Entrepreneur

What defines an entrepreneur? Creativity, confidence and risk-taking are all but a few traits of the entrepreneur.

In Singapore, an entrepreneurial environment is sorely lacking. Compared with other developed countries, entrepreneurship has yet to really taken off in Singapore.

Why? Because the Singapore government is systematically killing the traits requried for the entrepreneur to grow and flourish.

This article provides an interesting read about how schooling has destroyed creativity and confidence is lacking. Reminds me of what Princeton economist Alan Binder said in The Flat World:"In the future, how we educate our children may prove to be more important than how much we educate them." Singapore, notorious for its rote-learning and content-based education system, still has a lot to learn. To learn how to learn.

Coming back to the topic, I can futher add on to the lack of entrepreneurship in Singapore. To be an entrepreneur, risk-taking is a must. Nine out of ten businesses fail, and to set up a new business, one must have the guts, the tenacity, the determination to see it through. Unfortunately, risk-taking is a trait that is very scarce in risk-averse Singapore. I feel that one reason is because of the lack of a social safety net in place.



When there is a social safety net in place, the environment should be more conducive for start-up businesses. After all, if you fail, it's easier to stand up and start all over again. You would not be staking everything on your business; you would still have some money for your family, enough money to pay for your electricity bills; you would not be left destitute and poor, unable to afford even three meals a day. The government's stand is that welfare benefits will encourage a dependency mindset, encouraging unemployment. But, it should also take note it may be precisely becasue of the lack of welfare benefits that Singaporeans has lost its mindset to be independent, to have the guts to invent and innovate. The stakes are simply too high. One failure, and you might take forever to stand up again.

There is one more great impediment to cultivating the spirit of entrepreneurship in Singapore, and this great honour goes to the ever-present SAF. For two years, every male citizen is sold into the SAF, where their software is re-written several times over, with risk-averse behaviour embedded into their brains. All are taught to follow the system, follow the hierarchy. One toe out of line and you will get charged, and with that, your future will probably be over. All males are cowed into submissiveness, conformation (they use standardization in the SAF) becomes a norm, differences are frowned upon and punished.

After two years, they emerge from their cocooned environment to face a society that is politically and culturally oppressive. Political dissidents being slapped with lawsuits are not an uncommon occurrence, and all media has to go through the censorship board. The climate of fear prevails, and everyone continues to keep their head down and focus on the work on hand, never thinking, never wondering what they want, what they can have, and what they can become.

In this environment, how can entrepreneurship flourish? In fact, perhaps the most important factor in cultivating entrepreneurship is freedom. Freedom to think, to do what we want, with no restraints and no thoughts of the consequence. In Singapore, the school with its monolithic system takes away our freedom; the lack of a social safety net places heavy restraints to hold us down while we try to fly, denying us our freedom; SAF pummels all aspiring entrepreneurs into conformity, brutally snatching away all shreds of freedom which we desperately try to grasp.

Thus, it is no surprise that entrepreneurship does not thrive. In an increasingly competitive world, without a strong entrepreneur presence, Singapore will always play second fiddle to bigger economies.