IIE at SMU: The Epicentre of Entrepreneurship Education in Singapore's Thriving Startup Ecosystem‍

Every element you can think of in an entrepreneurship education program, Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE) at Singapore Management University(SMU) has most of them. From a co-working space, to an incubation program, internship program, student clubs, to a global startup competition, IIE is a one-stop destination for entrepreneurship education. 

In fact, in the 2024 World University Rankings for Innovation (WURI), its entrepreneurship program was ranked #11 worldwide in the “Entrepreneur Spirit” category” – referring to its initiatives to foster an environment conducive to entrepreneurship and innovation, beating out Harvard and Oxford University.

In the ASEAN Global Start-up Awards, it was also crowned ASEAN’s Best Co-working space (for The Greenhouse) and ASEAN’s Best Accelerator / Incubation Programme (for the Business Innovations Generator).

Singapore is a country where many startups gather, and IIE is playing a critical role in shaping its future through entrepreneurship education in Singapore. 

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To explore more about IIE, we met Prof. Lim Sun Sun. 

She is SMU’s Vice President (Partnerships and Engagement) and Lee Kong Chian professor of Communication and Technology, overseeing innovation and entrepreneurship, industry engagement and international relations. Additionally, she has leadership experiences across three universities. With her background and expertise, she shares insights on how the globally recognised entrepreneurship institute operates. 

We explored the kind of programs and events they are hosting, how students who participate in education perceive it, and how big an impact they are having on the entrepreneurship landscape in Singapore. You will also gain a better understanding of the Singapore entrepreneurial ecosystem. 

‍“How diverse are IIE's entrepreneurship education programs? What is special about the Greenhouse, IIE's co-working space? How does IIE's incubation program operate? What kinds of startups have been fostered? What is the student-led venture capital fund like? Why do global startups want to go to Singapore? Which sectors are IIE focusing on? What kind of impact does IIE have on the Singapore entrepreneurial ecosystem?”

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Promoting Entrepreneurship in Singapore through Building Communities in the Greenhouse

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Q. Could you introduce IIE?

IIE is essentially the institute that is home to entrepreneurship at SMU and was founded 15 years ago. Physically, we are located in the 'Greenhouse' on SMU campus.

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Being a management, social science and technology-focused university, SMU realised that there is a lot it can do to promote entrepreneurship in Singapore. As Singapore is a country where academic achievement of students has been greatly emphasized, it is not traditionally regarded as highly entrepreneurial. In this regard, IIE champions entrepreneurialism and seeks to create a support structure for students who have a desire to engage in entrepreneurship so that they don't fear it.

We hope students feel that this is a safe place where they can fail, but fail forward, which means that they can learn from failure and then translate that failure into impetus for the next step.

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Q. What is your role in IIE? 

SMU has been working very hard on teaching, research, as well as its outreach. 

During a review of the university by experts and analysts, there was a sense that as a university, we can do a lot in terms of building relationships with regional and global universities and industry partners, as well as growing programs centring around innovation and entrepreneurship. We needed to integrate all these different kinds of work. 

The Office of Partnerships and Engagement was thus created to link together all of the efforts across the university for internationalisation, partnerships, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

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Q. Then, what does IIE do? 

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IIE is the central institute orchestrating all the entrepreneurship events at SMU. When I joined, I benefited from the strong foundation that had already been laid by colleagues and to focus on creating ways to better integrate all that was being done.

If you think about a university having a full calendar of events, one school might have a talk about sustainability and computing, while another has a talk about the environment. In this case, how do we make sure that everyone on campus knows what everyone else is doing? 

To address this, we decided to combine some of the events, and co-work and co-brand those events that have an entrepreneurial dimension with IIE.

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Q. You host IIE’s events at the ‘Greenhouse’, your co-working space. Could you explain more about it?

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Yes, The Greenhouse is the co-working space for the startups undergoing our incubation program (Business Innovations Generator, BIG). It is located in downtown Singapore (on the SMU campus), which allows them great accessibility to meet business partners, potential investors, and the rest of our vibrant community. We have at least 2 to 3 events every week.

The Greenhouse is really a community, so startup founders and entrepreneurs can go beyond theoretical insights to tap on the expertise of people who have real-life experiences to share. IIE creates an ecosystem for startups and their founders within the Greenhouse. All these players in the startup journey can come together to build important relationships with partners who can provide relevant insights, investments, and expertise. This will allow the startups to take their ideas from lab to launch.

The Greenhouse has two floors. One is for the startups and IIE’s office, while the other is the event space. The Greenhouse community includes corporate executives, CEOs and VCs who come to share their stories with students, and young startup founders.

Besides these events, we have mentoring sessions too. We invite founders who have exited their companies to become mentors for our young startup founders. The knowledge they share may range from ‘how to get seed funds’ to ‘how to bring the right VCs to the table’ and ‘how to manage your own wellbeing’. 

Furthermore, we have many guests including professors or students who want to connect with SMU, industry leaders who are keen to share their business experience with students, and neighbouring startups that are keen to network with our students. Occasionally, VCs or legal experts also come to hold 'Ask Me Anything' sessions where they generously dispense advice to startup founders.

We provide all-in-one guidance for startups to ensure they are well supported, as founding and running a startup is not easy at all. 

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IIE’s Innovative and Colourful Entrepreneurship Programs for Industry and Societal Impact

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Q. Could you provide some more details about your entrepreneurship programs, starting with the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition?

IIE organised the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition last year. The competition attracted over 1,000 entries from 1,100 universities spanning 77 countries. 

Among those, 50 startups flew to Singapore, and we had judges who were CTOs and CEOs in their respective organisations. They spent hours helping us to evaluate the startups and listen to their pitches from various sectors.

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At the end of the day, they came to me and thanked me, saying it was such a good opportunity to meet these new startups. Actually, I couldn’t even begin to express my gratitude to these corporate leaders! 

I think it was a rewarding experience for them because they were able to see interesting innovations from universities across the world. They could feel the youthful energy, shared visions, common energy, and motivations to tackle challenges and change society.

‍*Note: The Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition is a biennial university startup challenge organised by IIE, bringing together the brightest minds from entrepreneurial universities worldwide to address 21st-century challenges and reimagine a smart, sustainable future. 

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Q. Could you elaborate on Global Innovation Immersion (GII)?

GII is a three-month overseas internship program for students who are interested in entrepreneurship. Besides that, students participating in GII should be full-time undergraduates with at least one more semester of study after they return from this internship.

Additionally, we would like to see internship applicants' maturity to live and work independently because they will be in a different country, working for a startup there. As living in a different country itself is quite challenging, students need to be prepared to work at a fast-paced startup.

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Our GII host employers are from China, Southeast Asia, US and Europe and are all within the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. They include Bluepha(China-based biotech company), Workato(Silicon Valley-based unicorn start-up, dealing in business integration platforms), Awan Tunai(Indonesia-based co-funding platform that provides technology and capital to FMCG-Grocery SMEs). Also, we have two host employers in Korea, which are facilitated by the Busan Metropolitan City - MarinaChain and YoungLong Corp.

One of our students had worked at a startup in Vietnam with GII. He had never been to Vietnam and never worked as an intern at a startup. Through this, he learnt a lot about the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Ho Chi Minh City and about himself. For example, he learnt how to adapt to a challenging environment with a different language, and also learnt about his enthusiasm for entrepreneurship as well.

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Q. Would you explain about Protégé Ventures (PV), too? It’s actually quite intriguing. 

‍PV is Southeast Asia’s first and Singapore’s only student-led venture capital fund. It is funded by both the government and private sector. We just started PV Fund II., valued at S$500,000, the sector-agnostic fund was launched in September 2023 and was contributed by Mr. David Su, Founding Managing Partner of Matrix Partners China. 

Students get their feet wet by investing in companies. Over the years, since its inception in 2017, PV has trained 320 students, of whom 70 percent obtained jobs or internships within the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.

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We don't limit the program to just SMU students; we also offer it to all university and polytechnic students in Singapore if they can commit at least 1 year to the program and have strong analytical and research capabilities to evaluate startups. They are trained to become future investors. PV has invested over S$300,000 in 12 student startups.

Students can discover the value proposition in startups with fresh eyes that we may not recognize. For example, one of PV’s most successful startup investments is called ‘Intellect’, a mental wellness app that helps users manage  their mental health and well-being. It has been adopted by several companies and hotel chains for use by their employees and guests. 

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At the outset, Intellect might not have had clear investment-worthy potential to regular investors, but students with young analytical perspectives could recognize that attention to wellness is important and appreciated among younger generations.

I believe we have helped build the pipeline of VCs and sharpened students' abilities to identify good investment deals. Through participating in PV, students develop an analytical toolkit to understand how to evaluate startups and assess their value propositions through PV. 

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Q. You also have an incubation program, BIG, which fosters startups that can use the Greenhouse. Could you introduce it to us?

‍BIG is an equity-free four-month incubation program that is open to all entrepreneurs and early-stage startups in Singapore and globally. It runs two cohorts a year (January and August). On average, we incubate about 60-70 startups a year, and selection for the program is highly competitive with a 23-25% acceptance rate per cohort. 

As of January 2024, we have incubated 490 startups which have collectively raised over S$747 million as of May 2024. They are selected via a rigorous process including an internal evaluation and an external intake panel comprising experienced venture capitalists and industry experts. 

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As BIG is a high-touch incubation program, startups receive tremendous support in the form of dedicated guidance from our Entrepreneur-in Residence, Incubation Managers, BIG mentors as well as industry-specific advisory support from Office Hours Advisors. Startups also receive 1-to-1 advisory, guidance, and feedback from advisors (experienced start-up founders) on various topics through our BIG Office Hours and BIG Legal Clinic.

Depending on the stage of the startups, the incubation period will help them with validation of product-market fit, go-to market strategies or development of their minimum viable product (MVP). 

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One of our success stories is Alterpacks, which creates a biodegradable and home compostable material to replace plastic food containers. It was founded by SMU alumna Ms. Karen Cheah in 2019 while completing her master’s of science in innovation at SMU.

Since Alterpacks commercialised its invention at the end of 2022, it has upcycled about 4,000kg of food waste and fabricates over 500,000 containers a month for distribution in Singapore, Australia and Thailand. In January 2023, Alterpacks closed its first round of $1 million Pre-Seed funding led by Plug and Play APAC, SEEDS Capital to further its commercialization drive.

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Q. Finally, what is the research lab, Knowledge Transfer & Commercialisation (KTC) that you are operating?

KTC is helping SMU faculty and researchers transform their invaluable knowledge and research into practical solutions for real-world problems. KTC assists researchers in three ways: IP management, licensing, and early-stage gap funding.

Lau Hoong Chuin, a SMU Professor of Computer Science developed an advanced AI planning and dynamic route optimisation tool, which leverages the patented Collaborative Urban Delivery Optimization(CUDO) technology. KTC helped to successfully license the CUDO technology to UParcel - a Singapore-based SME specialising in same-day e-commerce logistics and medicine delivery services. Early results from uParcel’s implementation of CUDO between 2022 and 2023 indicated 20 percent improvement in efficiency and savings of 500 hours in delivery time. 

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SMU, IIE in Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Singapore for Urban Solution and Sustainability

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Q. Singapore is one of the most popular startups’ destinations. What attracts them? 

• Singapore has a business-friendly environment with high standards of transparency. We have very strong regulations and governance structures, so people can feel confident coming to Singapore to start new businesses. It helps startups not only with registering their businesses but also with settling in and adapting, from finding apartments to schools. Processes are clear and well set up.
• Singaporeans are interested in innovation. We have a very small population and land area, yet we are able to do a lot. I think our appreciation for innovation and striving to improve business processes are the driving forces for that and startups are drawn to that.
• Lastly, Singapore is home to a thriving financial ecosystem with sources of capital and funding for startups.

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Q. What sectors are SMU and IIE interested in?

Our main focus is on urban solutions and sustainability. 

Singapore has had positive experiences with urban sustainability solutions. For example, our public transportation system is well lubricated by a very strong network of IoT sensors. But there is more we can do in terms of optimising urban mobility, especially when it comes to improving the quality of the environment to promote individual well-being. 

SMU is focused on Asia’s regional growth, too. Asia is home to many of the world's megacities, which are going to face numerous urban challenges such as traffic congestion, population density issues, air quality concerns, and traffic optimization needs. 

Thus, IIE is looking at urban solutions and sustainability quite closely. We can play a useful role in marrying academic expertise with innovation energies and commercial support. 

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Q. What’s IIE’s goals in this entrepreneurial ecosystem in Singapore?

The short-term goal is to become the ‘go-to’ place for urban solutions and sustainability startups, to meet the right people, get the right insights and expertise. The long-term goal is to strengthen the entrepreneurship signature of Singapore. To do this, we need to engineer entrepreneurship into the population so that Singapore can foster more entrepreneurs with transformative ideas. 

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Written by May Jang

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