If you are interested in social enterprises, impact investing, start-ups, Asia, empowerment, and stories of unreasonable people committed to make the world a better place, then you may decide to read on.


I will explore the intersection of many different worlds that typically don’t intersect. At this intersection where traditional finance meets non-profit, start-up meets government, Silicon Valley meets Dhaka, there is a new type of ecosystem being built. I have found beauty in such contrasts, where in one conference room, the lady to my left may be a Goldman Sachs executive, to my right, an Indian market weaver, across the table, a member of the Singapore ministry.


This all occurs in a city called Singapore, which I have found to be quite a surprising intersection of many different worlds itself. Often referred to as the “benevolent dictatorship”, one might wonder whether Singapore might just be the ideal place to build a “benevolent capital markets”, a capital markets organized for the purpose of doing good.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Incubation in Singapore

What is the role for incubation in Singapore?

Stemming from a fascinating discussion with an American venture capitalist involved in incubation in Singapore, I learned about the 4 stools of Singapore’s growth model: Banking, Petroleum, Resorts, and Manufacturing.

As manufacturing declined (e.g., 80% of the world’s disk drives used to be from Singapore, and now that figure is close to zero), there was a need to shift the economy from skills based to knowledge based. One of the approaches embraced by the government has been building and developing incubators in Singapore.

The government has modeled the strategy after the approach in Israel, which has made Israel the second-best Silicon Valley. There are now 7 incubators in Singapore.
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