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.