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23. Second, investing in R&D and becoming a
knowledge hub. This Budget underscores the Government’s
commitment to invest in R&D and to become
a knowledge hub. We will inject $5 billion into
an R&D Trust Fund over the next five years.
24. R&D is about experimentation, taking risks,
venturing into uncharted territories - some failures,
others successes. It means that we must be ready
to support good people, to support good projects,
to be hard-headed about what we do with our money,
where we spend it, and in assessing whether projects
are getting somewhere or whether we are getting
nowhere.
25. We have to be patient. We cannot expect results
overnight. We have to spend some time. So, I
am heartened that MPs like Dr Teo Ho Pin, Dr
Ong Chit Chung, and Dr Loo Choon Yong support
this effort to secure our long term economic
future and have offered many good suggestions
which we will follow up on.
26. Professor Ivan Png has cautioned against being
overly driven by a target like raising national
expenditure on R&D to three percent of the
GDP, which he points out is an input target rather
than an output target. His point is well-taken.
I fully agree with him that what counts is output,
not input, and we must get the appropriate performance
measures, because how you measure influences
what people will do. But, we do need inputs to
get the desired outputs. If you look at countries
like Sweden, Finland, US, Japan and Korea, they
have shown that high levels of R&D investments
are strongly correlated with the level of innovation
there - in terms of the high-tech start-ups,
new products and processes, patents and finally,
dynamism and prosperity.
27. So we do need the money. We will not spend
it blindly. We must make sure it is well spent.
This means we must have robust processes to review
and evaluate R&D proposals, using local and
foreign experts to help us. We must focus on
building up core R&D capabilities and talent,
and not just on funding projects.
28. The National Research Foundation (NRF) and
the Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council
(RIEC), which I chair, have been formed to drive
this overall effort. I am glad to tell members
that eminent academics and leading corporate
figures have agreed to serve on the RIEC and
on the Scientific Advisory Board of the NRF.
These include Dr Susan Hockfield, who is President
of MIT, Professor Clayton Christensen from the
Harvard Business School, Dr Thomas Connelly,
Chief Science and Technology Officer at Dupont,
and Kenji Fujiyoshi, President of Mitsui Chemicals.
They are experienced, very capable people. They
know we are taking it seriously, and their participation
shows that they have confidence in what we are
doing. They will advise us on key areas of development
and on how to assess and direct funding for R&D.
29. Professor Low Seow Chay has recommended a higher
private share in total R&D spending. I agree
with him that greater private sector participation
in R&D is our long-term goal. But to get
there, the Government’s approach is to
use public sector investments to drive, and to
seed, private sector investment. We will not
just fund projects but we will also encourage
collaboration between the wider research community,
including the research institutes, universities
and the private sector. We are one small country.
We cannot have factions and different warring
territories in Singapore. We have to bring everybody
together and make the most of a national effort.
30. Dr John Chen and Mr Ahmad Magad have suggested
that funds should focus on supporting commercialisation
of R&D. Indeed, economic payoff is the ultimate
objective. By commercialising technologies and
ideas developed in the universities, research
institutes and the firms, we will be able to
achieve this.
31. But we have to be prepared to invest in the
whole continuum of R&D in a balanced sort
of way, from upstream research to commercial
application. We used to focus just on the very
downstream development part. If we want to make
further progress, we have to move upstream. But,
we have to do it in a focused sort of way, in
fields where we believe there is a reasonable
chance of a good outcome over the medium term.
32. We used to focus on capability building in
our first efforts in developing R&D. Now,
we are moving into creating new knowledge and
commercialising the applications. EDB is already
getting companies to set up the R&D centres
here, with A*STAR focusing on applied research.
EDB and SPRING have a programme called SEEDS,
Start-up Enterprise Development Scheme, which
also helps to provide equity financing for creative
individuals who want to commercialise their business
models or products. So far, eleven of them have
achieved the million dollar mark and six have
won international awards for their products.
So, not too bad.
33. We have plans to help existing SMEs develop
and commercialise creative ideas too, through
the Enterprise Technology Fund. The details of
how we will help SMEs to participate will be
in the Committee of Supply for MTI.
34. Professor Low Seow Chay expressed concern that
R&D could be dominated by foreigners and
that Singaporeans will not benefit from it. I
think we should look at it positively. We want
to develop Singaporeans to go into R&D -
to become researchers and scientists - but, we
must get as many foreigners as we can to come
here, do good work here, and help us to get the
activities moving – better for them to
be working with us rather than against us elsewhere.
Only by attracting the best talent, foreign or
local, can the quality of our R&D be truly
world class. There is no centre in the world
which only works with local talent and is world
class. You can go to the Whitehead Institute
in MIT, you can go to Weizmann in Israel, you
can go to Cambridge, Cavendish Labs - all the
world class institutions gather talent from around
the world. No single country, not even the US,
not even China, has enough talent and scientists
to say: “This is my own national effort
- foreigners stay away.”
35. The way to do it is to bring everybody in,
the talent from wherever you can get them, to
cross fertilize, spark off and germinate new
ideas. At the same time, we will encourage locals
to pursue a career in R&D - get bright people
into R&D. We are always enhancing our programmes
to grow our local scientists, but we need to
find the talent with the potential and interests
to do R&D. Not everybody can do it, not even
every bright person can do it. You have to have
the right mindset to focus, to understand the
subject in detail, and to spend a large part
of your life researching in-depth in something
which may lead to nothing, but which you hope
will lead to something big. There are only a
finite number of such people in Singapore. So
where we can find them, we will deploy them to
R&D, remembering that you also need SAF officers,
civil servants, MPs, businessmen, entrepreneurs
and many other things.
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