One North, which was launched in 1998 and known previously as the Buona Vista Science Hub, has just passed the 25-year mark last year. It has catalysed and laid a firm foundation in positioning Singapore as a global research and development (R&D) and technopreneur hub.
Singapore has also added two more accolades to its list of global city awards in September this year. On 26 September 2024, a report showed that Singapore has claimed fourth place globally in the Global Innovation Index (GII) ranking and also retained the top spot in the regional Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Oceania (SEAO) category. The World Intellectual Property Organisation published the GII ranking of the world’s most innovative economies annually.
On 19 September 2024, Singapore rose from sixth place to second place in the World Talent Ranking 2024 report published by IMD. Singapore has also achieved the highest rank among the countries in Asia. The IMD ranking is based on the countries’ talent competitiveness in three areas, which includes investment and development, appeal, and readiness.
In 2023, the Economic Development Board (EDB) attracted S$12.7 billion in Fixed Asset Investment (FAI) and S$8.9 billion in Total Business Expenditure per annum (TBE). These investment commitments, when fully realised, are expected to create 20,045 jobs, of which 26% will be in R&D and Innovation jobs. Services and manufacturing jobs account for 58% and 16% of the jobs created, respectively.
R&D and innovation jobs include Product Specialists, Software Engineers, Data Platform Engineers, AI/Machine Learning Researchers, and Bioinformatics Scientists. These jobs will be created in cutting-edge technology and product development and commercialisation areas.
All these achievements and strong investment inflows into Singapore did not come by chance. The conceptualisation of the bold R&D roadmap and the joint efforts by many government agencies contributed to translating the vision into reality.
Moving up the value chain in industrialization
Industrialisation has successfully transformed Singapore from a third-world country, where most parts of the island were still fishing villages when gaining independence, to a first-world country today.
Singapore has undergone several phases of industrial transformation, starting with the establishment of Jurong Industrial Estate in the 1960s for labor-intensive industries, moving up the value chain with skill-intensive industries in the 1970s, and capital-intensive industries, such as chemicals, petrochemical, and wafer fabrication in the 1980s.
After experiencing the first economic recession in 1985, the strategy was to scale up further on the value chain, with the shift from low-skilled labor industries to those requiring skilled workers for high-technology industries in the 1990s – 2000s. The Technopreneurship 21 (T21) programme was launched in 1999 and headed by the National Science and Technology Board (NSTB), which was now the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), in 2001.
Like how Boston has reinvented itself from a seaport and a manufacturing city and now as a knowledge city with the aggregation of high-skill human capital, Singapore is also reinventing itself to become a magnet of high-skill human capital in technology, professional services, and higher education that will provide an impetus to drive economic growth.
The Birth of One North – A nexus for research and entrepreneurship
“One North,” reflecting Singapore’s geographic location that is one degree North of the equator, is a 200-ha development strategically located along the technology corridor in the Southwest of Singapore, anchored by the National University of Singapore (NUS), the Singapore Science Park, the National University Hospital, and other tertiary institutions. The area is well connected by two MRT lines and is served by one north and Buona Vista MRT Stations.
The four input factors underpinning the rapid rise of One North, which is still a work in progress, comprise capital, labour, entrepreneurship, and land. However, these inputs, if put together like in other industrial developments, would not have yielded the same results. What has made the difference in One North’s development?
First, we start with examining the land, which is usually the residual of a production function. In Singapore, land resources are scarce and should be optimised to generate the highest and best value. One North is not just an extension to the Singapore Science Parks I, II and III located in the North Bouna Vista area.
When JTC Corporation was appointed as the master developer for the project, it employed the late renowned architect Zaha Hadid in 2001, after a global design competition, to develop the master plan for the area. One North consists of three R&D clusters, namely “Biopolis,” “Fusionopolis,” and “Mediapolis,” which are planned to house firms in biomedical sciences, information and communications, and media industries, respectively. The Biopolis development was the first cluster to be built in 2001.
Zaha Hadid’s concept pushed the conventional planning guidelines, where she planned to have buildings of different heights clustering close to each other and connected both at the street level and via sky bridges. The idea is to promote collaborations and sharing of laboratory facilities and resources by firms located near each other. Knowledge spillovers and peer learning in a close-knit research community are essential for sparking innovation and fostering new ideas.
Unlike the park-liked planning in other Science and Business Parks, where buildings are spaced far apart, the new breed of research talents will prefer to combine “work-live-play-learn” functions all in one location, which is the concept behind One North.
Second, money and talent are two key input factors in the development of research and knowledge parks. R&D and innovation are highly competitive and heavily reliant on talents with the right skills, which are highly scarce globally.
Unlike investments in precision and sophisticated plants and machinery that could instantly boost productivity in the engineering and manufacturing sectors, investing in top-class laboratories and infrastructure alone will not yield incremental outputs in the R&D and innovation sectors unless the right talents can be recruited to use the facilities to invent new products and discover new knowledge.
Why will scientists and professors from top research institutions want to move to Singapore? Other than the physical environment, bringing top-notch scientists and professors to Singapore to inspire and mentor home-grown scientists is indispensable to creating a vibrant and sustainable research ecosystem in One North. The “whales” strategy was explained by the former A*STAR Chairman, Mr Philip Yeo, in his article “(And they call it) guppy love – A Singapore agency has been recruiting and raising young scientists to swim with the ‘whales’” published in Nature in 2017.
Third, technopreneurship and entrepreneurship are the last but not the least important input factors in the R&D sector. R&D is not just a knowledge-intensive industry that requires years of accumulation and creation of knowledge. R&D investments are substantial yet highly uncertain and risky. No one will be able to predict R&D outcomes upfront. Rationale businessmen and investors will not invest in R&D projects based purely on financial consideration, i.e., most R&D projects will not generate positive “net present value” when conceived on the drawing board.
Importance of “dare to fail” spirit
Public agencies could align interests and partially share investment risks with businesses and investors by jointly investing in R&D projects. Research seed funding could be provided to encourage early R&D developments, which attract funding sequentially from other private companies for subsequent stages of R&D processes. Based on the World Bank Statistics, the R&D Expenditure to GDP ratio of Singapore was only 2.16%, which was lower than the World average of 2.49% and far behind the R&D expenditures of 5.7% and 4.8% in Israel and the Republic of Korea.
The spirit of “dare to fail” should also be cultivated and encouraged among young technopreneurs and entrepreneurs in Singapore, which is equally important as attracting large multinational corporations to set up bases in Singapore. Young people should be agile enough to learn and bounce back from setbacks in experimentation and learning before discovering breakthroughs and innovations.
The Launchpad @ One North, started with “Block 71”, which was a former flatted factory in the Ayer Rajah area converted by JTC to provide affordable space to incubate startups. Budding researchers from nearby academic institutions, such as NUS, will be able to join the R&D ecosystem and network, where they can meet other startup founders, angel funders and investors to help commercialize new ideas and products.
“Picking the winner” is important in winning the R&D race in a highly intense and competitive world.
How do we make the small little “red dot” shine in the global hub? The smallness is not the constraint, but the lack of risk-taking “spirit” will limit its success.