Ethos Issue 5, Nov 2008

Singapore as Innovation Nation
Conversation with John Kao

Ethos speaks to innovation thought leader John Kao who argues that innovative capacity can and should be cultivated as a national strategy.

What does it mean for a nation or a country to be innovative? Can a nation’s overall innovative capacity be usefully determined?
I think we’re still at an early stage in terms of trying to measure the innovation capability of countries. Some rankings of national innovation capacity exist, which I think are inadequate. The tendency is to count objective factors such as patents, advanced degrees and so on.

I would look at other factors, based upon my assumption of how innovation works—which is that people with disruptive ideas, business models and insight often come from a society that is more diverse and stresses on thinking at the edges of disciplines. I would look for people with inter-disciplinary backgrounds and the level of diversity and tolerance in the society they come from, which suggests a culture that supports innovation.

Societies that will succeed are those which have done great job of cultivating home-grown talent through education and creation of opportunities, or have welcomed that sort of talent from abroad. They would have cultural sensitivity and the intelligence to build bridges across social and cultural boundaries. Also, they would have the money, the managerial talent and the will to invest in the future, such as in the form of basic and applied research and infrastructure.

This kind of societies is likely to better appreciate and reap the fruits of innovation on a worldwide basis. I think you’ll see small societies that are very sophisticated when it comes to innovation begin to pull away from the pack and develop disproportionate wealth creation. My bet is that these communities would include Singapore, Finland and the San Francisco Bay area.

What are the key barriers to a nation’s innovative capacity?
One of the dilemmas of innovation is that when you are on top of the game, you have to, in some respects, throw away what you know and take one or two steps back, in order to see what the next best step is.

The most important but subtle barriers are mindset, ethos and values. If you have on paper the desire to carry out innovation in a big way but the cultural DNA is one of avoiding risks or valuing smooth and efficient career progression, you’re not going to change people’s behaviour. Of course, every society has its own unique set of psychological barriers.

I think one of the reasons why you don’t seem more entrepreneurial in Singapore—even though there are plenty of people who are capable of being entrepreneurs—is because while there is a rewarding upside of being successful in a public sector or private sector track, the downside is also huge, compared to many other societies. In Silicon Valley, the saying is: if you haven’t gone bankrupt at least a couple of times, you’re not working hard enough. In Singapore, if you have business trouble, everybody knows about it; it is considered bad, a game-ender. I think this mindset will create an interesting cognitive dissonance for Singapore as it aspires towards becoming a centre for innovation, a talent magnet and a global city.

You could also argue that the problem in many otherwise well-run countries is the absence of a big national idea beyond simply trying to maintain a standard of living. Look at great companies—they are not about creating shareholder value exclusively. Someone said a long time ago that great companies make meaning.¹ They create value in the realm of intangibles that make life worth living. And if you think about how hard innovation is to practise, there has to be a reason why you would get out of bed in the morning to engage with those kinds of challenges.

For me, an innovation nation is a country that mobilises the creativity of its people for the purpose of addressing large-scale complex challenges and trying to make the situation of humanity better. So it isn’t about just making new stuff to make money but about aligning with an important national purpose.

However, a national idea has a lot of subtleties. You can’t just cook one up and sell it like a brand because it has to have a certain authenticity. On the other hand, without some degree of attention on the part of leadership to articulate the national narrative and ensure that there are stewards and catalysts for that process, innovation is not going to happen—simply having millions of people think about it isn’t going to generate the necessary results. A national character tends to be the result of complicated social, historical, emotional and cultural factors. At any given moment in history, you need leadership to crystallise those factors into a national purpose.

Why is it important for a country to have a coordinated national strategy for innovation, instead of allowing it to emerge spontaneously?
A society that only relies on the bubbling up of innovation from the ground is going to be at a disadvantage for two reasons. First, a government’s policies are significant enablers of national innovation. A government nurtures the roots of the innovation economy through its education policy. Fiscal, regulatory and investment policies encourage certain kinds of entrepreneurial behaviour. Governments may also sponsor dual-use technologies, where there is a national security and a commercial or broader application.

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