Speech by SMS Chee at the Emerging Enterprise Awards 2019

SPEECH BY MR CHEE HONG TAT, SENIOR MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY OF TRADE & INDUSTRY AND MINISTRY OF EDUCATION FOR THE BUSINESS TIMES’ EMERGING ENTERPRISE AWARD 2019 ON 3 OCT 2019, 7.30PM AT RAFFLES HOTEL

Mr Wong Wei Kong, Editor, The Business Times,

Mr Linus Goh, Head of Global Commercial Banking, OCBC Bank,

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

INTRODUCTION

1. Good evening. I am delighted to join you at the Emerging Enterprise Award today.

2. Now in its twelfth edition, the Award has recognised and showcased some of our most promising businesses over the years. Many of these enterprises have gone on to achieve international success in their respective fields. I would like to commend the Business Times (BT), OCBC Bank and your supporting partners on your sustained efforts in organising this event, which has become a significant and highly anticipated milestone in the annual SME calendar. INNOVATION TO DIFFERENTIATE OFFERINGS AND ACHIEVE SUSTAINABLE GROWTH 

3. Before coming here, I looked into the list of finalists for tonight’s awards. While they come from diverse sectors, from cooperative farming to rodent risk management, all of these businesses have strong fundamentals in innovation. They took an age-old problem or business idea, and transformed it into novel solutions by harnessing the power of innovation. 

4. Innovation is in fact the means to an end – strong and sustainable business growth. In a global environment where competition is rife across borders and headwinds are strong, one way to achieve this is to differentiate your offerings; to carve out a niche for yourself so that you add value and provide a unique value proposition. 

5. I read an article from Financial Times recently, it is about a 23-year old young lady from California named Haley Pavone. One night, when she went dancing with her friends, she decided to remove her heels for comfort but got her barefoot stepped on by another dancer. That triggered an idea in her mind to invent heels that can turn into flats.You unscrew the heels on the shoes and the soles flatten out because they are made from a flexible material similar to those used in trainers. Her company is called Pashion Footwear and currently has patents pending in 30 countries.I cannot speak with first-hand experience as I do not wear heels myself, but Haley’s innovation took off because she tackled a literal pain point that many customers face when they are wearing heels.

6. I am heartened to find that many of you have reached a similar conclusion. Not about wearing heels, but about the importance of innovation to achieve business success.In the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (SCCCI) 2018 Business Survey, more than a third of the surveyed companies considered innovation an important strategy to manage their business challenges. Almost 95% of the surveyed companies were SMEs. The Emerging Enterprise Award rightly recognises the value of innovation, with a special category for “best innovation”. 

7. Many of the Award finalists have developed interesting and innovative offerings. I will not be able to describe them all, but would like to touch on two examples.   ENABLING INNOVATION AND SUPPORTING GROWTH

8. Many of you have good ideas and the gumption to translate them into action. The Government will continue to foster a pro-business environment where innovation can flourish and entrepreneurs can focus on growing their business.Streamlining regulations and processes

9. We have been streamlining regulations and processes to minimise compliance costs. Supporting Innovation

10. Where new opportunities arise, our businesses should be poised to seize them. The Government is working to create room for our companies to innovate more freely – whether by increasing the ease of starting a new business, ensuring regulatory agility so that new ideas can be implemented or giving SMEs opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities and establish their track record. 
     PRIVATE SECTOR COLLABORATION AND PARTNERSHIP TO UNLOCK NEW PROSPECTS

11. The spirit of collaboration is crucial for the growth of the wider business community.I am sure that most of our finalists today will agree with the value of collaboration, since a third of them were once located at JTC’s LaunchPad @ OneNorth. The concept of the LaunchPad is simple - to enable the growth of a vibrant community of startups and partners, where there would be opportunities for partnerships and the cross-fertilisation of ideas. 

12. Past Emerging Enterprise Award winners have leveraged partnerships to great success. For example: 

13. In 2018, we enhanced the PACT scheme to encourage companies to jointly pursue co-innovation and new business opportunities. PACT now supports partnerships between firms of all sizes, including between SMEs and startups, and to more types of collaborative projects. Beyond B2B partnerships, we also strongly support our Trade Associations and Chambers (TACs) in spearheading initiatives to help transform our enterprises and industries, such as through the Local Enterprise and Association Development (LEAD) programme. 

14. Working together to grow your businesses will not only create opportunities for knowledge transfer and capability building. Co-innovation amongst business partners has the added benefit of bringing together a larger range of skillsets and strengths, and helps to lower individual risk. And importantly, you can scale-up more quickly because rather than building everything in-house, by partnering someone who already has those capabilities you are better able to combine your strengths and scale up. 

15. We have to think about how to enlarge the pie so that there is more to share. The real competition is not among ourselves in Singapore but with the larger and better-equipped companies elsewhere in the world. So all the more I think we need to work together as a community and help one another, complement our strengths so that we can all run faster and go further.CONCLUSION

16. Tonight’s award ceremony is an excellent example of how the private sector has come together to encourage and uplift our young and promising enterprises. More than giving well-deserved recognition, it is also about gathering our community of entrepreneurs to exchange ideas, experiences and best practices. I hope it will spark off some partnerships and collaborations. 

17. I would like to offer my heartfelt congratulations to all Award finalists. The organiser told me that they have more than 500 entries this year, so to make it all this way is a real achievement. Each of you have been inspirational in your inventiveness and tenacity, your passion and many other positive qualities. I am very encouraged by the great things that you have already achieved, and I look forward to your continued success and to you scaling even greater heights and in the process of doing so, lift up our whole ecosystem and provide opportunities and inspiration for future generations of entrepreneurs. 

18. Thank you.