TABLE OF CONTENTS Singapore is successfully transforming itself into a knowledge-based economy. As a response to the country's rapid development progress on the basis of export-led growth and the inputs by multinational companies, Singapore's government unveiled a new policy framework in 1991 that would take the country to the "next lap" of its development trajectory. The next lap strategy called for more ambitious industrialization programs in order to take Singapore to a higher level of technological sophistication and a shift towards knowledge-intensive industries. The computerization of Singapore's civil service which can be traced back to 1981, the remarkable IT literacy of local students, the systematic recruitment of foreign talents for new growth areas such as biotechnology and life sciences or the wireless technology-enabled lecture rooms of local universities such as the Singapore Management University (SMU) underline the commitment and gravity of respective policy implementations.
Singapore's vision of the city-state as an intelligent island was spelled out in the National IT Plan (1986) and the IT2000 blueprint, a rolling plan developed in 1992. Due to continuous IT investments, an increasing number of households have a PC. Singapore's Internet penetration rate is very high, and more and more Singapore...
