Transforming our SMEs into giant slayers

YEAR 2016 could be described as the year of the underdogs. We saw the triumph of Brexit and Donald Trump despite polls indicating that they were the underdogs. Leicester City Football Club won the 2015-16 English Premier League, a victory described by the press as the greatest sporting upset ever. Joseph Schooling won Singapore's first ever gold in the 100 metre butterfly event, beating his childhood hero and the most decorated Olympian of all time, Michael Phelps.

In the corporate world, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are generally perceived as underdogs compared to the corporate giants. But thanks to globalisation and the Internet, the playing field has been levelled for the SMEs and opportunities abound. However, the window of opportunity is becomingly smaller given intense competition.

According to some studies, it took 75 years for the telephone to reach a critical mass of 50 million users; 38 years for the radio; 13 years for TV; four years for the Internet; three years for the iPod and 35 days for Angry Bird. In the past decade, the rate of adoption of new technologies has accelerated the increasing connectivity to millions globally.