Inaugural NUS Seminar On Small And Medium Enterprises

Inaugural NUS Seminar On Small And Medium Enterprises
Speech by Professor Hang Chang Chieh, Deputy Chairman, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and Chairman of GET-Up Initiative11 Nov 2003

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Growing Enterprises Through A Technology Upgrading Strategy1. IntroductionAs Singapore transforms itself into a knowledge-Based Economy (KBE), innovation and intellectual property creation will be critical success factors for Singapore enterprises to survive and thrive. This is especially important and urgent in the manufacturing sector as they face keen competition in the global market place. In the past, these enterprises could depend on the multinational companies (MNCs) which readily transferred the latest technologies to their key supporting industry partners anywhere in the world. This traditional source of technology transfer will diminish rapidly in many high-tech industrial sectors as the time-to-market and product life-cycles become shorter and shorter. The global manufacturing outsourcing practice in recent years has also resulted in much reduced in-house manufacturing expertise in many of the MNCs themselves. Singapore's supporting industrial companies which have indigenous technology and manufacturing knowhow will therefore become the preferred global partners of MNCs, be it in the global market place or even in the home countries of the MNCs.Another strategy for growth is for more local enterprises to create indigenous technologies and products/services that will successfully compete in the global industrial and consumer markets. If they continue to grow, some will establish themselves as MNCs with their roots and bases in Singapore. They will in turn leverage and tap technology and human resources elsewhere in the world to complement their R&D and manufacturing Headquarters back in Singapore.In order to accelerate the above development as part of our KBE strategies, Singapore has launched a multi-agency initiative, "Growing Enterprises with Technology Upgrade" or in short, "GET-Up" aimed at creating both immediate and long-term benefits for our growth-oriented Singapore Enterprises. GET-Up is a concerted effort of four government agencies, Agency for Science, Technology And Research (A*STAR), Economic Development Board (EDB), Standards, Productivity & Innovation Board Singapore (SPRING) and International Enterprise (IE) Singapore. It will pro-actively reach out to Singapore enterprises in the manufacturing sector and give them ready access to human capital, shared R&D resources and technology capabilities. This will help them achieve what Mr Philip Yeo, A*STAR chairman, called the real 3 Gs of "Grow, Glow and Globalise". Singapore Enterprises which have the ambition and potential to "grow" in business scope and size, "glow" profitably and gain global market presence will be actively encouraged and nurtured through the GET-Up initiative.In the following sections, I shall elaborate on the scope of GET-Up, the unique programmes championed under this initiative, and the progress made since the launch of GET-Up in January 2003.