Heng urges companies to give innovation a boost
Singapore
SINGAPORE companies are now spending more on research and development (R&D), but there is still more room to improve the innovation ecosystem within which they operate, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat said on Wednesday.
For them to innovate rapidly and keep Singapore relevant and competitive, these companies will need to forge partnerships and strengthen that innovation eco-system, he said.
Speaking at the Leaders in Science Forum, he noted that on average, business expenditure on research and development grew 8 per cent year on year between 2010 and 2015 to more than S$5 billion annually.
Even small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are investing more in R&D; their expenditure grew by 7 per cent annually over the same period - compared to the 3 per cent growth in the five years before that.
Describing this as "very encouraging", he added: "Today, Singapore is well-regarded as a vibrant international research hub. The government has made sustained investments in this direction, and the research and business communities have put in significant efforts to push the frontiers."
The public agencies, research institutions and universities provide a range of support - by facilitating access to overseas resources, networks and markets - to help Singapore companies venture overseas, he noted.
He touched on government initiatives such as the the Global Innovation Alliance, the Industry Transformation Maps, the programmes of the Committee on the Future Economy and the Research Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) roadmap, now pumping the sixth tranche of funds into research and innovation.
He expressed hope that such efforts would make the innovation ecosystem one in which "entrepreneurs can develop new solutions and create new value across sectoral and geographical borders".
Mr Heng said, however, that Singapore companies must continue to forge closer partnerships and strengthen the innovation ecosystem, so that workers and companies "can innovate rapidly and meaningfully to create new value and keep Singapore competitive and relevant to the world".
He recounted a recent conversation he had with a leader in research and innovation about universities setting up inter-disciplinary or cross-disciplinary centres of research.
"(The leader in research and innovation) said the problem has to do with the way knowledge and research are organised. To get deep into an area of research, you have to know more and more about one area, and less and less about other areas. But the real world is messy, and does not fit neatly into one specific discipline.
"We have to bring all the knowledge and insights we can muster, and not be confined to one particular thread.
"So it may be that even cross-disciplinary or inter-disciplinary work is not adequate. If innovation is about new combinations and new possibilities, we will need a sense of wonder and curiosity, in envisioning a new world of possibilities."
