Addressing sustainability challenges through state-led social innovation: The Singapore story

The Singapore government has implemented series of economic reforms aimed at reviving economic growth, improving productivity, reducing its reliance on foreign labour, fostering a culture of innovation in businesses, and building a sustainable ecosystem over the past few years. This chapter assesses how businesses are responding to specific government measures, and how they view the government’s catalytic role of in one of the areas of reform: sustainable development. We rely on primary data and interviews conducted with SME Firms in 2014 (n=215), and analyse firm-level behavioural changes in response to government policy, incentives and influence. Our analysis finds that Singapore’s State-directed innovation efforts to improve sustainability have limitations. Our findings lend credibility to the argument that social innovation and achieving sustainable objectives cannot be driven solely using a top-down State-driven policy approach.