Singapore of the Future

Over the weekend, there was an op-ed that was written by Mr Teo MK, who is the Perm Sec in charge of R&D as in the Prime Minister's office and Ministry of Finance.

I think his article quite interesting about how R&D can be developed to benefit Singapore.

If I were to imaging his plan, it would be an inverted pyramid, where at the base would be the smallest portion and the top the widest portion. It starts whentechnology is created, protected and then commercialized and brought to the world. In the ideal circumstances, a single platform technology could be used to create many different products.

Example could be something like bluetooth technology. At the base, bluetooth is a communication protocol between several devices at short ranges, aka PAN (personal area network). One product at the now quite ubiquitious wireless headset that we use with our handphones. Next, we now see AD2P which is stereo bluetooth headset, and we also see bluetooth enable storage, etc etc. Therefore, theoretically from one technology there are multple spin-off opportunities to be exploited.

However, as great as the concept sounds, there are distinct difficulties in doing this. Primarily, bluetooth technology is not something cooked up by one party but a consortium of companies , plus not every technology being created is platform in nature. Therefore how does one pick winners?

I once had an interested (albeit short) conversation about this. I believe that industry would dictate what it wants, and thus drive R&D whereas my esteemed colleague at that time, was of the opinion that R&D should drive industry. So which comes first? The chicken or the egg?

I still believe that R&D should be guided in principle by industry. Why? Primarily because industry would have taken the effort to determine user requirements. Too often I have seen project requests for funding, not because it was what users had said they wanted, but because it was the neat thing to do. But perhaps that is the academia's way to exploring the outer limits of technology.

But what is most important is how much of this technology is commercialized. Even if we take the altruistic position of bringing benefit to Singapore companies, in the end, commercial returns from this R&D effort must be measured. If the industry is not taking up the exploitation of R&D that has been paid for by the government, then it shows that either:
a) These local companies have no clue how to exploit the technology
b) These technology are of no use to them
c) or the answer lies somewhere in between.

If C is the answer then, this is where Venture capitalists would come in, as they would provide the opportunity and platform for the reseachers, or creator of the said technology to commercialize it own their own behalf.

But I do not see how local VCs are being supported for this endevour. Admittedly, Singapore is muct too small a market for a company to base its business plan on, especially a technology company.

But how does one break the conundrum of the VCs not having enough dealflows, and technopreneurs not having enough funding sources.

What do you think?