In the 21^st century, the world’s economy will undergo a paradigm shift with growth coming not so much from large companies employing large numbers of people but increasingly from small start-up companies staffed by small numbers of people but with large ideas. The competitive advantage of nations will shift from possession of extensive natural resources and large populations to possession of skilled, imaginative people who can create wealth through exploiting innovations in science and technology, particularly in the fields of information technology, life-sciences and entertainment. More and more the vitality of a nation’s economic health will be sustained by its ability to throw up a constant stream of new high-tech ventures to fill new demands and create new markets. In the next millennium, development of technology entrepreneurship (or technopreneurship for short) is a must which nations ignore at their peril.

As a global city, Singapore must seek to tap into and ride this new wave of wealth creation by developing a technopreneurship culture which will welcome start-ups, tolerate failures and reward success handsomely. A key feature of every major technopreneurial hub in the world is the presence of world-class universities which are distinguished not only by world-class research and teaching but also by being particularly successful in fostering new technopreneurial start-ups in their respective regions. MIT in Boston, Stanford in California and Cambridge University in England are examples which come to mind. For NUS to play a major role in Singapore’s economic development in the coming years, the University has to go beyond being a repository of knowledge and a producer of competent manpower to being an engine of entrepreneurship and innovation.

I am therefore happy that NUS is seizing the initiative to launch a comprehensive programme of activities to promote technopreneurial development in the NUS community of students and researchers and their collaborating partners in industry. To spearhead this initiative, NUS has established the Centre for Management of Innovation and Technopreneurship (or CMIT for short) to coordinate the various new activities which are aimed at turning NUS into a vibrant technopreneurial hub. Among the activities to be overseen by CMIT will be the launching of a new minor programme in technopreneurship for undergraduate students in engineering and science, the introduction of new elective courses in technopreneurship for graduate students in engineering, science and business management, the establishment of a regular techno-venture forum to bring prominent technopreneurs and venture capitalists to share their experience with the university community and provision of techno-venture advisory services to new start-ups.

NUS will also launch a national annual technopreneurship competition which will be open to all undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers in our tertiary institutions. The aim of the competition is to encourage our students and researchers to act on their ideas and talents to create new high-tech ventures which in time will flourish in the knowledge-based economy which will characterise Singapore’s economy in the 21^st century. NUS’ initiative is in line with and will be supported by the national drive to encourage the development of technopreneurship in Singapore.

In this connection, NUS’s collaboration with MIT to jointly organise this Global Start-up Workshop is a good start to kick off NUS technopreneurial activities. The main aim of the Workshop is to share the best-practice experience of MIT and other leading universities in organising technopreneurship competitions. The workshop will feature presentations by prominent technopreneurs and venture capitalists and will be open to the larger community of students and researchers in NUS and the other institutions of higher learning in Singapore.

NUS’s partner in this Workshop, MIT, has long been recognised as being among the most successful in organising University Entrepreneurship Competitions in the world. Since 1990, the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition has facilitated the birth of over 30 companies with an aggregate value of over US$180 million dollars. In the spirit of encouraging student entrepreneurship, the NUS-MIT Global Start-up Workshop has been put together by student organisers from MIT and NUS. MIT students have raised funds to cover their travel to and accommodation expenses in Singapore while NUS students have raised funds to cover the local organising expenses. In addition to Singapore participants, the Workshop has attracted over 40 international participants from nine leading universities in Asia and Europe.

With the strong backing of NUS and MIT, I am confident that this Workshop will be a success and will pave the way for more co-operation in future between NUS and MIT. It is now my pleasure to declare open the NUS-MIT $50K Competition Global Start-up Workshop 1999.

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