So I am writing this blog from Singapore today, Monday evening, which translates into Monday morning NYC time; but I'm trying not to think about that. I'm here on a client trip. For reasons I prefer not to go into in depth, I've spent much of the day touring around semi-confidential military sites with a major local real estate developer. We talked about the project I'm working on here, as well as Singapore's overarching strategy for growth. Much of this conversation took place at a restaurant called "Cicada art-related casual lounge restaurant." Arts and what the developers called "creatives" are taken very seriously here.

Actually, it's much simpler than that. The future is taken seriously here. From personal savings to government investments, planning for the future means serious business in Singapore. Here, I'm echoing a column that Thomas Friedman (author of The World is Flat) wrote last week in the New York Times. He mentions the feeling of disparity one feels traveling from New York's JFK to Singapore's Terminal 3. Terminal 3 opened last year, so it's perhaps an unfair comparison, but it's hard to deny the feeling that one country seems to have more loose change in the couch than the other. Traveling from Newark, NJ on the direct flight doesn't diminish that feeling. One arrives in Singapore to lush indoor landscaping, triple-height customs' lobbies with live vegetation hanging on the walls and well-organized taxi pick-up locations. Meanwhile at Newark, you scurry down to your gate by ignoring the large signs pointing to escalators that have been rerouted to travel up instead of down.


The folks running the show in Singapore today mix public investment and planning with private development. This is not revolutionary. New York City works this way, too. The difference, though, is that Singapore does not take its status for granted. Driving past a cluster of typical squat, office-park-looking buildings, this bureaucrat developer explained that the development had been meant to house hi-tech scientific research. Instead, the electronic industry had brought in functions that eventually became commodified — late industrial electronic stuff. Now, the country seeks to maximize on its English language, location and strong intellectual property regulation to promote growth in creative development. This means everything from media production to software coding to distribution.

The strategy is pretty smart. And it's exactly what the U.S. is not doing.