NextGen VOICES: Experiments in Governing

This is a poll question posted in Science journal in Oct. Below is my opinion on the issue.
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Topic:
"You've just been elected to your nation's highest office! In your inaugural address, announce the biggest challenge facing your country today and how you will use science to address it."
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Singapore has come a long way since our pre-independence days from a tuberculosis-stricken port to Asia’s city with the highest quality of life (2011 Mercer rankings). To maintain the living standards of Singaporeans, our wages need to keep up with inflation. However, to prevent the erosion of Singapore’s business competitiveness, increases in wages should not come in the form of subsidies but should be from increases in productivity. The biggest challenge, therefore, is to increase the productivity of a country that already has a well-educated workforce, with a literacy rate of 100%, and depends on high value-added manufacturing as one of its main economic pillars.

Singapore has no choice but to progress from being efficient at acquiring knowledge to being effective at knowledge creation and application. We will have to continue investing in the scientific education of our brightest students, but go beyond offering generous PhD overseas scholarships. Through public-private research partnerships, government funded PhD students and postdocs should be given opportunities to apply their scientific knowledge in real world business problems. By providing a pool of readily available and highly enthusiastic researchers at low cost, businesses stand to benefit from R&D and thus gain productivity much faster than their competitors. An ensuing Darwinian effect would ensure that businesses with the highest productivities flourish and provide better paying jobs for Singaporeans. An investment in science now is an investment in Singapore’s future.