S'pore SMEs urged to work hard at differentiating themselves

Dresden, Germany

SINGAPORE companies, especially the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), must work hard at differentiating themselves in order to avoid being overtaken by the competition.

Making this point was International Enterprise (IE) Singapore's assistant chief executive officer Satvinder Singh who said that Singapore was still at a nascent stage in terms of its companies actively tapping the vast amount of research and knowledge in other parts of the world.

IE Singapore is a statutory board under the Trade and Industry Ministry that facilitates the overseas growth of Singapore-based companies and promotes international trade.

Mr Singh is in Germany with a 24-member business delegation to explore tie-ups with technology companies. The group is there in conjunction with an official visit by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Speaking to the Singapore media, Mr Singh listed a number of factors that SMEs must have in order to be successful in the long run - a leader that is always hungry to do better, the ability to consistently develop new ideas, and the ability to commercialise these ideas quickly.

When asked by The Business Times why many SMEs are not expanding overseas, especially into newer and emerging markets, at a much-faster rate, he said: "My feel is that the stumbling block is comfort. When things are OK, the markets are going well, the company is earning enough revenue, then a person becomes complacent. Sometimes, complacency comes from success."

Mr Singh hoped that more SMEs would be inspired by the stories of local firms such as vTrium Energy and Composite Cluster of Singapore, which both inked major deals with Dresden firms on Monday to work together on expanding business opportunities in their respective industries.

"What our companies need is encouragement. They need to see some success, some models of collaboration," he noted. "Overall, our SMEs are a bit more hungrier than those in other countries. We want to send out the message that Singapore SMEs have the capacity to re-innovate and boost their value proposition."

Two Singapore education institutions also put pen to paper on individual agreements with their Dresden counterparts.

Nanyang Polytechnic signed a deal with the Gustav Anton Zeuner vocational school centre for technology to collaborate on staff and student exchange programmes and research and development projects in the area of precision engineering.

The Nanyang Technological University (NTU), meanwhile, is committed to work with the Dresden University of Technology in various fields such as medicine, water research and bioengineering.

Bo Liedberg, the acting dean of NTU's Interdisciplinary Graduate School, said that one of the priorities this year will be to establish and launch a joint or dual PhD programme. Both universities will also apply for joint research grants.

"When a joint PhD kicks in, then the exchange of faculty members automatically kicks in. That is critical for us," he added.