Closing Speech at MCI Insights Conference by PS Yong Ying I

First, my job really is to say thank you to all of you - those who are here, physically, as well as those who are participating virtually - for being here. I hope that for those who are here, despite the inconveniences imposed by COVID-19, you have found this format an interesting one, and you are glad to be out and about again.

I wanted to express my appreciation to all the people who have taken part in our Insights Conference. I am told we have 500 participants here today, both physically here as well as joining us virtually. Our earlier conferences had 180 participants. I just want to mention briefly the participants -  IMDA and NLB’s Board of Directors, advisory panels and committees, the labour movement, SG Tech Council Members, the many companies who support our SG:Digital friends, our various training and innovation programmes, our Singapore Fund for Digital Readiness, Silver Infocomm Wellness Ambassadors, members of the Asia Video Industry Association, amongst others. Thank you all for your participation. Your support has every meaning to us and we are really glad that you are here.

Let me share very briefly, four things I thought we definitely agreed on, and then I will share four of my insights.

What I think we agreed on - I think we agree that digitalisation has hit home. Everyone understands Internet access today, not least because of work from home, and the need to use Trace Together and Safe Entry to go about. There has been a massive spurt in Singapore and I think around the world on digital services during our Circuit Breaker and what the rest of the world called “lockdown”. My minister said briefly - “from nice to do, good to do, to must do”. And I think just about every restaurant, home-based baker, and micro-retailer now participates in online sales and online delivery. So many friends and my own mother told me that they were joining in last week’s 11:11 sales. I think the world has changed.

Second, I think Singapore has laid strong foundations for digital to take off. Digitally-mature sectors like financial services, professional services, all adjusted quite smoothly to remote working. For that matter, our international legal arbitrations just went online. Nothing changed. Life just carried on. Our entire education system, from primary school all the way to universities, pivoted online. This did not happen in a crisis. Strong foundations have been laid which allowed this happened. On the Government’s part, we put in the connectivity infrastructure, we systematically invested in enabling enterprises, we helped people go online.

What is the next point, having laid the foundations having agreed digital is hit home? It is now about executing well. We can have good ideas. We can want to do it. But making it happen is different. Many enterprises have told us they want to go digital, but they do not know how. Many of us here who work in the sector have a lot of exciting work ahead to help companies tackle the execution challenges.

The fourth thing I think we all agreed on is that we can achieve much more if we work together. Singapore’s weakness and Singapore’s strength is that we are small. One of the things about being small is that we sometimes say we can bring the whole system into one room. I think we have maybe brought a very big part of the system into today’s conference. If we can do integrated solutioning across the whole value chain, I think Singapore can turn that into a stronger competitive advantage in the digital world.

Now let me share a few thoughts about my own insights.

One insight was that it is important to have ambition and to seize international opportunities. I was very struck by the speakers today as well as in our earlier pre-conference panels about Singapore’s ability to compete globally. They were very optimistic. I welcome their optimism and ambition. But everybody agreed that it cannot be business as usual. Tech offers totally new business models and new opportunities. Tech bifurcation is expected to continue. It will realign supply chains.

Yesterday, our leaders signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) - something that has been worked on for over 10 years. And you know, it is wonderful that has finally happened. But all this show that business models are changing. But then it also tells us we can create new opportunities. I was thinking to myself, as our SMEs sell online, they learn now that they can actually sell to us and deliver to us online in Circuit Breaker - why limit ourselves to only Singapore? If Lim Chee Guan Bak Kwa can now deliver to me, why can’t they deliver to Malaysia, or the world? They vacuum pack.

So, it is about ambition. It is about mindset. COVID-19 and the deep recession have actually generated a huge reset for us and for the world. But this is where we must not be complacent, because many other countries are getting it. If the ASEAN Summit can happen totally virtually online,  chaired by Vietnam, it shows that many countries who have digital access can potentially outpace Singapore in terms of where we have been competitively. So we have to move fast. Now Southeast Asia, which we live in the middle of, is one of the world’s most attractive growth markets. It has a rising middle class and rising incomes. Singapore companies should aspire to be regional players to tap on the market demand opportunities in the region. If they can reach Southeast Asia, they can then think about reaching further – America or Africa. But in all cases, our people must learn about what these markets need. It is not a question of saying  we can go global, but what do these customers want?

Our companies here have said, our people, our talent, must spend time overseas to learn about regional perspectives, to be exposed to diverse working cultures. They say it is about talent.  Mr Oliver Tan, CEO of ViSenze said, “My company now works remotely. I use global AI talent from many countries to support me.” Mr Karl Mak, CEO of the HEPMIL Media Group said, “I’ve been working with independent content creators across Southeast Asia, to sell them content to other parts of the region. They are not even in Singapore.” Many of our people have said, our talent is now much more internationally oriented than they used to be. They can also take part in this global talent business. Many of our panellists expressed hope that this crisis will create a new generation of entrepreneurs who are resilient, adaptable, innovative, and they will have the business and tech know-how to build the next generation of unicorns. That was one insight about ambition and seizing international opportunities.

A second insight - I talked about together bringing the system into one room. I think we can do well if we learn to leverage our ecosystem and innovation capabilities. I think this can be our strength. The Government is working on the building of the ecosystem with regulation standards. My Minister talked about Tan Chong Meng and Tan Chin Hwee leading the common data infrastructure for the trade and logistics sector. If companies decide that they will get on board this, they will work together then they can jointly share in the benefits. But they have to choose to come on board.

So I do hope that Singapore being the size it is, we will be able to get members of the ecosystem to choose to come together. Enterprises could do more to take advantage of the knowledge generation capabilities Singapore’s already built. We have research institutes and institutes of higher learning. If you could partner these institutes to translate your research into commercial products and services, we will generate new value. Mr Russell Tham of Temasek was talking earlier that as technology accelerates, he believes that we can capture value from AI and data will become more commercially viable. Dr Ayesha Khanna emphasised the need to have bold leadership and clear strategies in order to capture this value. Some others spoke about enterprises themselves needing to strengthen the ops-tech capability. There may be these technical capabilities but operational managers also  need to learn how to work with technologists so that they can translate the technology into the actual products and services.

Ms Tham Loke Kheng, CEO of Mediacorp was sharing how Mediacorp has leveraged AR storytelling and data analytics to improve audience interaction. She was sharing with me how Mediacorp has been using AI to quickly recast the news from the mainstream TV news to other platforms. AI will cast it very quickly within minutes to formats that work for YouTube, their Channel NewsAsia app and Instagram, and so on and so forth. Enterprises can partner tech companies to do this faster, rather than trying to build it all in-house. Mr Aaron Wong, CEO of PayPal Singapore, talked about how SMEs use of digital payments and platforms have helped them access international customers much faster. Mr Zhou Junjie of Shopee shared how Shopee’s livestream features can help offline businesses engage customers interactively, through virtual interactive marketing. So you can try your clothes on virtually without actually going to the store. These are new capabilities that what we call normal physical businesses are not going to be able to do quickly. But by working with tech partners, you are able to move faster.

Third insight from me – It is about people. We have to develop a digitally-savvy workforce. We also have to develop a digitally-savvy society. There have been many insights shared about how to upskill our workforce and bring everybody in society on board. But we did agree because we are reaching so many people, it cannot be one size fits all. It needs all of us to cover this canvas. Because we have to build expert tech specialists. We have to build skilled tech professionals of all types. We have to have tech-lite roles. We have to have corporate leaders and management teams learn ops-tech. We have to reach the big companies all the way down to the micro-enterprises. We have to bring on board the seniors and the vulnerable groups. We cannot just do this like we approach it as a technical issue. We cannot say well, we run the TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) training programmes or technical programmes and hey, presto, it will work.

Many people here – the panel that just finished – Mr Martin Chee and Ms Teo Lay Lim - also spoke about how we need empathy and understanding of soft skills, in order to reach the people we are trying to teach and to help seniors effectively. Mr James Tan, the CEO of Touch was talking about the importance of patience, and quality of physical engagement. It is not just a matter of the head, it is a matter of hands and heart as well. Minister Iswaran  talked about the acronym that the earlier panels had been talking about – that TECH stands for Together, Educate, Contribute with Heart. I quite like that.

My fourth and last insight is - it takes partnerships and trust. I think success in implementing the solutions we discussed today requires close partnership between all of us - industry, community partners, and the Government. None of us can do it alone. We are stronger together. These partnerships must be built on mutual trust. Trust that all of us are looking at issues increasingly with a shared perspective. That we understand how others see the issues, not just how we see it originally. That  we trust each other by working together, by helping each other overcome difficult challenges. And gradually we appreciate that we’re all on the same side.

Let me end this closing with a reiteration of a couple of points that Minister Iswaran mentioned very briefly. Today’s conference is the Insights Conference, so I am going to summarise the conclusions in a number of  “I’s”.

The first “I” is Innovation and Ideation. Enterprises can and should accelerate the innovation by leveraging IP from our Research Institutes (RIs) and Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs), from leveraging data. Because competition in the region is accelerating, we cannot stand still. 

The second is International. Our local enterprises should go international and we need to have the ambition to do this and aspire to break boundaries.

The third “I” is Informed Individuals. We really need to bring the whole of Singapore together to embrace lifelong learning as a way of life. We must have an informed citizenry that can make use of the opportunities of the digital age, while staying safe from cyber threats and misinformation.

The fourth “I” is Inclusion. The Government has a strong commitment to build an inclusive society that no one will be left behind. We also believe that enterprises should work together within the sector and across sectors as well, so that the system can move effectively, because that probably is Singapore’s competitive strength.

And the fifth and last “I” I would mention is Implementation for Impact. We learn and adapt agilely during the journey, and we continually test our ideas against what actually happened. We adapt and we pivot, if necessary. That is how we know we will ultimately deliver impact. With your partnerships, I am confident that we will surmount the challenges with optimism and determination, and we will forge a thriving digital future for all together.

Thank you all very much. Thank you for coming. Have a great rest of the day.