On Change

“The glass is half full”, said the optimist.

“The glass is half empty”, said the pessimist.

An EDB officer overheard the conversations and snapped, “the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.”

Affixed at the bottom right corner of this page is a very lovely snippet describing the Amoeba Challenge. That is but a summary of what the Amoeba Challenge is. If you’re in a rush, read that; but if you want the whole package (as you should), read on. The term “Amoeba” is actually a fairly recent moniker. Originally, the single celled eukaryote was called Proteus animalcule, evidently derived from the name of the Greek god Proteus - whose special trait was shape shifting. Later on, the name “amibe” was bestowed on the creature. That term came from the Greek word amoibè, meaning change.

Why the focus on change? Since you asked for the full package, here I go. Clausewitz was a Prussian general who wrote an excellence military treatise aptly titled Vom Kriege (On War). Here is an interesting passage.

When in 1806 the Prussian generals....plunged into the open jaws of disaster by using Frederick the Great's oblique order of battle, it was not just a case of a style that had outlived its usefulness but the most extreme poverty of the imagination to which routine has ever led. The result was that the Prussian army under Hohenlohe was ruined more completely than any army has ever been ruined on the battlefield.

- Clausewitz

In short, the Prussian generals though that Napoleon was a lucky newbie miscreant who enjoys tremendous beginner’s luck. Hence, the Prussians used the exact same strategy that they used in 1760 during the Seven Years War against their enemies. They lined their soldiers up in square box formations, oblique formations, entirely rigid drill based tactics, not realizing that the lucky newbie Napoleon had developed the concept of speed over rigidity, essentially prizing maneuverability over order. The Prussians got their ass kicked.

Place this in the context of Singapore. The strategies that have worked no longer works. In the early years of Singapore’s economic development, we relied on the expansion of our population as well as the burgeoning capital formation taking place on the island for GDP growth. Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize economist and my favorite columnist on the New York Times, predicted 17 years ago that the capital driven growth will not last. In order to survive, Singapore has to switch to productivity driven growth. In the last two decades, we have done exactly that. What next, we ask. How do we capture macrotrends, filter out global demand patterns, shift Singapore’s position on the value chain and craft a niche for the economy of Singapore.

In EDB, we have Amoeba Groups - project teams that look at specific trends and work on them for a period of time, testing the viability of those proposals. The ones with potential are then developed into full time aims. During these 3 days, 31 students will experience being in an Amoeba group. They will look at future trends, capturing value for Singapore’s economy while working around the limitations of Singapore’s resources. Going back to the joke that started this article, it is not enough to merely know the facts. We want to know what is our optimal response.

Welcome to the EDB Amoeba Challenge 2011.