Singapore companies in the infocomm technology and interactive digital media (IDM) areas have also created world-class products and services.

Dr Christopher Chia, chief executive of Media Development Authority (MDA): “Creativity is not questioned today. Instead, we need to ensure that the content pipeline is full and that development teams can easily collaborate with overseas partners at any hour.”

Creativity in IT and IDM would not have been possible without two fundamental strategies that Singapore has been developing over the last three decades: computerisation and government funding.

Twenty-eight years of computerisation produced trained manpower, turned Singaporeans into tech-savv people and built a comprehendisve infrastructure that connects Singapore to the world by submarine cables that have a whopping international Internet capacity of over 100 gigabits per second.

From fewer than 1,000 IT professionals when the national computerisation strategy started in 1981, there are now 139,000 professionals. Students and teachers use computers for learning and teaching. Office workers, housewives and the elderly have also become techsavvy during this time, willing to spend on shiny new gadgets like cellphones and digital music players.

A society so ingrained with technology seeded an environment ready to accept new digital toys and threw up technopreneurs the likes of the Facebook game firm, Tyler Projects, and IT firm ST Electronics that has branched out to
produce animated TV episodes and feature films.

Government funding in the last five to six years for IDM and new media led to fresh ideas, start-ups and companies that are today aggressively pushing the envelope with innovative digital services that are sold on the world market.

The injection of $500 million by the National Research Fund to create interactive digital media resulted in a slew of R&D projects in tertiary institutions as well as treaties with. overseas institutions like the Chinese Academy of Sciences to develop technologies that can be used to create apps.

Initiatives by the MDA to kick-start IDM projects include $50,000 microfinancing schemes to get potential technopreneurs to test their ideas.

World animation giant Lucasfilm is among the many IDM and game companies that opened their
local offices here. Singapore animators at Lucasfilm are contributing to the animation of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV episodes.

As these movies turn digital and with animated films being shot in 3D, the IT capabilities have proven useful. Techies know how to store movie rushes in digital format and transmit them, for example, in secure modes to foreign partners for collaboration. Or IT experts with programming skills are able to code algorithms for new games.

Then the broadband infrastructure that connects every part of Singapore to the world has big data pipes and high speeds which makes data transmission fast. Computergenerated graphics for a fight scene in an animated movie could be produced in a Singapore studio and then passed on to its partner in Amsterdam
at night when the sun sets here and rises in Europe and vice versa. Coding becomes more efficient and productive. Overall this saves time.

Feature-films and animated movies have gained international attention, with nominations and special
prizes at Cannes and other film festivals. Singapore filmmakers such as Kelvin Tong, Anthony Chen and
Jack Neo have all won nominations or awards at international film festivals.

Singapore still has much to do, for instance, getting more people trained to make new films, build
new games or create new technologies. What we have today is a promising start.

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