University,

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and gentlemen

Good evening.

I am pleased to join you this evening for the 5th biennial Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition Awards Dinner. To the teams and judges from overseas, welcome to Singapore. I hope you will have a pleasant stay in Singapore.

Entrepreneurship in Singapore – Key Driver for Future Economic Growth

Innovative start-ups are an integral part of economic growth for countries. According to a study by the Kauffman Foundation for Entrepreneurship in the US, some 600,000 new firms are formed annually in the US. Of these, about 1,000 will become high-growth companies and contribute about one third of US’ GDP growth.

Here in Singapore, the number of start-ups has grown rapidly in the last few years. Of the 160,000 enterprises operating in Singapore today, about 77,000 start-ups were formed within the last three years. These start-ups are now employing more people than before. In 2007, 1 in 10 workers were employed by start-ups, up from 1 in 14 in 2002[1].

This year, Singapore’s economic outlook looks promising with some economists predicting a GDP growth of around 9%. However, it is crucial to remember that less than a year ago, the world including Singapore, was experiencing a severe economic downturn. To maintain the resilience of our economy and ensure Singapore’s long term economic competitiveness, we need to generate exponential growth or risk of being overtaken by global competition. A knowledge based economy anchored on innovation and enterprise is the key to Singapore’s future economic growth.

Fostering Entrepreneurship – A Key Role for Academia

For the past four years, Singapore has been ranked by World Bank as the easiest place to do business. This is a reflection of our commitment towards ensuring that our regulatory environment continues to be conducive to the operation of business. But it is not enough for Singapore to be an easy place to start and grow businesses. Ideas and talents are the two ingredients for innovative entrepreneurship to flourish. In this regard, Institutes of Higher Learning or IHLs, in fostering innovation and entrepreneurship play a key role. Let me elaborate on this role.

First, education is an effective tool in developing awareness of entrepreneurship from an early age. It is important that entrepreneurship be incorporated in various disciplines, in order to provide students with specific training on how to start and run a business. Students can also be encouraged to take initiative, be creative and instilled with self-confidence.

Stanford University, for instance, has long been a hotbed of technology innovation and entrepreneurship. Innovation and entrepreneurship are integral part of the university’s culture. Unique programmes focusing on entrepreneurship permeate nearly every discipline, from Engineering and Business to Medicine and Law. The Stanford Entrepreneurship Network (SEN) serves as a single point of contact for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship-related organisations across campus that conducts research, teach and provide outreach services.

IHLs also help to encourage entrepreneurship through their intellectual properties. Unused, unlicensed technologies are part and parcel of every research university’s portfolio of intellectual property. These can be exploited and transformed into commercial ventures by the teaching faculties and students. Students can leverage on IHLs’ IP, create a business plan around a real technology, and be given the opportunity to commercialize that technology via a start-up company or licensing effort.

In addition, IHLs can provide hands-on entrepreneurship experience where students can experiment with business models and ideas. IHLs are best placed to bring students from different academic disciplines and background to create entrepreneurial ventures and to incubate them. Global companies such as Cisco Systems, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo!, Facebook and many others, can trace their beginnings to universities.

The government has also put in place schemes to promote the entrepreneurial mindset and spirit amongst the young. For example, SPRING Singapore’s Young Entrepreneurs Scheme for Startups (YES! Startups), provides a $50,000 grant for youths to start their venture. To-date, some 60 young start-ups have been catalysed. The Media Development Authority’s IDM Jump-start and Mentor (i.JAM) initiative has supported more than 200 early-stage projects in the interactive digital media (IDM) space.

Nurturing Innovative Startups in SMU

Our local IHLs have also put in place systems to develop entrepreneurial leaders. Back in 2005, SMU established its Business Innovations Generator (BIG) as an incubator to nurture student entrepreneurs. Since then, they have extended their incubation facilities to groom other companies and enhanced the programme to include collaborations with IDG Venture SEA and Tamarix to help generae deal flow for start-ups. As part of the entrepreneurship network, the SMU Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE) was also set up last September to groom business leaders and entrepreneurs, within and outside the university community.

With the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan competition, SMU has also gone a step further by providing budding young entrepreneurs with the opportunity to compete globally and be exposed to international business trends and ideas. First started in 2001, it is the first global business plan competition for undergraduates, college and polytechnic students around the world. It provides a unique platform for youths to showcase their business ideas internationally, network with potential investors and attract seed funding for their projects.

Indeed, some of the competition’s previous participants have gone on to successfully set up their own businesses. One such beneficiary of the competition is Leonard Lin, an alumnus of SMU. His team, TYLER Projects, came in as second runner-up in the 2005/2006 Competition with a mobile multiplayer game proposal. The team later started their business based on their winning business plan. Today, TYLER generates more than $1m in annual revenue as a social network game developer and consultant. One of its creations, Battle Stations, is Singapore’s first Facebook multiplayer game and has 3.5 million registered users. Later this month, it will be launching two new game titles.

Conclusion

I would like to extend my heartiest congratulations to the six teams which have made it to the finals today. These business ideas that you have, and more importantly, the passion behind the ideas, are the seeds for great things to come. I hope to see many of you leverage on this experience and start your very own enterprise. Let me conclude by wishing you all success in your future enterprises

[1] Source: Department of Statistics