AUG 18, 2001

Don't be a trout in a pond, be a bluefish in the ocean

Eat or be eaten - the time has come for young Singaporeans to leave the sheltered pond and swim in the turbulent ocean, says NUS Vice-Chancellor Shih Choon Fong. He tells our senior correspondent why he agrees with Professor Michael Porter's view that Singapore must change directions if it is to survive in a fiercely-competitive global environment

By M. Nirmala

SINGAPORE undergraduates are like guppies and trout swimming in safe and sheltered waters in ponds and streams.

They should be thrown into the ocean where they will face intense competition - and where only the fittest will survive.

For in these deep blue waters lurks the bluefish - better known as the piranha of the ocean - which will make minced meat out of other fishes.

American-trained Professor Shih Choon Fong, 55, Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Singapore (NUS) fishes out this anecdote to illustrate the promise and peril facing Singapore in the years ahead.

As an avid angler, he recalls how easy it was to catch trout when he started fishing in streams and ponds in upstate New York.

Trout bit quickly and he could catch them with his bare hands to remove the hook.

But when he moved to the Atlantic Ocean, off Cape Cod, he had a harder time with the bluefish. He remembers reeling in one much smaller fish than what he usually caught.

'What a fierce fight it put up before I could pull it in,' he says, adding that when he tried to remove the hook, it bit through his glove, injured his finger and jumped back into the ocean.

Prof Shih is convinced that if students swim around in little ponds like trout, they will become fat, complacent and ill-equipped to face competition.

Using the same analogy, he says the same observation can be made of Singapore which is now at the economic crossroads.

Can the Republic continue to use the tried and tested methods that have worked well for the past 36 years? How can it re-invent itself so that growth does not hit a plateau or worse, dip?

These were the same questions raised by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter at a recent economic conference hosted by the Economic Development Board Society.

If Singapore is to stay afloat in a fiercely-competitive global environment, the expert on competitive strategy argued, it has to change gear, focus more on services than manufacturing and place more emphasis on higher value-added services.

The possibilities in the services sector included engineering, health care, consulting, education, media and entertainment, he pointed out.

In a two-hour interview in his Kent Ridge Crescent office, the Vice-Chancellor says he agrees with Prof Porter's prescription.

He believes that tertiary institutions like NUS have a major role to play in turning out graduates who will have the survival skills of the bluefish. 'These predators have such a voracious appetite that their prey try to escape by beaching themselves,' he remarks.

SO HOW can NUS students evolve from tame trout to brutal bluefish? Prof Shih's approach: By implementing policies that will expose students to new challenges.

This means spoonfeeding will stop, apron strings will be cut and students thrown into the deep end.

That explains why he is dispatching the first group of 10 bright science, engineering and computing students next January to the Silicon Valley, home of technopreneurs who turn dreams into reality.

For a year, the students will work full-time as interns in technology-based start-ups where inventors work round the clock seven days a week. They will also take part-time courses on entrepreneurship at Stanford University.

Later, students will be sent to Boston, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other places to imbibe the entrepreneurial spirit.

In this way, says Prof Shih, NUS will help train Singapore's future builders and captains of indigenous, giant corporations.

At Kent Ridge campus, students, not academics, will decide what they want to study and when.

'I'm throwing them into the ocean. When they swim in ocean waters, all they will see is an endless horizon,' says the Vice-Chancellor.

His view is that if he does not expose his charges to challenging situations, students will be like the trout he used to catch with his bare hands from streams.

But bluefish are different.

'Bluefish have adapted to survive in a tough environment. To eat other fish and swim swiftly away from bigger fish, they have developed streamlined bodies, hard scales, powerful muscles and sharp teeth.

'In ocean waters, you eat. Otherwise you will be eaten,' he says.

SINCE Prof Shih, a Singaporean who did his university studies in the US, took over the helm at NUS last June, he has been making waves with far-reaching changes.

Boundaries between faculties and departments have become porous and cross-faculty learning is emphasised.

Students are required to think critically and challenge conventional wisdom. Lecturers are assessed and rewarded under a performance-based and market-driven pay system.

Many of his views have been influenced by his 30-year experience studying and working in premier American universities such as Harvard and Brown, and working in organisations such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).

In America, the buzzwords are change, competition and chaos, he says. Creative ideas emerge from this dynamic environment where people dare to venture into no man's land, and refuse to admit defeat when they trip and tumble.

In his view, these provide good lessons for Singapore but to get to this stage, Singapore needs to change its mindset.

How? His recommendation: Move from the pond-mindset to the ocean-mindframe.

Globalisation, or ocean-mindframe as Prof Shih puts it, is the arterial avenue small Singapore must travel on.

Trends in the business world show that companies that have this ocean-mindframe emerge stronger.

He cites the example of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, set up more than 130 years ago in Hongkong.

It is now a world leader in banking and finance, a position it reached by diversifying its geographical spread through acquisitions and alliances spread over the Middle East, the US and Britain, among others.

It has its headquarters in London and last year, it moved some of its China operations from Hongkong to Shanghai.

For organisations, an ocean-mindset also means embracing global talent, he adds.

Manchester United is a top football team that dazzles on the field because more than half of its players are foreigners, such as Fabien Barthez (French goalkeeper), Juan Sebastian Veron (Argentinian midfielder) and Ruud van Nistelrooy (Dutch striker).

'If Man U had just depended on players from the British Isles, it would not be where it is today.'

BUT he cautions that 'time is not on our side' and that 'if we want to compete with world-class players, we must adapt quickly'.

Singapore has natural handicaps in a 'marketplace that has voracious, sharp-toothed fish adapted to compete fiercely for talent, ideas and capital.'

The established knowledge hubs are in North America, Europe and North-east Asia and these areas have critical numbers in talent, vibrant research culture and synergistic partnerships between universities and industries.

An increasingly, disproportionately large share of talent, ideas and capital are flowing to these hubs, he warns.

But before Singapore can even think of outrunning the competition, it has to know how the game is played internationally.

'If we want to play soccer, like how the rest of the world plays, we cannot build half-sized soccer fields.

'To go that extra mile, we need to create the infrastructure and supporting systems that come up to and even surpass international standards for knowledge hubs,' he says.

Another key factor is people, he notes and refers to Prof Porter's advice on how the economy needs to be innovation-driven and how university research lies at the heart of innovation systems.

Prof Shih says that his undergraduates and graduate students can help build this culture of innovation.

The young have an appetite for ideas and learning, more so than the highly-experienced hired by many research firms, he says.

To underscore the importance of this point, he quotes Xerox's chief scientist John Seeley Brown: 'Wisdom can stultify innovation. The more experience you have, the more you know why something can't be done.'

WHAT are the other issues Singapore must grapple with when it adopts an ocean-mindframe? Will there be a brain drain and will Singaporeans lose sense of their roots?

The NUS chief is confident that these will not be major drawbacks because 'the world cannot be one's home and humans are genetically programmed to desire a place which they can call home'.

To anchor Singaporeans to their country, efforts must be stepped up to build a shared destiny in which members of the whole community come together to shape society and country.

At NUS, intersecting circles are formed when students live and study together, he notes, and it is at the points of intersections that values, hopes, and shared dreams for Singapore can be cemented.

NUS students must also develop a sense of moral responsibility to contribute to society, he stresses.

A role model is technology software mogul Bill Gates who became the world's richest man because society lapped up what he created.

In return, he has become the world's richest philanthropist, giving billions back to society.

On the question of roots, Prof Shih remarks that Singaporeans need not worry too much about the brain drain problem.

They can learn from the Irish who remain attached emotionally to Ireland even after they leave its shores.

He remembers supervising very bright Irish graduate students who studied in the US but declined attractive job offers and returned to Ireland to teach and do research.

He notes that the Irish who decide not to return to their homeland continue to have strong feelings for their country.

Ireland's National Day on March 17 is celebrated all over America by Irish-Americans, he says. Even the non-Irish join in and a carnival atmosphere fills the air with marching bands, floats and parades winding down the main streets filled with people.

Celebrations, collective confidence and creativity can be mixed to provide Singapore with a heady concoction needed for the journey it must make from the pond to the ocean, concludes Prof Shih.

Copyright @ 2000 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.