Manpower crunch stunts Singapore's ambitious R&D dreams

R&D firms are scrambling for solutions.

The city-state is poised to become an Asian R&D powerhouse in the coming years, but a shortage of specialised talent in the R&D field is threatening its bid.

According to BMI Research, even though job opportunities in the R&D field are robust, limited talent is creating a huge gap between the amount of salary and the level of productivity.

“An understanding of drug research processes is difficult to teach in a classroom and can only be gained through direct work experience on projects in real-life settings,” said Brian Henry, executive director for early discovery pharmacology, MSD translational medicine research centre in Singapore.

As a result of the manpower crunch, firms are opting to collaborate with companies and spread research projects across innovation platforms and partners.

“Some pharmaceutical firms have also begun to farm out their R&D activities to partners, such as small biotech start-ups,” BMI Research said.