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What you have proposed is exactly what the PAP govt has been trying to do without much success for the past few decades.
There is a difference between Singapore and Korea. Korea has a home market which can test bed a new product and even if it fails to take-off in a big way, at least it can cover the R&D cost before it is junked. Same with Japan who carried a national standard of the cellular network which is not adopted in any other country.
For Singapore, any new product will immediately have to face competitive challenge on the world market. Except for a few small items (unlikely to carry the whole economy along) like the sound blaster, now practically dead, the home-plug, some models of PC (now extinct) which had a minor success, the rest are MNC driven manufacturing which will move with the cost of production and they are all going to China, India and Indochina.
Pharmaceutical haven't deliver the hoped for returns yet. Aeronautical is more service than manufacturing and except for ST and some other GIC investments they are mainly MNC operations. Chemical, our traditional strength, linked to the oil and gas industry is subject to the future evolution of this sector.
So if we don't move over to services, not only for the international market but also the domestic market to reduce the overwhelming reliance on the global economy, our future can be very bleak.
Even the high tech industries that the Govt is trying to attract can easily be migrated to countries like China which can leap frog in technological know-how. Where Singapore once had the financial muscle compared to other developing countries, to bring in large scale investments like chemical plants, now China can also do the same. The world has become a very open place as far as talent is concerned. So even in the Middle East, there are things that Singapore is traditionally strong at, we can now be threatened.
In fact, some people are saying, we are a bit late to evolve into a more service type of economy. Hongkong has already done so a few decades ago and now have limited manufacturing. Singapore is just playing catching up in this area. You must have noticed that I didn't say nasty things about the casinos despite the social costs which are minor compared to the total collapse of our economy. The main thing I would wish to see is a deliberate replacement of foreign manpower with local manpower in the gaming industry and people like Zhihau going there more often to throw in some money.
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