Why the new Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg may soon come from Singapore

Singapore to outwit Silicon Valley as tech innovation hub over the next decade.

The brisk pace of technology innovations – including mobile devices and apps, social networking and cloud computing – indicate a need to constantly assess the business implications of disruptive technologies, says KPMG.

“The development and adoption of new technologies is spreading out from the Silicon Valley epicenter to tech hubs around the world. Asia is leading the charge in mobile communications and commerce, skipping past the PC generation of the West. Technology parks have sprung up in Beijing, Bangalore and beyond as emerging markets vie to move up the innovation ladder from manufacturing or outsourcing centers. China is already the world’s second-largest economy, and as micro-innovations unfold, could eventually stack up to Silicon Valley as a tech force,” it said in its latest report.

Other countries expected to become technology innovation hubs include Canada, Israel, China, South Korea, Japan and India.

Morten Lund, serial Entrepreneur at Chief Ideologist Copenhagen said that innovation has been mainly consolidated in San Francisco because of the cash and the knowledge but nNow it is becoming totally distributed. “In the next 10 years Singapore will become one of the biggest hubs for tech innovation. Smaller startups will end up there because of the British legal system and anti-corruption policies. Smarter teams will follow where the security is. And with Asia growing like crazy, Singapore is a hub, just like what happened with trading centers,” he said.

According to KPMG, Singapore is currently on its sixth technology master plan, Intelligent Nation 2015, the latest in a series dating back to 1980. This plan seeks to infuse innovation, new business models and vibrancy into the local infocomm ecosystem through initiatives for start-ups and commercialization of technology. “Singapore has historically ranked high as a tech ecosystem, including being placed second in the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report every year from 2009 to 2012. For over a decade, various investment initiatives and tax incentives have encouraged technological innovation and driven productivity,” said KPMG

With China likely to surpass the US over the next 10 years to lead global technological innovation, Hoh Wah Lee, Head of Advisory, KPMG in Singapore said that Singapore is well-placed to become an important Asia-Pacific tech innovation hub. “We already have the right level of government support and incentives; and if you add a significant multinational business presence and a technology-ready population (where local broadband wireless penetration recorded 150 percent in 2012), then you have all the ingredients for a successful tech innovation ecosystem,” he said.

KPMG’s Technology Innovation Survey reflects the viewpoint of 668 global technology leaders. The web survey was conducted from March to May 2012.