UNESCO SCIENCE REPORT

Southeast Asia and Oceania
creation of start-up companies; and to encourage universities
and polytechnics to pursue academic entrepreneurship and
transform the results of their R&D into commercial products.
Between 2008 and 2012, S$ 4.4 billion (circa US$ 3.2 billion)
was allocated under NFIE to fund:
n the establishment of university enterprise boards;
n an innovation and capability vouchers scheme (Box 27.3);
n early-stage venture funding (Box 27.3);
n proof-of-concept grants (Box 27.3);
n a disruptive innovation incubator (Box 27.3);
n a technology incubation scheme (Box 27.3);
n incentives for global entrepreneurial executives to move to
Singapore (Box 27.3);
n translational R&D grants for polytechnics to help take
research to market;
n national intellectual property principles for publicly funded
R&D; and
n the creation of innovation and enterprise institutes.
The National Research Foundation works in tandem with NFIE
to provide funding for collaborative innovation (Box 27.3).
In parallel, innovation and enterprise institutes have been
established to provide an organizational context in which
to nurture partnerships and develop funding proposals;
that hosted by Singapore Management University, for
instance, provides a forum where academics and commercial
enterprises can meet. Potential partners can receive guidance
from the institute when seeking grants from the National
Research Foundation to develop business concepts and seed
grants for early-stage development.
The government agency A*STAR has been sponsoring a new
initiative for a Smart Nation since November 2014. The aim
is to develop new partnerships across the public and private
sectors, with a view to strengthening Singapore’s capabilities
in cybersecurity, energy and transport, in order to ‘green’
the country and improve public services. In 2015, A*STAR’s
Institute for Infocomm Research signed an agreement with
IBM for the creation of innovative solutions in the areas of
big data and analytics, cybersecurity and urban mobility as
a contribution to the Smart Nation initiative. In December
2014, the minister in charge of the Smart Nation initiative,
Vivian Balakrishnan, had explained 6 the rationale behind the
scheme at the opening of the Singapore Maker Festival. The
current shift from mass production to mass customization
of technology such as mobile phones, combined with
lower prices for hardware, the generalization of sensors and
easy connectivity, had placed data and innovation at an
individual’s fingertips, she said. The minister undertook to
6. See: www.mewr.gov.sg/news
Figure 27.10: Trends in GERD in Singapore, 2002–2012
3.0
2.5
GERD/GDP ratio
BERD/GDP ratio
2.62
2.34
GERD/GDP (%)
2.0
2.07
2.03
2.10
2.16
2.13
1.88
2.16
2.01
2.16
2.02
1.5
1.27
1.23
1.34
1.43
1.40
1.56
1.33
1.22
1.34
1.23
1.0
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Chapter 27
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, June 2015
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