Insights from Mr Jonathan Kua, Director, New Businesses

Jonathan introducing the underlying principles driving EDB's new ventures.

"Animated" is the best word that we can find to describe Jonathan, but that is far from doing justice to the exciting session he gave in the morning. After giving the contestants a glimpse of Singapore's development so far and the strategies adopted to achieve them, Jonathan posed the question "what then lies ahead for Singapore". He then went on to discuss the rising trends globally, and how some seemingly irrelevant industries might be rather significant for Singapore. 

Classification of industries?

Jonathan then moved on to his niche area of new businesses, teasing the contestants about the potential areas that the teams can consider. As much as the presentation was about prospective businesses that Singapore can hope to attract, it was about strategies to select and filter businesses that Singapore can and should attract. One would never expect Singapore to have competitive edges in agriculture and space systems. However, we do have comparative advantages in the upstream processes of those industries. A huge takeaway for all the contestants.

Questions anyone?

The session was certainly an interactive one with the contestants posing questions that were nothing less than challenging. Nigel (one of the participants) engaged Jonathan in a discussion about the extent of government direction in industrial policies, and Jonathan commented on the inadequacy of pure laissez faire industrial planning in some countries, and the successful endeavours made by Singapore. Chi Ling (another participant) then asked about the potential of attracting "entertainment talent management" businesses into Singapore. While Jonathan joked about the difficulty of dealing with these complex businesses, he noted such potential and cited Singapore's latent capacity for such industries.

Buck up contestants! Jonathan spelt out high expectations for the contestants, and does anticipate outstanding ideas from them. If this isn't a good wake up call, then what is?