Four real-life examples of Innovation and Entrepreneurship will first be shared.

The first one is a 3-year-old 3D-printing company founded by 4 fresh NUS engineering graduates, and which has raised Series B funding.

The second one is a 12-year-old engineering company founded by an A*STAR RI engineer, and which has become a high-growth high-tech global SME.

The third one is a 3-year-old company in Artificial Intelligence founded by a group of mid-career senior engineers, and which has succeeded in attracting major customers and funding.

The fourth one is an established company with visionary engineering leaders who took the risk to enter a new area and successfully transformed the company to be a Singapore multinational organization.

While these four examples were rare during the first 50 years of Singapore nation building, they will certainly inspire more to follow their paths as Singapore further develops itself into a matured developed nation with indigenous knowhow over the next 25 years. In the new era of digital and other form of disruptions, Singapore engineers will have to face the new reality of more frequent job changes, and the good ones will definitely rise up to the challenge to become engineer-leaders. One major role of these engineer-leaders will be in innovation and entrepreneurship, in an established corporation or in a startup. Innovation and entrepreneurship would require entrepreneurs to be knowledgeable also in business models and two examples will be used to illustrate its importance. It behoves our young aspiring engineers to seriously ponder the above emerging scenario and equip themselves for their development as future entrepreneurial engineer-leaders of Singapore. rtup in Artificial Intelliartup in Artificial Intellegence started byarea of 3D-printing.

Speaker:

Professor HANG CHANG CHIEH received the Ph.D degree in Control Engineering from the University of Warwick, England, in 1973. From 1974 to 1977, he worked as a Computer and Systems Technologist in the Shell Eastern Petroleum Company (Singapore) and the Shell International Petroleum Company (The Netherlands). Since 1977, he has been with the National University of Singapore, serving in various positions including being the Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering. From 1994 to 2000, he served as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University in charge of research. From 2001 to 2003, he was seconded to Agency for Science, Technology and Research to serve as its Executive Deputy Chairman. Since 2004, he has resumed his academic career in the National University of Singapore. He served as the founding Head of Division of Engineering and Technology Management, Faculty of Engineering from 2007 to 2016. His current appointment since 2012 is Executive Director, Institute for Engineering Leadership. His current research interest is in Innovation Policy & Strategy.

Prof Hang received the 1998 Public Administration Medal (Gold) for his leadership and contributions in the university, and the 2000 National Science & Technology Medal for his leadership and contributions to science and technology development in Singapore. He was elected a Fellow of IEEE (USA) in 1998 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK in 2000. He served as the founding Chairman of Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) from 2001 to 2009. Currently, he serves as non-executive Chairman of 3 high-tech companies and as Board Member of a listed company in Singapore.