Finding the Golden Path: Can Singapore be a Silicon Valley?

Can Singapore be a Silicon Valley? We review the trends and issues what kind of technology cluster we want to become.

“To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”
- Confucius

The present Singapore Entrepreneurial Scene

Can Singapore be truly become a Silicon Valley within the next decade? To begin, a few interesting indicators have emerged as to why we should ask this question now. First and foremost, is the increasing entrepreneurial activity that has emerged from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2005 report. The figure clearly shows that the entrepreneurial mindset is slowly distilled down to the younger generation, because they contribute most to that statistic. The city of Singapore is becoming more and more cosmopolitan. If you bother to look around, you will find one in ten people who are foreigners from other countries. Furthermore, the government has recently looking at forming a board for small & medium enterprises, studying the feasibility of a stock exchange similar to AIM in the London Stock Exchange and provided S$13.75B worth of funds into science and technology.

Yet, there is a shortage of home-grown entrepreneurs. Other than Creative Technologies and Hyflux, we have not seen other big hitters in the country. Rising from the ashes of the dot.com bust, young entrepreneurs are still dealing with status anxiety. To some, the entrepreneurial culture has not fully grown in the Singaporean minds in the older generation. People are still thinking to work for bigger companies, search for material possessions (car, credit card, career, cash and condo) and afraid of failure. Of course, most young Singaporeans are not living in their own dreams but through the dreams set forth by their parents, who are not aware of the changes in today’s global economy. Despite the enthusiasm shown by the younger generation to be entrepreneurs, there are still a shortage of business plans in the local business plan competitions to be translated to true businesses.

While many cynics or naysayers condemned the lack of entrepreneurial spirit in the Singaporean mindset, they do not appreciate the historical roots of how the country came to be. A respected American venture capitalist who I worked presently with gave a very different view from what we read. If you trace the historical roots back to the independence of Singapore in 1965, one will realize that the country was left to survive on its own after the separation from Malaysia. Unlike its surrounding neighbours, it has no natural resources and the only way to grow the economy of the country was through successful management of human capital. That proved to be a success, because it did transform itself from a small fishing port to the buzzing city today.

Through the years, Singapore reinvented itself with the use of transition from manufacturing based economy to knowledge based economy. Through the hands of the government (imagine them as the venture capitalists), they hedge their bets on biomedical sciences now and hope to recreate the success that it has brought itself in the past thirty years. The government is entrepreneurial in its early days after independence and built a successful and vibrant economy till the 1990s. However, the structure of Singapore Inc has grown too big, like a multi-national company, for example, Microsoft, it becomes too rigid and inflexible. That inflexibility is translated to the cultural mindset of the country, with the typical Singaporeans having too much expectations for material possessions, too little patience for hard work and too intolerant of failure in themselves and other people.

Is there something missing that will help Singapore to find back that entrepreneurial past?

Fire in the belly

A famous entrepreneur in Singapore pointed this out to me privately over a discussion. He used the following example to illustrate his point. Take a typical Singaporean, if he decided to take all his meals in the hawker centre (assuming that he does not cook), he can pay about $3 per meal and that will total to $270 per month. That calculation is to point how comfortable most Singaporeans are in at the moment. Of course, to a lot of Singaporeans, coupled with our expectations and the sacrifices the men has to make for the country, we have taken a lot of things for granted. In short, the entrepreneur told me straight that why the entrepreneurial activity is small among the Singaporeans compare to the foreign talent that are bearing the brunt of resentment from the local heartlanders. It is the fire in the belly.

Singapore was like the US in its early days as a British colony. Our forefathers came to the shores of the country and search for a better place to live. The multi-cultural background contributed to its success as a trading port. The fire in the belly was in the blood of our forefathers and not in the younger generation. Most of the younger generation hope to rely on protectionism to safeguard their entitlements. The government is on the tightrope to control this protectionism. In Silicon Valley, it does not matter who you are. You could camp in the Silicon Valley during the hay days of the dot.com rise, and find a job the next day whether you are Indian, Chinese or for that matter, a Singaporean. The same kind of mindset is required for the current generation of Singaporeans.

The resentment to foreign talent can be only be cured via two approaches, first by both locals and foreigners working towards a win-win situation for an entrepreneurial venture and second, Singaporeans not short-changing themselves. The first is easier to achieve, but the second is difficult. When I visited Shanghai last December, during a networking session, I was told that Singaporeans in Shanghai are helping each other less compare to their Taiwanese and Hong Kong counterparts. Singaporean businessmen often look for the cheapest deal, but in business, it is not just profit that we need to maximize but also personal relationships. Yes, money can allow you to buy everything, but it cannot buy relationship. The Singaporean mentality prides itself for being efficient which I still believe that it’s our strength, but we need the software and they are the networking and win-win mentality that is lacking in our culture.

In the country, the Singaporeans need the “fire in the belly” and drop their resentment to achieve a win-win situation. An entrepreneurial environment like Silicon Valley requires diversity of talent and hunger to achieve. Countries like Finland has demonstrated that size does not matter, otherwise, companies like Nokia would not have existed.

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