Why we succeed and fail
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This article makes me sit up and think hard. How come I never thought of it!
I like to hear your thoughts about it - thanks!
".......Thus, Singapore's relations with its neighbours is not so much symbiosis as parasitism. Singapore thrives, like a virus, simply because it is smaller, simpler, more single-minded and focused than its hosts. By being the best among the worst, it sucks the most advantageous features from its surroundings and stands out from it, just as Lee Kuan Yew seems eloquent simply because the rest of Asia don't even speak English; or knowledgeable simply because other Asian leaders don't bother to read the latest American gurus or intellectual fads, let alone quote them to Western journalists.
This means that Singapore's chances of survival and prosperity are actually very good. Since the region seems to be constantly mired in problems, and to remain poor forever, the virus called Singapore will feed and multiply off its weakened hosts indefinitely. Far from the region's problems creating problems for Singapore,
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Full text available at this url -
http://www.sfdonline.org/Op%20Pages/OPMay01.html
http://www.sfdonline.org/Op%20Pages/OPMay01.html -
"For example, it is no secret that Indonesia's two-percent Chinese control over 80% of the Indonesian economy and that they park most of their spare money in Singapore, usually invested in everything from properties to companies."
I don't think the above is true. 2 percent Chinese control over 80% of the Indonesian economy? Many in the garment are terribly corrupted and would very much like us to believe that they are not siphoning the people's money.
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The government has succeeded to a certain extent up to 1970s. When LKY decided to push for high wage costs after being assured of a few good years of growth he actually made a major mistake.
From that point, beside burdening the economy with high costs, he was over-pricing too many government services and economic sectors making businesses uncompetitive.
He has continued to price out many so-regarded undesirable industries in order to up the value chain, but he failed because he actually kept out many entrepreneurs badly needed and more needed than scholars and academicians to sustain growths.
He could have upgraded the meritocratic pro-elite education system to broad-based system to nurture new generation of knowlege workers to support new technological growths. He could have made them adaptive changes instead of conceptually pushing out certain industries and entrepreneurial talents.
However being conceptual and without widely exposed practical hands-on experieces he tended to used big brush to paint delicate pictures and surely enough messed it all up. It is a bit like the same remote assumptions made on Souzhou. Assumptions went terribly wrong because of neglected middle technological excellene and broad-based education which were terribly underestimated.
He has failed to up the value chain because essentially he had neglected building the middle management excellence to support the talk-only ministers and largely academic senior civil servants. That is why gorwth traingle concepts could not take off. That is why many micro-chip and other hubs could not take off. One critical factor missing in the equation, up value chain could not take off. There was not the same technology push as seen happening in Taiwan or Korea throughout 1980s and 1990s but every day the media happily painted rosy pictures until the worse recessions hit the red dot in the late 1990s from which property and all sectors slumped 30% and large chunks of people's savings were wiped out.
Singapore's per capita ranking drastically dropped from 8th to 22nd but the state-controlled media happily reported rosy pictures daily to hide the truth.
Without cultivating middle management excellence, through practical knowledge application and innovations as culture in the work place, no amount of technocratic juggling could build up enough knowledge workers to build the new technology start-ups which took Taiwan and Korea big efforts to do so.
He only went by concepts that he should price out too many of the old industries which suitably upgraded could have thrived and led new growths.
He priced out viability and vibrancy which are essentially generated by passionate middle management knowledge workers not high flyers who are only good for administration. Technlogical start-ups and practical business brains are drifting to other countries. Singapore needed large number of practical knowledge workers who are the potential businessmen to lead the actual businesses and create jobs.
Many entrepreneurs shifted operations overseas and emigrated to viable lower cost countries. There were not enough entrepreneurs to lead growths but these people are the real talents and wanted to transform businesses into value-adding technology hubs which take more than a few Dr. Goh Keng Swee to build.
Distracted by his pro-scholar policy, entrepreneurs and practical knowledge applications were largely neglected. By the late 1990s, when the lack of entrepreneurs was found by the remaking singapore committee to be the main cause of Singapore's lack of economic success, it was already too late.
To correct this problem, many entrepreneurial types of public officers who have a yearn for efficiency and empire building will have ot be found not all the scholars and ministers who only manage by slogans and concepts and sing to the same old tune about meritocracy and leadership ego that no longer appealed to the people.
*For a model of accountable corporate governance: read: http://www.ospforohsopolite.blogspot.com
http://www.managefranchise.blogspot.com -
You may be right, you know I suddenly feel so humbled because I am sure many Singaporeans look down on our neighbours alot.
We criticised them for their lack of this and that. I always thought we are the best because we are smarter - not so now!
Maybe we are just lucky for now. If our neighbours were say Taiwanese or Koreans, I think Singaporeans will be the cheap labor instead. -
Just to add, if China were right beside us, I think we are going to be last.Originally posted by freeNeasy:You may be right, you know I suddenly feel so humbled because I am sure many Singaporeans look down on our neighbours alot.
We criticised them for their lack of this and that. I always thought we are the best because we are smarter - not so now!
Maybe we are just lucky for now. If our neighbours were say Taiwanese or Koreans, I think Singaporeans will be the cheap labor instead. -
Well, that restructuring in 1980's let me put it in my views
Then, Malaysia was starting to industralised as well. If they complete with us, we are at the losing end on lower end products like soap, toiletry products
Only way was to go into capital intensive industries -
The critical things that we miss out from our economy enginees - local successful MNCs. To br frank, gov did a number to inititatives to nuture our local enterprises, eg SME loans and market capitalisation for many of the local companies.
But a lot of our business leaders are all very smart. They know that in order to survive and thrive, they need $$$. So their sole objective is soley based on building up the $$$. On surface, this model is 100% correct. But when we examine the way or route that these local businessmen managed their businesses, then we know why our local companies always stayed barely afloat.
All over the world, many big names like Norkia or Samsung and Sony started off as small companies just like any of our SMEs. But the differences is that their local governments have always tried to put in these "small-timers" in alot of gov related projects, for these small timers to grow and learn from the big international players. After that, these small timers tends to expand their scale of operations and became the sub contractors of the big guys. Soon they would go listing and get extra capital for further expansion and R&D for better products features at LOWER production costs.
However, for many Sg companies, many of these SMEs just stopped at the stage after they got listed. They were soon overwhelmed by the new found wealth that was havested from the stock exchange. The management lost their focus and tends to spend more QUALITY time, than actual productive time to map out a global domination plan for their companies expansion and future growth - let alone R&D. In the recent articles, you can see that our gov are now panick that many of the local SMEs are actually quite not-on-par with their global competitors.
Our businessmen are more concern on how to make the Profit and Loss Statement look more presentable at the end of the days. They are less interested to take risk to move up the value chain through R&D or staff training. Most of them have very narrow tunnel visions. But we cannot blame them. I understand that their concerns; Sg is a not a place for FAILURE. Who would want to place their good fortunes at stake? -
I don't think Singapore's relations with its neighbours is more parasitism than symbiosis. If it had been parasitism then our neighbours would be weakened by us which is not the case. In fact Malaysia and Thailand have made much progress.Originally posted by freeNeasy:This article makes me sit up and think hard. How come I never thought of it!
I like to hear your thoughts about it - thanks!
".......Thus, Singapore's relations with its neighbours is not so much symbiosis as parasitism. Singapore thrives, like a virus, simply because it is smaller, simpler, more single-minded and focused than its hosts.
...."
Full text available at this url -
http://www.sfdonline.org/Op%20Pages/OPMay01.html
SIP failed because our mandarins were arrogant and did not know how to handle competition from the local industrial park. Our mandarins were so used to having their way in Singapore that they were at a loss when they faced competition. SIP only made progress after we partnered with the local industrial park.