Speeches

Re-making NUS:
Fostering a New Organizational Culture
State of the University Address 2002 by Professor SHIH Choon Fong, NUS President and Vice-Chancellor,
13 August 2002, University Cultural Centre

Full Speech Article	Annex Article

NUS Council
Students, alumni, faculty and staff
Ladies and Gentlemen

Paradigm Shift in the Global Economy

We have entered a new millennium where knowledge and talent constitute the critical resources for wealth creation.

For much of the first and second millennia, China was the unrivalled economic, technological and military power. The Chinese invented the compass, paper, silk, fireworks, gunpowder, the seismograph and printing, among others. However, China placed greater emphasis on maintaining the status quo than advancing knowledge and exploiting technology. In the end, the Middle Kingdom stagnated.

The past two centuries were marked by the ascendance of trans-Atlantic industrial powers. Propelled by the invention of the steam engine and steamship, electricity and telephone, automobile and airplane, Europe followed by America became the dominant economic and military powers. In the second half of the 20th century, America surpassed Europe. One might call the 19th and the 20th centuries the Atlantic Rim centuries.

The turn of the millennium witnessed a paradigm shift.

Over the past decade, the world experienced fundamental changes in knowledge discovery and transfer, commercialization and wealth creation. Incremental innovation and refinement, critical for past successes of developed economies in Europe and Japan, is no longer sufficient to ensure continued economic growth. Industrial economies deriving their strengths from incremental refinements are unable to break out of their state of stagnation. By contrast, sectors of the American economy are charging ahead by taking advantage of rapid innovations in information and communications technologies.

Today, the Pacific Rim region encompasses some of the world's most vibrant economies. They include advanced, post-industrial economies, as well as rapidly industrializing economies. Some Pacific Rim economies are investing in their up and coming research universities, which are taking on roles as engines of innovation and wealth creation. At the same time, we are seeing the intensification of trans-Pacific ties and linkages facilitated by a more balanced talent flow between North America and Asia. Not surprisingly, some have forecasted that the 21st century will be the Pacific Rim century.

This paradigm shift in the global economy presents challenges and opportunities for Singapore. As Singapore re-makes itself to seize these opportunities, we must also re-make NUS.

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