In a joint commentary, SMU President Professor Arnoud De Meyer shared the story of how the British high-tech firm ARM became a world leader in chip design, and was acquired for US$32b (S$44b) by Japan's Softbank. ARM is a pure intellectual property (IP) company. They design, but don't produce, a specific type of microprocessors which use fewer instructions and thus less energy. Reflecting on the valuable observations one can make about this case for Singapore-based innovators, Prof De Meyer highlighted that there is a lot of money to be made in the production of intellectual property, which also happens to create well-paid jobs (such as designers and commercial account managers) that we want here in Singapore. The second observation is that innovators should not try to do everything themselves. ARM is good at mobilising and guiding a very international network of knowledge partners, including huge players like Huawei, Samsung or Apple. And yet a small company like ARM is able to act as a lead firm in such a network, by cleverly orchestrating the network.

A third observation is that ARM chose to be a global company from Day 1. It has only a few customers in continental Europe. Last year, only 10 per cent of its revenues came from Europe (including the UK), while North America and Asia accounted for 38 per cent and 52 per cent respectively. Lastly, Prof De Meyer observed that ARM is relying on highly specialised developers from all over Europe and the world. It faces shortages of well-trained engineers in the UK and is therefore relying on a multinational group of talent. He emphasised that if innovators in Singapore learn from these observations, perhaps we will be able to write a similar story about the takeover of a Singapore high-tech company in a few years from now.