Singapore SME Innovation Support Schemes - PRO INNO Europe

The service has a “For the Customer, By the Customer” attitude with a “no wrong door”
mindset driving the interaction with customers. Great care was taken from the outset to
write the website in a language which was simple, concise and easy to understand from
the SME’s perspective, i.e. to present the information in a way in which SMEs might relate
to as opposed to way in which it might be structured within an agency. When putting
the portal together the top concerns and needs of SMEs were gathered through telephone
surveys, focus groups and interviews with more than 300 SMEs. This survey
was initiated in 2004 and the site was launched in 2006. As a result the organisation of
the information is based on what SMEs want, rather than an agency-specific approach.
4 A*Star SME Support Schemes
A*Star is Singapore’s main government agency, with the role of fostering and conducting
world class research which is industrially relevant. A*Star operates 14 research institutes,
7 in the biomedical area under the Biomedical Research Council (BMRC) and 7 in
Science and Engineering under the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC).
Under the five year plan, A*Star has a budget of approximately S$6.4 billion (over the
course of the 5 years). In terms of staff A*Star has a “community” of 4,085; of which 223
work in A*STAR headquarters and the other 3,862 consist of scientists and researchers,
technical and non-technical staff, and industry development and commercialization
staff.
Over the past 10 year A*Star has had very significant capital investment in the building
of two research hubs, Biopolis for the Biomedical Research and Fusionopolis for the Science
and Engineering hub which are located 600 metres apart. These campuses house
the A*Star Research Institutes and consortia, co-located with private sector research
labs and companies. The idea is that the public and private sector labs can thus share
infrastructure such as equipment, core scientific services and conference facilities. The
co-location of the research institutes with industry and in adjacent campuses has been
planned with the concept of spurring interdisciplinary research and collaboration between
researchers and industry.
A*Star has a very strong emphasis on supporting and interacting with industry as part of
its core mission. This interaction takes the form of setting-up and participating in Consortia
typically aimed as pre-competitive research, joint one to one R&D collaborations
with industry, provision of lab space within the research institutes and providing technology
and Business incubation. The latter is handled though Exploit Technologies, the
marketing and commercialisation arm of A*Star, described further below. In 2009
A*Star participated in 1200 industry projects and had approximately S$166 million
(€100 million) in industry funding. A*Star has also been instrumental in attracting and
setting up large scale industry collaboration projects such as the A*Star Aerospace Programme
or Roche’s Translational Medicine Hub. These collaborations bring together
large industry partners, A*STAR’s research institutes and local SMEs in a consortium to
collaborate on pre-competitive projects.
A*Star also places a considerable emphasis on both attracting overseas research talent
and on placing Singapore students in short term research placements overseas, with
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