The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) announced a new initiative to support innovative enterprises as they enter global markets. The initiative is called the Intellectual Property Insurance Initiative for Innovators (IPIII), and it will give innovative enterprises insurance coverage for legal expenses that may be incurred in intellectual property (IP) infringement proceedings worldwide.
The IPIII initiative was announced this week by Minister for Education Ong Ye Kung in his keynote address at the Singapore Bicentennial 1819 – 2019, hosted by City of London Corporation. Minister Ong was part of an official delegation comprising Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies, and Dr Tan Wu Meng, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Trade and Industry.
Innovators with SG Patent can get cost-saving insurance policy
Under IPIII, enterprises and innovators with a Singapore patent, trademark or registered design can take up an insurance policy with substantial cost savings that pays the legal costs of enforcing IP rights or defending against allegations of IP infringement, which can often be expensive and detrimental to business cash flows.
New business risks will emerge as more enterprises use innovation and digitalisation to grow and enter global markets. With over 60 million IP in force in the world today – about 10 IP for every 1,000 people globally – securing business interests with an IP insurance policy is emerging as a business priority.
This initiative comes at a time when value in the global economy is increasingly created in the form of intangible assets. For the first time in history, global intangible value surpassed US$50 trillion in 2018, making up more than half of the global economy. In advanced economies such as the USA, more than 80% of enterprise value of S&P 500 is already in the form of intangible assets. These trends are increasingly driven by Asian economies, with Asian IP filings growing at the compounded average growth rate of 12.7% from 2007 to 2017, twice as fast as the rest of the world according to figures taken from an IPOS press release.
“IP Growing faster than the world population”
Dr Bernard Ong, Group Director, Policy & Engagement, IPOS, said: “IP has been growing at a faster pace than the world population in the past decade. Yet, insuring IP is still nascent to a market that has witnessed multi-million-dollar patent litigation and trade disputes over IP theft.”
“The new insurance initiative is timely in a global economy increasingly powered by the new currency of intangible assets. Cutting edge initiatives such as IP insurance will anchor Singapore’s position as a financial and legal hub, and support our innovators and entrepreneurs as they expand into overseas markets with their IP.” said Mr Ong.
The digitisation and digitalisation of the Malaysian economy is an important factor in the changing society today as most countries are re-emerging by adopting new norms due to pandemics affecting various sectors. This unprecedented situation has led to irregular structural changes in past lifestyles.
However, a majority of the population does not have much choice because they have to adapt to the new paradigm as past practices have to be changed forever. It is important to acknowledge that this crisis is causing the emergence of change agents that trigger a new digital era.
The industrial revolution that bloomed about 200 years ago has exposed humans to technology has now entered a new phase which is the leap into the Industrial Revolution 4.0 or IR 4.0. Despite the belief that IR 4.0 will remain, the implementation of these technologies will determine which societies will progress and which ones will be left behind.
Just as steam engines trigger the use of fossil fuels to aggravate the current climate crisis, the power of IR 4.0 technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, material internet (IoT), robotics and crypto will determine the quality for human beings whether they provide well-being or vice versa.
Taking on the responsibility of digitising Malaysians who are ‘affected’ by this transformation, the role of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) is being implemented accordingly. The agency is responsible for ensuring the widespread dissemination and use of IR 4.0 tools in advance so that the community is aware of the challenges that are inevitable not only in Malaysia but also globally.
Considering that more than 90 percent of businesses in Malaysia are categorized as Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), it is an essential requirement for this group to be given ‘digital power’. Therefore, the focus is also given to MDEC for the digitization and digitization of family-based businesses.
Investment through training, subsidies, incentives, grants and loans are all important to achieve the goal of digital participation, especially during these challenging times, MDEC is in a unique position to encourage grassroots engagement by sharing resources that fairly involve all stakeholders in society.
The main philosophy that drives the penetration of IR 4.0 technology in the Malaysian digital economy is to achieve common prosperity for all citizens. The current global crisis is an opportunity to place the country in a position from where it can prepare for a better future with greater possibilities as well as by placing the community at the centre of IR 4.0 technology.
Another article notes that MDEC aspires to firmly establish Malaysia as the Heart of Digital ASEAN, a regional digital powerhouse launching global champions to lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). It also aims to ensure the digital economy will drive shared prosperity for all Malaysians by accelerating our digital economy growth, ensuring it is inclusive and rewarding for all, focused on the key drivers: empowering Malaysians with Digital Skills, enabling Digitally-Powered Businesses, and driving Digital Sector Investments.
At the cusp of the 4IR, Malaysia is blessed with the chance of re-engineering the human experiment using technologies that decentralise authority and de-emphasise divisions along the lines of colour, creed and country – what the Japanese have coined as “Society 5.0” – and the nation has adapted as “Malaysia 5.0”.
The term describes the next stage of the evolution of societal communities. The quest for Society 5.0 is built around the needs of a human-centred society. MDEC envisions playing a leading role in catalysing this transition to Malaysia 5.0 as a new narrative for introducing emerging technologies which are essential tools in the new Malaysia 5.0 digital economy.
With Malaysia 5.0, it can contribute to a more sustainable and circular economy, where greater well-being is possible for all citizens regardless of age, ethnicity, and class.
The Indonesian manufacturing sector is seeing comprehensive changes in businesses across the spectrum, that is leading to accelerated progress to Industry 4.0 standards. This increased pace is being driven by efforts to increase productivity, efficiency and safety to adapt to the new normal brought about by the pandemic. Speaking at a virtual event, Webinar of Industrial Powerhouse in the Making: Invest in Industry 4.0, Director-General of Resilience, Territorial and International Industrial Access (KPAII) of the Ministry of Industry, Dody Widodo felt that current transformation efforts are critical to encouraging economic growth and competitiveness of the country.
Digitisation and technology have brought a marked improvement in the productivity of the domestic manufacturing industry after being hit by the COVID-19. As of September 2020, the utilisation of the manufacturing sector reached 55.3%, an increase of 15-25% from the previous 30-40% at the start of the pandemic. He was confident that efficient and effective digitalisation would connect companies with domestic and international markets through an integrated supply chain network. Countries that have low transformation performance characteristics will face high costs due to unreliable capacity and efficiency, as well as major barriers to integrating and competing in global supply and value chains.
Dody acknowledged the undeniable role of the internet has had in changing the way of doing business, including in the industrial sector. Industry 4.0 is driving the increasing trend of automation, such as through the Internet of Things (IoT), machine-to-machine and human-to-machine interfaces, artificial intelligence, digitisation in manufacturing, and other advanced technologies. According to him, the new paradigm shift in manufacturing today is the result of the use of the internet which allows real-time communication between machines and humans- leading to an era of smart products and smart services.
To prepare for the Industrial 4.0 era, the Indonesian government has launched a road map for Making Indonesia 4.0. Initially, there were five sectors that received development priority – food and beverages, textiles and clothing, automotive, electronics and chemicals. However, learning from the pandemic, the Ministry of Industry has added two critical sectors to be included in the Making Indonesia 4.0 program – pharmaceutical industry and medical devices. With this, there are seven priority sectors.
These seven sectors are key sectors in the world economy and Indonesia is striving to become one of the major global players in these. The main goal is to have Indonesia in the top 10 countries that have the strongest economy in the world by 2030.
OpenGov Asia recently reported on the Ministry of Industry’s launch of the Startup4industry programme as another concrete step to implementing the Making Indonesia 4.0 roadmap. The nation is confident that this strategic initiative will bridge the needs of industry and the community with the role of startups as technology providers. Startup4industry, built on the theme “Indonesia Is Confident in Domestic Technology” 2020 aims to deeply technology to have a positive social impact on citizens and mitigate the impact of the pandemic in the industrial sector.
Investment in Industry 4.0 technology will increase competitiveness and added value and, to that end, the government has carried out various strategic activities as part of the implementation of Making Indonesia 4.0. These include 2019 Indonesia Industrial Summit, preparation of Indonesia’s 4.0 Industry Readiness Index (INDI 4.0), the IKM e-Smart program and the appointment of an Industry 4.0 lighthouse company in Indonesia.
To attract investment related to industrial technology 4.0, the Ministry of Industry has proposed various incentives for industry players, including a super tax deduction of 300% for industrial companies investing in R&D (including technology 4.0) and 200% for industrial companies investing in vocational education.
Further, to maintain business continuity of the industrial sector in the country, the Ministry of Industry has granted an Operational Permit and Industrial Activity Mobility (IOMKI) for business actors who meet the requirements based on Circular (SE) of the Minister of Industry Number 4 of 2020, SE of the Minister of Industry No.7 / 2020 and SE of the Minister of Industry No.8 / 2020. As of October 2020, 18,183 IOMKIs have been issued for various industrial sectors with total employment of 5.15 million people.
The pandemic has caused widespread devastation across the world with cases inching towards 43 million even as the death toll crosses a million. The Philippines is also struggling to deal with the COVID-19. The country has recorded 370 thousand cases with fatalities touching 7,000 in this last week of October.
Researchers across the world are working ceaselessly to try and get a comprehensive picture of the virus, its epidemiology and management. Such large-scale, glocal research has been made possible with supercomputing facilities that can perform high-speed processing and computations.
Wide interconnectivity and global reach give it the capacity to empower multi-disciplinary efforts in medical and health research across facilities and experts spread across wide geographical areas. The incredible processing and analytic powers drive advancements in the development of treatments, vaccine and management of all diseases and pandemics, such as the COVID-19. Supercomputing facilities can process massive amounts of data, speed up simulations and provide large amounts of space need to store data and analytics. These capabilities allow access to virtual machines, massive cloud applications and coordination on a global scale – produce results a thousand times faster.
The Computing and Archiving Research Environment (COARE) is a supercomputing facility at the Department of Science and Technology-Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI). The facility provides free services to researchers, scientists and students who need high computational resources, access to virtual machines and data archiving services. Currently, COARE has allocated its resources to institutions and researchers dedicated to dealing with COVID-19.
FASSSTER and TanodCOVID
Developed by the Ateneo de Manila University’s Ateneo Center for Computing Competency and Research (ADMU-ACCCRe) and in collaboration with the University of the Philippines Manila-National Telehealth Center (UP-NTCH) and the Department of Health-Epidemiology Bureau, the Feasibility Analysis of Syndromic Surveillance using Spatio-Temporal Epidemiological Modeler (FASSSTER) is a pandemic intelligence monitoring that assists the government’s real-time decision-making processes for COVID-19.
FASSSTER’s data warehouse features multiple modules used for collating, storing and filtering real-time information sourced from various health records and reports. Data from the warehouse is fed to a dashboard that produces analytical projections and computations that help decision-making processes and disease response.
One component and data source of FASSSTER is TanodCOVID, which helps people track and monitor COVID-19 symptoms and report it to their local health authorities through a self-reporting tool. Since March 2020, the COARE facility has been of crucial help to FASSSTER and TanodCOVID, providing access to its virtual cloud services to help them in their complex mathematical models and data warehouse needs.
COVID-19 Operations Center Monitoring System
The COVID-19 Operations Center Monitoring System is a data platform used by Local Government Units to help in management, tracking and monitoring of COVID-19 cases. The system consolidates COVID-19 data that is easily viewed on a dashboard. It includes visualisation features like heat maps and charts for monitoring at the municipality up to the barangay level and modules for encoding patient information and assigning patient records for contact tracing. COARE assists this platform by storing and analysing data through virtual servers.
Philippine Genome Center Research Initiatives
The Philippine Genome Center (PGC) of the University of the Philippines-Diliman is a genome-focused institution that currently prioritising research on COVID-19 – centred on phylogenetic analysis, computational studies, evolutionary analysis, molecular biology and in silico detection of COVID-19. COARE supports PGC by providing researchers access to the facility’s supercomputing services.
Folding@Home Project
Folding@Home is an R&D project that helps combat worldwide diseases through research carried out through distributed computing. From March 2020, COARE offered its supercomputing resources to F@H research efforts by installing a dedicated folding node. Through this node, the project was able to utilise COARE’s resources for computational drug design, protein folding, molecular dynamics, and other COVID-19-related computer simulations.
University of the Philippines Cebu’s CovCheck Application
The Department of Computer Science and the FireCheck team of the University of the Philippines Cebu is developing a web application, CovCheck, that enables Local Government Units to manage and respond to the transmission of COVID-19 through the collection of data from constituents who have self-assessed and self-reported for COVID-19 symptoms. At present, COARE has helped by hosting the web application on its virtual servers.
ACCELER8 Project for SARS-CoV-2 Therapeutics
Faculty members and scientists from the University of the Philippines-Manila, Philippine Genome Center-Mindanao, and De La Salle University Manila are working on a research project – Advancing Antivirals through Combined Computational Design and Emerging Omics to Leverage Repurposed and Natural Drugs for SARS-CoV-2 Therapeutics (ACCELER8). COARE has given ACCELR8 researchers access to its supercomputing services to help them conduct simulations and data analysis on computational drug design and omics.
The Deputy Director-General of the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (Depa) in collaboration with Thailand’s largest GSM mobile phone operator and the leading source of all tech and business news in Thailand and Southeast Asia organised an online seminar Esports Summit – Pre-Event LIVE which featured a comprehensive overview of the gaming and e-sports industry.
The Deputy Director-General joined hands with the President of the E-Sports Association of Thailand (TEF) and the CEO of the mobile phone operator. The parties will come together to develop a new path for the game industry in Thailand. The partnership aims to increase the number of industry opportunities in the esports, a sector which many people still as lacking potential. Moreover, a case studies of the successful implementation of esports industry initiatives will be done and the results will determine the measures needed to apply them to the gaming industry in Thailand.
The Summit will take place on 28 October 2020 at Samyan Mitrtown, and will include a variety of e-sports-related seminars including those titled ‘How To Drive, Develop and Engage Global Branded Customers with eSports’, ‘Tips from the Developer of a World-Class Streaming Platform’, ‘Bachelor’s Degree of Gaming: Advice For Parents About E-Sports and more.
Propelling e-sports in Thailand
In August 2020, it was reported that mobile phone operator launched the AIS e-sports studio to support Thais training to compete at competitions around Southeast Asia.
Winners of competitions hosted by the operator will be able to practice e-sports at the studio. The studio brings together high-speed internet networks and equipment to support e-sports, primarily for training in preparation for the next regional competition.
AIS uses a caster and production zone with modern production techniques and full equipment to organise live events on high-speed internet networks for e-sports fans.
The company plans to organise two more e-sports tournaments this year beginning with its e-sports Thailand Campus Championship 2020 Season 2, and its e-sports Thailand Open Championship for players of all levels.
More recently, the Co-Founder and Chief Executive of a consulting firm stated that gaming is set to emerge as the next dominant technology platform much the way search engines, mobile phones and social networks redefined industries in previous decades.
Some games are transforming into digital hubs that offer people an array of services once only possible in real life. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated gaming’s popularity, with overall time spent gaming rising by 29% during the outbreak, according to the firm.
People are increasingly using gaming platforms to view virtual concerts, for messaging, gambling, dating and even virtual celebrations of weddings and birthdays, the company found. The firm predicts the consumer gaming industry will reach a value of $198 billion by 2024, not including sales from hardware and devices, augmented reality, virtual reality and advertising.
The industry is turning from selling individual games to offering subscription services, with several tech giants offering gaming subscriptions and competing with major players. The consulting firm found that 58% of gamers use or intend to use gaming subscription services, while 38% use or intend to use cloud gaming services.
A wave of mergers and acquisitions involving gaming and tech companies has been predicted. Gaming will also connect industries, the expert said.
About 22% of people who bought their first virtual-reality headsets this year did so during the virus outbreak, the firm reported, with most users intending them for videogames.
The University of Wollongong’s (UOW) SMART Infrastructure Facility will play a vital role in the new Illawarra-Shoalhaven City Deal prospectus, which aims to provide a vision and program to drive the transformation of the region and its economic recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The Illawarra-Shoalhaven City Deal brings together four councils and eight partner organisations – including UOW and the SMART Infrastructure Facility – in a shared vision for the region.
It is a vision that will deliver transformative change to the region, generating more than 12,000 high value add jobs in areas such as advanced manufacturing, professional services and technology, and enabling a more robust, more diverse Illawarra-Shoalhaven economy.
The proposed Illawarra-Shoalhaven City Deal initiative provides an opportunity to build from the existing Western Sydney City Deal to accelerate this growth relationship while also delivering important local infrastructure, facilities and jobs for the 420,000 people who live right here in our wonderful coastal region.
In addition to delivering 12,550 jobs over the next decade, the Illawarra-Shoalhaven City Deal:
- Creates growth for the Illawarra-Shoalhaven economy, and supports the growth of Greater and Western Sydney;
- Provides targeted transformative infrastructure projects that support a connected, diverse and resilient economy;
- Unlocks a recovery of the bushfire-ravaged visitor-economy for Shoalhaven;
- Develops the Circular Economy with a world-class waste reduction project;
- Creates a pipeline of Smart City projects, improving our overall economic resilience;
- Supports enhanced liveability for 70,000 plus households in the region and to South-Western Sydney, including Wollondilly and Campbelltown.
SMART’s Chief Operating Officer stated that the facility already works closely with industry and local government on projects that enhance the economic value across the region, such as Smart Waterways Management Project and the South West Illawarra Rail Link (SWIRL) report.
This City Deal states a clear vision moving forward and provides a roadmap for everyone to work towards, she said. The prospectus includes a pipeline for implementation and delivery of smart city projects which will deliver high liveability impacts for the region.
The vision and program outlined represent a considered and confident package of initiatives that can drive the transformation of the Illawarra-Shoalhaven and position the region for economic and employment recovery, he said. Considerable effort and collaboration by key organisations, including UOW, has been applied to define and agree on a suite of initiatives that address transport infrastructure, the visitor economy and economic resilience across Wollongong, Shellharbour, Kiama and the Shoalhaven.
Federal and State Governments rightly encourage regional communities to take charge of defining their aspirations and charting a course of action. Leaders in the Illawarra-Shoalhaven have risen to that challenge. Now the team seeks the support and investment of the Government as well as their collaboration in delivering jobs growth and improved liveability for communities.
Job creation in Advanced Manufacturing is targeted through the expansion of the Albatross Aviation Technology Precinct at Nowra. Better road and rail access resulting from the Illawarra-Shoalhaven City Deal will attract investment in manufacturing, green energy, ICT and tourism in the bushfire affected South Coast.
The delivery of the projects in the proposed Illawarra-Shoalhaven City Deal will have a transformative impact on the regional economy. The strategic objectives of the Illawarra-Shoalhaven cities are to create over 12,550 high-quality jobs in the next decade by delivering investment in key industries that attracts new businesses and retains employees as residents in one of Australia’s most liveable regions.
The growth potential is currently constrained by a lack of investment to unlock the local economies. Additional investment from Federal and NSW governments in transformative infrastructure will allow the Illawarra-Shoalhaven to reach its full potential as a much needed ‘release valve’ for a congested Sydney.
IIT Kharagpur’s Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology has set out to bring to the forefront indigenously developed industry 4.0 technologies that support India’s industrial sector to achieve the vision of an Atma Nirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India). Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IITK) was the first-ever Indian Institutes of Technology to be established and is recognised as an institute of national importance.
The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated significant staffing restrictions with new hygiene norms and social distancing. In this new normal, cloud infrastructure, remote and real-time operations systems will be critical to maintaining effective industrial operations. Furthermore, the advantages that controlled operations bring in delivering quality output at low costs have a wider impact in the context of Atma Nirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India).
The institute recently developed novel Industry 4.0 technology for remotely controlled factory operations and real-time quality correction during industrial production, in partnership with an Indian multinational information technology services and consulting company, to set a new trend in India’s advanced manufacturing sector.
The innovative technology has been developed by Prof. Surjya K Pal, Professor in-charge at the Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology jointly with the information technology services and consulting company, will acquire real-time information about the welding process through multiple sensors and enable online control of weld quality through cloud-based communication with the friction stir welding machine.
Stressing the need for such technologies to achieve the ‘Make in India’ goal, Director Prof. Virendra K Tewari believes that while India is aiming to boost indigenous production and exports, the primary goal should be the quality output with minimum disruptions. He felt that these are the two basic needs our industrial sector which must be addressed for servicing business to scale.
The innovation upgrades the industrial process of friction stir welding to a multi-sensory system of Industry 4.0. The process has set the course for remotely controlled operations in the Indian industrial sector and, at the same times, has enabled real-time quality check and correction during the production process. This will make it possible for industrial houses to achieve standardised quality goals throughout the production process and reduce rejection hence lowering the cost of production.
Welding is at the heart of any industrial operations. If we can improve the weld quality in real-time during batch production we can reduce rejections in post-production sample checks,” opined Prof. Pal.
Explaining the new technology, he revealed that the multiple sensor process involves a range of signal processing and machine learning techniques that predict the ultimate tensile strength of the weld joint is fabricated. This technology is connected with a vast experimental knowledge base to conform to a standard system and prediction of the weld joint strength. Any defect identified during the monitoring procedure is corrected in real-time by sending modified parameters to the machine thus ensuring the standardised quality of the process.
The concept of this technology can further be evolved for real-time control of other industrial processes and such work will be carried at the centre with other industrial partners soon, affirmed Prof. Pal.
IITK’s industry partner believes that such innovations are enablers of technology-based transformations in the country, especially in overcoming challenges called out by the pandemic. The remote friction stir welding machine quality control via multi-sensor fusion developed by Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology at IIT Kharagpur is a case in point
The Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer said their organisation convinced that academic partnerships are an important part of their Research and Co-Innovation Network (CoIN) in creating real-world solutions with scientific rigour. He confirmed that their Embedded Systems & Robotics, IoT and ICME platform teams from their Research and Innovation wings were working closely with IIT Kharagpur’s CoE towards AI-driven prediction/control of weld strength using a scalable and robust platform.
The SG Women in Tech movement (SGWIT), an initiative by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), industry, government and community partners to attract and develop girls and women in tech, celebrated its 1st year of advancing diversity in the tech sector in Singapore this week.
Some of the key milestones include:
- Connecting girls in schools with female tech leaders through a series of StudentsAsk videos that have since reached out to over 115,000 people in the community
- Bringing together over 600 women in the tech workforce for networking and mentoring activities
- Launching the inaugural SG 100 Women in Tech List to honour women who have achieved outstanding accomplishments and made significant contributions in tech.
Study finds women in tech in SE Asia is higher than global averages
To provide more insights on the strategies that companies, governments, schools and individuals can take to advance gender diversity, The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has partnered with SGWIT and IMDA on a new study which surveyed 1,650 women in tech in Southeast Asia.
The study found that the participation of women in tech in Southeast Asia is slightly higher than global averages, and about 65% of respondents agreed that the tech sector does better than other industries in offering programmes specifically tailored to recruit, retain and promote women.
“More talent will drive the fast growth of our burgeoning tech sector and spearhead digital transformation for the Singapore economy. It is heartening to see the strong interest and support for the Singapore Women in Tech movement from schools, industry and community. We are glad to see tech companies and leaders taking action to attract, retain and develop girls and women in tech, and look forward to bringing on board even more stakeholders to develop an exciting and enabling environment for women in tech,” said Mr Lew Chuen Hong, Chief Executive, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).
Report identifies areas to boost the number of women in tech
With demand for digital talent growing faster than supply, the report identified three critical junctures for intervention to boost the number of women in tech. These “moments of truth” are the choice to pursue higher education in tech, the selection of their first job, and the decision to remain in tech over the long term.
Based on these, the report has also identified areas where companies, policymakers and academic institutions, and even women themselves, can work on, to further attract, retain and develop more women in tech.
BCG’s global leader for the Technology, Media & Telecommunications practice, Vaishali Rastogi, said, “Technology is radically disrupting businesses and industries, driving an urgent need for more digital talent across the region as demand for such profiles rises faster than supply. Women need to be part of the long-term solution.” Vaishali, who is one of the authors of the BCG report, further explained, “Our research shows that gender diversity can make companies more innovative and agile. For example, companies where women account for more than 20% of the management team have approximate 10% higher innovation revenues than companies with male-dominated leadership”.
Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information, Ms Sim Ann, also announced the extension of the MentorConnect programme for a second year at a webinar organised by SGWIT to commemorate its first anniversary.
The cross-company mentorship programme was started last year by Dell Technologies as a platform to guide and empower the development of women professionals in tech and promote best practices among participating companies from all industries. The programme will see four new companies, DBS Bank, VMWare, Aon, and BHP, joining the current ones – Dell Technologies, IMDA, Salesforce and ST Engineering.
