Saturday, March 06, 2004

Access and interaction with faculty at Singapore seems to be a lot easier than in Fontainebleau. I am running a club that tries to bring Professional Women on campus. The Singapore arm of this club focuses also quite a bit more on the entrepreneur side of things, because the entrepreneurship department is run out of the Asian campus (and the best entrepreneurship profs at INSEAD are Singapore residents). My REP prof tells me that the Singapore government has launched an initiative to help encourage entrepreneurship in Singapore (they first encouraged trade with their Hub strategy, and they are now looking for a second boost). Instead of talking about entrepreneurship, they organize discussion forums, hosted by a successful local entrepreneur.

So there we go, off to a panel with the Singapore Minister of Trade and Industry, Elim Chew (CEO and Founder of 77th Street), Janet (Head of Commercial Banking HSBC Singapore), "Mr Fish" a very funny and lively entrepreneur who has made a fortune exporting aquarium fish and various others. The presentation of 77th Street was not the average Fashion Show: young models wearing teenage outfit took various positions and effectively portrayed Youth attitude and the Hip Hop Break Dancer were absolutely amazing.

Elim Chez and Janet have both agreed to come to INSEAD for panel discussions and presentaitons. The main challenge will be to agree on dates since they seem to be travelling back and forth all the time. The prof had forgotten his business cards but he didn't need any, everyone seemed to know him, even the Minister (whom I shook hands with).

I came back with 20,000 business cards, a full stomach and the memory of extremely interesting discussions.

Singapore rocks.

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