Singapore, punching above its weight

Singapore realized that if it was to develop, it needed to focus on high-value-added, technology-intensive industries. In order to do that, however, a highly educated workforce would be required to meet the challenge.

Today, that focus has paid dividends many times over. Singapore has become the regional center for R&D and innovation in such diverse sectors as petrochemicals, biotechnology, aviation and nanotechnology.

"Singapore's transition was no accident," says Desai Arcot Narasimhalu, director of the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Singapore Management University.

"It was carefully planned and designed. It was a realization by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew that Singapore's future was in having a knowledge economy and focusing on technology - high-end technology," he says.

Narasimhalu says Singapore's small population has been an advantage in its development.

"Because it does not have a large domestic market, Singapore has had to think beyond its own borders for markets," he says. "It simply could not afford to hang on to low-end manufacturing and maintain a workforce with low skills."

MIT Technology Review, a publication by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has described Singapore's transition as a "Cinderella story of how a small island - less than half the size of London - transformed itself from a colonial backwater into one of the world's most affluent, most fully wired places in a single generation".

Earlier this year, P&G opened its multimillion-dollar Singapore Innovation Center - the largest private research facility in the city-state.

With more than 250 research laboratories, the center is P&G's international innovation hub and home for 500 researchers, engineers and PhDs.

The city-state is investing S$16.1 billion ($12.9 billion) between 2011 and 2015 to support research, innovation and enterprise development - a 20 percent increase over the previous five-year period.

"Research and development has become a cornerstone of the nation's economic strategy," says an article in WIPO Magazine.

By next year, it says, Singapore aims to increase gross expenditure on R&D to 3.5 percent of GDP.

"Singapore's tertiary sector - its universities, research institutes and polytechnics - play a key role in spawning the innovation that sustains its economic performance," the magazine says.

Innovative Asia	Ramping up R&D investment