Opening Address by SMS Tan Kiat How at A5X

Mr Heng Swee Keat, Chairman, National Research Foundation

Professor Tan Eng Chye, President of NUS,

Excellencies and members of the diplomatic corps

Start-up founders, colleagues and friends

I would like to thank Professor Tan for the thoughtful reflection on entrepreneurship. Congratulations to NUS Enterprise on your 25th anniversary. I was fortunate to be around when it was first formed. I have seen very exciting and impactful projects coming from NUS Enterprise. I am sure the next 25 years will be equally, if not, more exciting!  

Professor Tan reminded us of the building blocks for innovation coming together — talent meeting opportunity, research meeting real-world needs, capital meeting conviction, and local ideas finding their way to global markets.

I think that is exactly the right place to start when we think about Singapore’s next phase.

AI is changing not just technology, but the economics of innovation. Intelligence is becoming more capable, more accessible and more abundant.

So what becomes scarce, and therefore valuable?

Increasingly, it is not intelligence itself. It is the things around it: judgement and domain expertise, trusted data, talented people, real customers, capital, and importantly, the ability to bring all these together.

For Singapore, that is important. We cannot compete with the largest economies on scale. Our opportunity is to become exceptionally good at connecting these strengths and turning new ideas into real-world impact.

That means shortening the journey from discovery to application, from application to enterprise, and from enterprise to global scale.

Singapore has invested steadily in research, universities and talent. But excellent research does not automatically become economic or social value.

Universities therefore have a role beyond teaching and research. They can bring researchers together with entrepreneurs, engineers with domain experts, and ideas with real-world problems.