7. Teaching innovation and entrepreneurship: The Singapore Experiment

In 2002 the Economic Development Board of Singapore sponsored a series of four-month experimental programmes in ‘technopreneurship’. The word is a hybrid of entrepreneurship and the kind of high-tech development that Singapore has been promoting for decades. The EDB is one of the most creative departments of government in the world. It wanted to discover whether entrepreneurship could be deliberately taught in its universities to its own citizens and whether such programmes would lead to new start-ups. The answer was ‘yes we can!’ to echo Barak Obama. This chapter tells the story of the last six years of this programme, which we also carefully evaluated. Our methods of capturing this innovation are also potentially important.