Speech at Inaugural Launch of WDA-TLIAP Think Innovation! Executive Seminar & Master Class Series
Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Minister of State for Manpower, Grand Hyatt Hotel Singapore
Professor Tan Eng Chye, Deputy President (Academic Affairs) and Provost, NUS and Chairman, TLI – Asia Pacific Advisory Board
Professor Lai Choy Heng, Vice Provost (Academic Personnel), NUS, and Chairman, TLI-Asia Pacific Executive Committee
Dr Robert de Souza, Executive Director, TLI-AP
Mr Chan Heng Kee, Chief Executive, WDA
Distinguished Speakers, Panellists
Ladies and Gentlemen
INTRODUCTION
1. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this exciting series of seminars on innovation and productivity.
2. As I went through the content of the seminar, I was impressed by the many distinguished speakers you have gathered. These speakers bring with them vast experiences of best innovation practices across a number of industries that our businesses would find useful.
3. I am heartened that this joint initiative of TLI-AP and WDA aims to engage some 2,000 business leaders and senior executives across various sectors. Given that we have just launched a national productivity drive, the timing of this series cannot be better in terms of helping us focus on the urgent tasks of value creation and cost reduction.
4. The recently released Economic Strategies Committee (ESC) report highlighted the glaring productivity gaps between our services and manufacturing industries compared to those of the United States’ and Japan’s. The Government has also announced that productivity growth will account for 60% of the GDP growth in the next decade. Hence if we target to grow 4-5%, productivity growth must be 2-3% per annum. The question is how are we going to achieve this target in a manner that is sustainable and achievable?
5. There are many techniques to bring about firm-level productivity improvements. The THINK Innovation! Series is an initiative to introduce many tried-and-tested industry best practices to our businesses. Today’s workshop is therefore a great start in helping us define a pathway forward. Many speakers are experts and black belters in Lean Six Sigma management. Others specialise in design-led innovations and process improvements. As we embark on the journey to remodel our businesses, our CEOs must take the lead as champions for change and improvement. Only when they own and lead the changes, managers and workers down the line would be galvanised to make the necessary adjustments, overcome inertia, acquire new skills and do things in fundamentally better ways.
6. Government agencies such as WDA and SPRING will work closely with the various stake holders: industry associations, unions and academic community to drive the understanding of and adoption of productivity in our workplace.
7. In Budget 2010, the Government has announced to set aside S$5.5 billion over the next 5 years to help enterprise and workers raise productivity.
8. Of the S$5.5 billion, $2.5 billion would be invested in new and existing Continuing Education & Training (CET) infrastructure, providing skill-upgrading opportunities for our workforce. We now have 500,000 training places. We would increase CET training capacity to 720,000 by 2015. But we must ensure that it is not just capacity increase, but that it also offers quality training tailored to the needs of the workers and industries so that they raise the value of our output. This is one reason why 6-sigma discussion in this seminar is very relevant.
9. The remaining S$3 billion will be spent to help industries upgrade, innovate and adopt productivity-improvement measures at national-, sectoral- and firm-level. The newly introduced, broad-based tax incentive “Productivity and Innovation Credit” for instance, allows firms to claim 250% of qualifying investments into 6 areas of productivity measures. This is a generous provision. Our companies must invest carefully but boldly so that there is return on their investments in terms of productivity gain.
10. The Government is fully committed to our long term target of achieving sustainable productivity-driven growth. Our businesses must seize the opportunity to make full use of these support measures. As TLI-AP and WDA continue to roll out more workshops to cover best-practices in different industry sectors over the next few months, I urge our industry associations and their members to participate proactively in these seminars as they take ownership of the change process.
11. On this note, let me wish you a fruitful and engaging seminar. Thank you.