Singapore's R&D investments have encouraging outcomes: official

Singapore's research and development investments are seeing encouraging outcomes, local broadcaster Channel NewsAsia reported on Tuesday, citing an official of the National Research Foundation.

Low Teck Seng, chief executive officer of the National Research Foundation, said the foundation has partnered 15 technology incubators and five early stage venture funds over the years.

"Together we have invested in more than a hundred companies through them ... of which, quite a few have done well, and we have exited (our investments)," he said.

Singapore is now half way through a five-year plan for boosting research and development. Under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2015 scheme, the 16.1 billion Singapore dollars (12.7 billion U.S. dollars) plan aims to support the government's long- term vision to develop an innovative and entrepreneurial economy like Sweden, Finland or Israel.

According to the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A* STAR), activity in the innovation and enterprise space has picked up in recent years.

It spun off over 40 start-ups in the past five years, with the majority taking place in the last two years.

There were 400 licenses over the same five-year period, 70 percent of which were issued in the last two years.

"The traditional players are there but (we want) new players to come in, even non-traditional players, Singapore investors, to start to stand up and take notice," said Philip Lim, chief executive officer of Exploit Technologies, the technology transfer arm of A*STAR.