Lee Kuan Yew on entrepreneurship

Good news for entrepreneurs

Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew may not be a business man, but he is certainly a man who means business. Whenever he talks about the need to do something - be it turn Singapore into a Garden City or have graduate mothers produce more babies – the full force of the government machinery will be mobilised to try and make it happen.

Mr Lee's recent speech about nourishing entrepreneurship is therefore good news for all entrepreneurs and budding entrepreneurs.

He did not give details about how the government plans to do this, but no matter. Those details have been coming out in bits and pieces in recent months in the form of various schemes to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

More help schemes can be expected in this year's budget, and when the Economic Review Committee presents its findings and recommendations. Business owners can look forward to substantial tax and regulatory changes that will make like a whole lot easier, and hopefully more profitable, for them.

Mr Lee painted the big picture. He spoke about creating a culture where parents, relatives and friends would not discourage anyone from going into business. He spoke about encouraging all types of people to go into all types of businesses.

This is good. Because it is really hard to predict who would succeed and who wouldn't, hard to predict which products, even which industry, would be the next big wave of the future. In today's ever changing, ever uncertain world, it is tough to be in the business of predicting trends and picking winners.

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Richest man on earth

Who would have predicted, for example, that a college drop-out named Bill Gates would build a software empire that makes him the richest man on earth?

When this writer was at university, a classmate called Foo Jong Long dropped out in second year. None of us thought he would become better known as Dennis Foo, aka "Mr Europa" who built the Europa chain of pubs and clubs, and subsequently, become the infamous "Mr Raffles Town Club".

In the news some months back was Thing Siek Food Industry. A major producer of seafood snacks with $40 million annual turnover. Could anyone have predicted this 30 years ago when the company's founder, Lim Boon Chay, was at the time selling fishballs from a push cart?

Shortly after Mr Lee's speeh, the newspapers featured one Mr Ow Chio Kiat, who owns a Rolls-Royce, a Ferari, a Porsche and five BMWs, along with several posh homes and a chain of hotels. Again, could anyone have foreseen this in the 1960s when a teenage Ow was plying tongkangs (bumboats) by the Singapore River?

These, and lots more similar examples, point to the one major flaw in Mr Lee's exposition on entrepreneurship.

He focussed largely on "Singapore's best and brightest" - the people who do well in school, win scholarships and go on to hold top posts in civil service and the government.

Mr Lee seems to think that they would make successful entrepreneurs if they were released from their scholarship bonds.

Would scholars make good businessmen? Maybe. Maybe not. The fact that some of them proved capable I running government-linked companies is besides the point. They do so with an unfair advantage when they hold (or previously held) senior positions in government that give them both influence and information access. Moreover, they still do their jobs as employees, not as risk takers.

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Other talents

Risk taking in business is often not logical. More entrepreneurs seem to succeed through gut feelings than through mental analysis, through passion and determination than through academic study, through rising again and again from failure than through (logically) viewing failure as a sign to give up.

To create a culture that encourages entrepreneurship, we - and that includes Mr Lee and his scholars in government - need to break away from our fixation with academic talent. For it is but one of the many types of talents.

There is also talent for creativity, for solving problems, recognising potential, selling, buying, trouble-shooting, criticism, expression, motivation, human relationships (EQ as opposed to IQ) and so on.

The talent for doing business would include several of the above. Each and every type of talent contributes to the well-being and success of society.