The Lion In Winter — page 4

Singapore will do "whatever it takes" to attract talent, says Vivian Balakrishnan, the government official in charge of the Remaking Singapore Committee. As part of that effort, repressive government policies previously enforced in the name of social stability are being relaxed. The city now boasts seven saunas catering almost exclusively to gay clients, for example, something unthinkable even a few years ago. There are a sprinkling of gay bars, and many dance clubs set aside one night each week for gay customers. Prime Minister Goh says his government now allows gay employees into its ranks, even in sensitive positions. The change in policy, inspired at least in part by the desire not to exclude talented foreigners who are gay, is being implemented without fanfare, Goh says, to avoid raising the hackles of more-conservative Singaporeans. "So let it evolve, and in time the population will understand that some people are born that way," Goh says. "We are born this way and they are born that way, but they are like you and me."

Foreigners, gay or straight, will be critical to carving out the niches in which the government hopes Singapore's new economy will thrive. In biotechnology, for example, the republic successfully lured Dr. Alan Colman, of Dolly-the-cloned-sheep fame, with $30 million or so in funding for his stem-cell research into a cure for diabetes. And Professor Yoshiaki Ito, a world-renowned cancer specialist from Kyoto University, moved his entire team of 10 research scientists to Singapore. He says a maneuver on this scale could not have been accomplished anywhere else in the world. Ito observes that although there is no direct pressure on his team to focus on commercial results, the atmosphere in Singapore's scientific and research circles is the most business oriented he has ever seen. "'We don't want a Nobel Prize; we want money,'" he says a senior Singapore official told him. "That message controls the whole academic atmosphere here." For the moment, the tight commercial focus seems to be producing results: biotech and pharmaceutical products contributed some $5.8 billion to the country's GDP last year, a 48% gain over 2001, and the government predicts the figure will surpass $8.6 billion by 2005.

But even Singapore's deep-pocketed government can't afford to forever throw money at sectors it deems crucial. Nor can it afford a large population of the permanently unemployed. Economists point out that neither biotech—which employs about 7,000 scientists—or other niche fields can come close to providing jobs for the tens of thousands of factory workers whose positions will probably disappear in coming years. Ultimately, the solution to Singapore's woes lies with individuals being willing to move out of their comfort zones and start taking risks, says Sudhanshu Sarronwala, chief executive of Internet-based music site Soundbuzz. "It doesn't really matter what the government does or doesn't do," says Sarronwala, who was born in India but runs Soundbuzz in Singapore. "The change has already begun, and it's going to happen a lot faster than anyone thinks. That's because you aren't talking about changing the mind-set of an existing population. You're talking about the influence of a flood of new people, with their talents and viewpoints making a completely new mixture." A former chief executive of MTV Asia, Sarronwala says his own company is a good example of what is coming: staffed by a mixture of native Singaporeans and immigrants from a dozen other countries, it has survived the Internet debacle and is now expanding throughout the region.

It will be years before efforts such as the foreign-talent program can be deemed successes or failures. But there are early signs that sheer necessity is forcing change. Even Toh, a cautious company man, has taken a stab at entrepreneurship. He and two friends (one Singaporean and the other Australian) formed a consulting firm last year to teach the latest inventory-control techniques. After months of failing to find work in Singapore, their company finally landed a job—in Inner Mongolia. The project, which involved advising executives at a milk factory about how to streamline operations, collapsed after a few months, taking the budding consultancy with it. "It was hard," Toh says, "we lost almost all of what we had put into the company."

But Toh says he would be willing to try again, probably with the help of more foreign talent. "You have to be flexible," he says. "We Singaporeans were always told we had to be perfect. Now sometimes we're learning it's okay to make mistakes, too, if you learn from them." Words to live by, if Toh and his hometown are to pull through their mid-life slumps.

—With reporting by Genevieve Wilkinson and Douglas Wong/Singapore

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