A very good afternoon, Fu Hua, Eng Chye, and the NUS family; Forrest and the Sea family; as well as all guests present.
2. First, I think I'd like to thank Sea, as well as Forrest and his team.
3. Not just because Sea donated the money for these two buildings, but more importantly, for your partnership. What Sea brings to NUS is more valuable than just your monetary contributions.
4. What Sea brings to NUS is even more precious than the scholarships or professorships that you sponsor. What Sea brings to NUS is a partnership that can define the competitiveness of Singapore.
5. On that note, I will go on to my second point.
6. In Singapore, we never compete on the basis of our size; we do not have more people and resources than others.
7 Then what makes Singapore competitive? What makes Singapore special? I think there are three things that are embodied in this partnership that we hope to see.
8. First, we compete on speed.
9. In most countries, there is a divide between industry and academia. The best ideas in academia may not be commercialised. On the other hand, the best and cutting-edge ideas and practices in industry may take a long time to filter into academia to teach the next generation.
10. In Singapore, we want to tighten this industry-academia nexus. Our belief is that if anybody can do this well and do this fast, we must be one of them.
11. Because of the tight nexus between the industry and the academia in Singapore, our academia know what problems are most pressing for industry, and our students get the benefit of experiencing cutting-edge practices in industry while they are studying.
12. Speed is the key to our competitiveness; the tighter our industry-academia nexus, the faster we will be, and the more likely it can become our competitive advantage. So, partnerships such as the one between NUS and Sea is an example of how we try to make sure that we achieve speed.
13. The second thing that defines Singapore's competitiveness is our networks. Sea Connect, serves as a great metaphor.
14. I do not see Sea Connect as connecting between Sea, the enterprise, and NUS, the university. There is a deeper meaning to this connection. I hope that this connection will connect the NUS network with the Sea network, and when the two networks come together, I hope that it can become more than the sum of its parts.
15. For example, when there is a problem to be overcome, and if Sea brings the problem to NUS, NUS will rely on its network with the rest of other universities and other education and research institutions, the academia network in Singapore, to find a solution to the problem.
16. Sea, on its part, also has a network not just in the industries, but also in the talent pool across the region. When we combine these networks together, we multiply the effects of these networks. This is another way we can define our competitiveness.
17. Last but not least, we compete on the basis of our ideas. Again, for a small country with finite resources, the question has always been how we can distinguish ourselves by the quality of our ideas.
18. To distinguish ourselves by the quality of our ideas, we look at the quality of the problems that we want to solve, the problems that we dare to solve, and the networks that we can bring on board. Not just within the NUS community or the Sea community, but to bring with us the interdisciplinary approach that we take in all our problem solving.
19. As we like to say, we never fall in love with our solutions. We prefer to fall in love with our problems so that we bring a multitude of different approaches to solve these problems. That will allow us to distinguish our solutions by its quality, rather than by scale or size.
20. Sea is a leading example of how an academic institution can partner an industry. But I want to see this divide being broken down; just as Sea is not purely a business and also has its research elements, NUS, likewise, also contains elements of enterprise.
21. So instead of seeing it as two separate ecosystems, we should see this partnership as an interlocking ecosystem. If we can have more partnerships between industry and academia, with leading ideas from industry flowing into academia, and leading, cutting-edge ideas from academia flowing into industry in a fast and seamless way, I am quite sure that, notwithstanding our size, the Singapore ecosystem will continue to shine across the world. Because we define our competitiveness through the quality of our ideas, our networks and our speed.
22. So that is why I thank Sea for your partnership, not just for your monetary contributions to this building or the professorships or scholarships, because there is a higher order partnership that we are seeking to exemplify between Sea and NUS. We hope that this will inspire many more others to come and join us in this venture for Singapore to remain competitive and defy the odds of history.
23. Thank you very much, and congratulations to Sea and NUS.