AsianScientist (Mar. 23, 2016) – When the Singapore government set out its most recent five-year Research, Innovation and Enterprise Plan (RIE2020) in January 2016, it laid down new roads over which it hoped research would travel faster and more deeply into industry.
The new spend on commercialization was significant. Of RIE2020’s S$19 billion budget, which represents an 18 percent jump from the previous five-year budget, about S$3.3 billion, or 17 percent, was devoted to innovation and enterprise.
This was notable when held against the S$3.3 billion for economic-led advanced manufacturing and engineering research, S$2.8 billion for academic research, and S$2.5 billion devoted to discovery-led, ‘white-space’ research.
A singular pursuit of innovation
Amongst the institutions in Singapore now dedicated to this aim is the Innovation Centre of SMART. The Centre funds scientists to pursue market-driven research and creates programs to accelerate the commercialization of their innovations, through advice such as intellectual property and ‘go-to-market’ strategies, and through building connections with investors, entrepreneurs and the business community.
Howard Califano, director of the SMART Innovation Centre, is a first-hand witness to progress so far, having arrived in Singapore from the United States not long after Singapore launched its first national research and development plan in 1998, to head Johns Hopkins Singapore and the Johns Hopkins-National University Hospital International Medical Center. Since then, he has taken on positions such as consulting director of biomedical sciences investor Bio*One Capital, and director and CEO of multiple companies in the US and Asia.
Having observed developments over the previous five-year roadmaps, Califano believes the new phase of commercialization that began in 2011 is “progressing nicely,” pointing out that Singapore has proved it can create well-funded institutions that produce world-class research.
“The commercialization of Information communications technology (ICT) has done extremely well,” Califano notes. “While other areas like deep science and the medical space have not done quite as well; but, their momentum is beginning to change.”
The task of building a mature commercialization environment is only just getting started, he says.
“The question now is how do you develop an entire ecosystem, which can harvest and monetize these discoveries. The latest five-year phase will help institutions do this.”
Noting that the commercialization process is only five years old, Califano hopes that the next five years will see the development of an ecosystem that can mature into one with the depth of Boston, hometown to the hallowed Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its various spinoff and startup companies.
Boston’s success, he says, rests on the experienced community of people who have gone through many cycles of b