Singapore SME Innovation Support Schemes - PRO INNO Europe

equip them with entrepreneurial mindset and skills. This programme gave a grant of
maximum S$50,000 (€30,000) per student to start a business venture. The grant had to
be matched S$1 from the business venture itself and S$1 from the student’s school. Although
the original programme had a budget of $25 million for 5 years, the take-up on
the programme was relatively low and by the end of the programme in 2010 only $1.76
million had been paid out. Nevertheless the programme supported 48 student ventures,
and 122 students. 13 of these ventures were still in business, with a combined total of
94 employees and greater than $10 million revenues.
SPRING explains the lack of take up of the scheme as been largely due to the reluctance
of the schools to fund the ventures, as this was not part of their core activities. Moreover
although the programme supplied funding to student entrepreneurs it did not focus
enough on igniting the initial interest in entrepreneurship. The programme was redesigned
in 2008, so as to incorporate more promotion, awareness raising and mentoring
initiatives in addition to the funding. This resulted in an emphasis on four different aspects,
namely, Initiation to Entrepreneurship, Development of Ideas, Commercialisation
of ideas, all underpinned by a National Promotion Effort. SPRING either directly runs or
sponsors programmes which deal with all these aspects of youth entrepreneurship.
For example, the Yes!Schools programme (see section 3.1.1), which is directly administered
by SPRING, provides funding and mentoring to schools to run entrepreneurship
education programmes. This is an example of a programme aimed at introducing students
to entrepreneurship though education. An example of a programme aimed at the
development of entrepreneurial ideas is the Ideas.inc. Business Challenge which is run
by Nanyang Technical University, but sponsored by SPRING Singapore, which provides
funding and mentoring to turn an idea into a business (see section 3.1.2). The
YES!Startups programme, run by SPRING (see section 3.1.3) then provides the funding
to actually support students to start a business. These programmes are all complemented
by a national promotion effort.
3.1.1 Young Entrepreneurs Scheme for Schools: Yes!Schools
The YES!Schools is a relatively new scheme, started in October 2008 which provides
schools with grants of up to $100,000 to put in place a comprehensive structured entrepreneurship
learning programme. Schools can apply for support to design entrepreneurship
training programmes all the way from primary schools (9 – 12 year olds) to
universities. There are different learning outcomes defined and expected from the programmes
in the different age groups and it is expected that the programmes adopt a holistic
approach, which cover all aspects of entrepreneurship (e.g. character development,
relationship managements, and business and technical skills).
YES!Schools is available to polytechnics, institutes of technical education, junior colleges,
centralised institutes and secondary schools. Schools submit their project proposals to
SPRING, who evaluate the proposals based on aspects such as Entrepreneurship and
innovative elements, Holistic approach, Hands-on (experiential) learning component,
Reach of project, and the use of Mentors.
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