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Singapore lacks an innovative culture? British inventor doesn’t think so

MALMESBURY (UNITED KINGDOM) — As a billionaire entrepreneur and serial inventor, well-known British industrialist James Dyson, 69, is in a better position than most to recognise innovation and talent — the latest buzzwords in the global economy — when he sees them.

Mr Dyson says Singapore has had better success in making engineering an attractive profession to men and women than the United Kingdom, as evidenced by the large pool of engineering graduates that educational institutions in the Republic produce every year. Photo: James Imagery

Mr Dyson says Singapore has had better success in making engineering an attractive profession to men and women than the United Kingdom, as evidenced by the large pool of engineering graduates that educational institutions in the Republic produce every year. Photo: James Imagery

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MALMESBURY (UNITED KINGDOM) — As a billionaire entrepreneur and serial inventor, well-known British industrialist James Dyson, 69, is in a better position than most to recognise innovation and talent — the latest buzzwords in the global economy — when he sees them.

And the founder and chief engineer of technology firm Dyson rubbished the perception that Singapore lacks engineering talent and an innovative culture. In fact, tapping on the deep pool of talent is the sole reason he is expanding his company’s presence in the Republic next year.

“In fact, we probably wouldn’t be there at all ... So while it’s a very expensive place to be, it’s a very capable place. It has the right skills, so it’s been very good for us, and we expect it to continue to be so in the future,” said Mr Dyson in an interview with TODAY last month at Dyson’s headquarters in Malmesbury, a small English village about 150km west of London.

Mr Dyson, who was knighted in 2006 for his services to business, added: “There are very good engineers in Singapore and we’ve recruited very good people, so I hope that continues. We want to do it because we’ve been very successful in our development there so far ... so we expect it to be successful.”

Dyson, known for its vacuum cleaners, bladeless fans and, most recently, the supersonic hairdryer, announced plans on Tuesday to grow its engineering team in Singapore by 50 per cent over the next few years.

The company currently hires 800 employees in the Republic, nearly half of whom are engineers. It will also launch a new Technology Centre in Singapore next year, which will allow the company to have round-the-clock research, design and development capabilities in Singapore and Malmesbury.

Comparing Singapore and innovation-powerhouse Japan, Mr Dyson said that despite being a much smaller country, Singapore “got to where it has gotten to very quickly” and that success is not least because the country is innovative. He joked that the presence of Dyson in Singapore further adds to the country’s innovation quotient. “We’re part of Singapore and we’re innovative,” he quipped.

Mr Dyson pointed out that Singapore has had better success in making engineering an attractive profession to men and women, compared to the United Kingdom. This is evident by the large pool of engineering graduates that education institutions in Singapore recruit and produce every year, he said.

The latest Education Statistics Digest by the Singapore’s Ministry of Education showed that universities here produced 4,374 graduates in engineering sciences last year. Among those, 30 per cent or 1,296 are female graduates. There were 16,677 undergraduates enrolled in the field as of 2015, with 29.8 per cent or 4,970 of them female.

In the UK, statistics by the Women’s Engineering Society showed that only 15.8 per cent of engineering and technology undergraduates are female.

“I think Britain has a much bigger problem than Singapore,” said Mr Dyson, lamenting how the British media was partly responsible for the situation.

It was a topic he felt strongly about. Mr Dyson, who had been sitting back in his chair all along, leaned forward and said: “Part of the reason for that is engineering is secret until the product is launched. But then I think the media on the whole thinks that talking about technology and the product is not interesting for consumers but banking tales — tales about what goes on in banks, the hiring, the bonuses and all those sort of things — are interesting.”

In the eyes of many, Mr Dyson personifies innovation. His first original invention in 1974 was the Ballbarrow — a modified version of a wheelbarrow using a ball instead of a wheel. Other inventions included a trolley which launched boats and a boat that could travel at speeds of 64km per hour on both land and water.

He incorporated his company in 1991, after 13 years of trial and error in developing the cyclone technology that is now used in millions of vacuum cleaners across the world.

His passion and attention to detail are still very much the DNA of the company today, which spends about £5 million (S$8.9 million) every week on research, design and development. As of July, Dyson held 4,600 patents and pending applications worldwide.

After growing the company to employ more than 2,000 engineers worldwide today, Mr Dyson remains heavily involved in every project that the team embarks on, employees told this reporter when she visited the Dyson offices in Malmesbury.

Despite his advanced years, Mr Dyson expects to maintain the same level of supervision and oversight when the Singapore Technology Centre starts operating. “There’s video conferencing, so it’s not a big problem,” said the father-of-three.

The company’s decision to expand at a time when consumer spending and global economic growth are slowing seems counter-intuitive for a consumer products producer. But pointing to his decision to keep the firm privately held, Mr Dyson said: “A public company would find that kind of decision difficult ... we can decide that we can reduce our profits for the next one year or two to invest in something without worrying what investors or the market will think or say. And similarly, we can take a very long-term view about investment in research.”

He added: “We invested in electric motors for 10 years before we launched an electric motor, you don’t see a lot of this in public companies ... Our development in new-technology batteries, for example, we’ve been investing in that for well over 12 years but you haven’t seen a Dyson battery yet.

“So it’s all money that we’re spending and spending and spending, and no returns yet.”

His belief in research, design and development spending is also why he supported the UK’s decision to leave the European Union (EU). Other than being more globally focused, leaving the EU allows the UK to lower corporate taxes as well as increase research and tax incentives.

“We’ll be better off after all, and we should look to the rest of the world which is growing much faster than Europe,” he said.

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