Ethos Issue 7, Jan 2010

Singapore: The Apple of Nations— A Conversation with Peter Schwartz
Featuring MR PETER SCHWARTZ, Futurist and cofounder of Global Business Network;
MS QUAH LEY HOON, former Director, National Population Secretariat, Prime Minister’s Office;
MR KWEK MEAN LUCK, Deputy Secretary (Industry), Ministry of Trade and Industry (then Director, Industry Division)

One emerging issue we have identified is the possibility of a sixties-style youth revival in Asia that will challenge the establishment. We see signs of this in China and India. The next generation in Singapore and in Asia could turn out to be very rebellious and progressively stranger.

QUAH: There are home-grown pockets of creativity in Singapore, some of whom have done well around the world. How can we retain, nurture and develop our own distinctive creative talent and innovation, going forward?

SCHWARTZ: You already have the scientists and the engineers, there’s no question. The issue is whether you have the next layer of marketing and design— this is where creative culture and the question of tolerance and diversity come into play.

There is also a sense that Singapore is still run with a corporate mentality: top-down, not bottom-up and not highly participatory. There is still energy at the top, but there is a big thick middle that has become conservative, bureaucratic and risk averse, because all the incentives are against rocking the boat. They play by the rules and enforce the rules, and make it hard for anyone at the bottom to find their way or contribute. The high quality of governance and an honest system also means things sometimes get slowed down. More people, more rules, more density leads to the accumulation of a dense fibre of constraint. At the same time, because you have done well, you now have a lot of talent and capability looking for something to do and wanting to make a difference, in a system that already works extremely well. This is a problem of success, not failure. Many big companies have exactly the
same issues.

The challenge is to bring back some of the bright young talent who see exciting things happening around the world, and do not have the patience to plod through the bureaucracy for twenty years to get things done. So you need to open up the dense middle and give the bottom, particularly young people, an opportunity to participate.

One idea is to create a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-like outfit to allow for innovation outside the usual stream, where you can experiment and be allowed to fail, which is critical. Create a mini ministry to conduct experiments in governance: How would we run things differently? How would we organise things differently? If you were to invent Singapore today, what would you do? How would you build it? This could be used as a nucleus for innovation elsewhere.

EDITOR: Does it make sense for Singapore to sponsor something like the Ansari X Prize,¹ where we attract innovative solutions to tricky problems? The ideas may not come from us but they come to us because we’re the ones who issue the challenge.

SCHWARTZ: It’s a good idea and could lead to something. I’m on the board of the Auto X Prize and it’s a powerful mechanism to stimulate creativity.

Another useful idea is the MacArthur Fellows Program,² which are commonly called the Genius Awards. Every year, a secret committee picks 20 to 30 talented individuals who exhibit unusual creativity relatively early in their career, although some are as late as 50, and gives them US$100,000 a year for five years, with no strings attached. Over 800 Fellows have been named since 1981; interestingly enough, there is no common trend in terms of their background or formative environment. The impact of this award has been disproportionately large, in terms of its second order effect and on the creative culture. Singapore could set up something like this award for its own citizens as a low-cost tool to draw out talent.

The ETHOS Roundtable was hosted by Alvin Pang, Editor of ETHOS, in July 2009. Peter Schwartz was in Singapore for a monthlong sabbatical, during which he delivered a New Insights Lecture on "Emerging Strategic Issues and Wild Cards" at the Civil Service College and conducted a number of workshops for scenario planners in the Public Service.

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