What is lacking in Singapore? Let’s start from student enterprise first

Reading Bjorn’s short entry on “What is lacking in Singapore”, a few thoughts came to mine. On some level, I have answered some of the questions through my earlier article “Finding the Golden Path: Can Singapore be a Silicon Valley?. A revised version of this article will be published in a technology innovation magazine.

Coming back to the question, here are few cents worth to the issue. If I am going to summarize all my thoughts, it will be in one statement: Bootstrap the resources and build the software first. What do I mean by that? Let’s start from NUS first, and I believe that my argument can extend to the other universities if they are really ready to build successful student enterprises. Honestly, I am yearning for a challenge from the other local universities (and notice that I don’t call them by names).

The software lies in the people. People management is important. Only through that, you can harnass teams to make big leaps and vision. The important thing is that you find a good team to promote the culture you want. Ultimately, the beliefs of society is determined by herd behaviour. At least one aspect on the culture I would like to see is the following belief:

Build your own brand and not follow other brands

Before I came back to NUS, my first choice of working with a student enterprise is the NUS Entrepreneurship Society. While I spent my time in UK starting up my own company and doing my academic research, I took the time to mentor a very good team of students (the three co-leads of the 6th Start-Up@Singapore, who one of them is an editor of SG Entrepreneurs). I did not want to work with groups which have associations with famous universities and alliances. As an entrepreneur, you build things from scratch but adapt the experience and resources you have previously at your disposal.

Here is the problem of associating with some branded universities. If you keep harping on the fact that you are related to so and so famous group, the penetrating question I will ask you is “What is your organization’s unique selling point?”. Working with two branded and powerful organizations taught me something different. I have a lot of friends who ride on the brands and I don’t think that it’s a wrong thing to do. To be honest, I have to do that for my initial presence back here in Singapore because branding builds credibility. However in two years time, I told myself that this is not going to work. At the end of the day, people will give you the first recognition based on brand, but the later parts are built on your credibility, your ability and also your management and innovation. In order to make the mark, you need to separate yourself from the rest. You need to innovate. Imitation is simple, because you can ride on an existing organization’s idea. What a successful student enterprise needs to do is to innovate and do something which is not done before here.

At one point in time, branded student enterprise organizations (the ones I used to work with) started from scratch. So, something must have happened to turn them from nobody to somebody. I liked the lessons I learned from an organization from MIT which focusses on five things: consistency, big teams, branding, smooth leadership transition, and strong institution memory.

Consistency: We don’t do one big event once. NUS student enterprises have this strange idea that they make one big event and then the next year, forget about it. You innovate on existing structure and not innovate by keep re-inventing the wheel.

Big Teams: Stop thinking that a team is about you and your friends. The team is about gathering people from diverse backgrounds and having a professional and accountable organizations. You create a big company with the team you have and not the team you want to have. You only create the team you want to have, when you become successful.

Branding: It’s not putting your logos, but evangelize on the aims, vision and the how-to mantras of your organization. Branding is not a process, but a mindshare. Most people think that a brand is a logo, a tagline and some nice souvenirs that you can give to people. That’s wrong. A good organization from MIT I know tells people that they are the best in the world not by giving souvenirs, tagline and logo, they do that by having people from the leader to the last man who goes around telling people why they are great. That’s branding.

Smooth Leadership Transition: You need to make sure that the next leader follows with the vision that is set down from the predecessors.

Strong Institutional Memory: That’s important. You have to start the alumni process now, and help to set up a way where the founder of the organization can interact with the student leader of the 16th generation. The organization in MIT I talk about have their 2nd generation leaders helping them out even 14 years later. It’s the sharing of knowledge and how you avert in making the mistakes of the past.

Author’s Note: I welcome a debate if anyone is game for that. Attached is a picture on the branding efforts made by the team of dedicated students in NUS Entrepreneurship Society:

Technorati Tags: Entrepreneurship, Singapore Entrepreneurs, Singapore, Technology Clusters, Culture

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