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Many thousands of years ago (approx 200 BCE), there was a relatively tiny innovation that changed global geo-politics — the domestication of horses. Hundreds of years ago, we have had innovation in arts, sciences, biology that all have made us (almost) masters of our destiny.

It is almost undisputed that innovation has advanced humankind, created countless advantages and immeasureable wealth. We in Singapore, have been very fortunate to see a huge surge in startups thanks to governmental support along with generous investors who distribute valuable capital, experience, and resources.

I think a tech startup would be the ideal vehicle that endeavours to explore the cutting edge. This would generally yield two outcomes: a high rate of trial and error failures (imagine how many kicks humans must have endured to tame the mighty horse?) and secondly, return on innovation.

Yes, it’s return on innovation versus Return on Investment. Imagine if humans stopped trying to tame the horse, just because there was no direct line of sight to economic impact.

But how can we measure return on innovation? How can we celebrate those who push the envelope of innovation vs those who “Asianify” an existing successful business? And this celebration should also include daring investors who genuinely believe in innovation versus something else. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong in being the biggest and baddest shoe maker or the slickest retail shop that provides the most economic value but not necessarily best innovative value. And its important we make that distinction.

So to me the idea of a tech startup or tech venture capital has a special meaning which should be measured by its own set of metrics.