Andreas Brenner shares his experience in East Asia. He got to explore the region while he studied in Singapore, where he completed a Master degree in Technology entrepreneurship and Innovation at Nanyang Technological University. Upon graduating in May, Andi moved back in Europe, leaving his Sandbox Singapore Ambassador duties to Gwendolyn Regina Tan and Zhihan Lee, only to take on the role in Zurich. Listen to his plans, and find out about resolving conflict in different Asian cultures.

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We recently had the pleasure to welcome Raymond Abelin to a dinner with the Zurich community. Currently Director of the Nanyang Technopreneurship Center at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (NTU), one of the best entrepreneurship programs with a focus on technology. He was visiting Switzerland last week and contacted us to help him get in touch with some of the most interesting young entrepreneurs in town. We talked of course about entrepreneurship, and about the challenge to teach it in academic institutions. Raymond teaches creative thinking and we exchanged opinions about cultural differences between the West and Asia, where entrepreneurship is often a mindset that needs to be developed.

Raymond is a person with a very large experience in a wide range of domains: he began his career in Hollywood’s entertainment industry in the 1970′s, animating Scooby Doo series for Hanna Barbera Productions, moved to writing and directing, real estate, design and now to the academic field as a Professor and program Director at NTU.

Antoine is a Co-Founder and the CEO of Sandbox. Besides the discussions, he also very much enjoyed the delicious pizza of Michelangelo in Zurich.

Last Monday, when arriving from Bangkok, I was as always very relaxed when landing in the lion city and passing out of Changi Airport into the clean and relatively quiet streets. It seems like a completely different world, comfortably easy but also a bit superficial, particularly when coming from rather chaotic places like Bangkok. Is this still Asia? Yes, of course. I actually could very well imagine the future of many Asian cities, particularly in China and South East Asia to become like Singapore. Experienced travelers from Malaysia use to say that KL looks like Singapore 20 years ago. I personally like to live here. It is a very multicultural city and there are a variety of interesting talents. Besides, it’s a perfect base to leverage your business into South East Asia, sometimes even China and India.

On Wednesday night, I had the pleasure to host the first official Sandbox Dinner in Singapore and it was a great success. The participants consisted of seven different nationalities and came from a variety of backgrounds – from a researcher at Insead to a social entrepreneur and an investment manager. Interestingly, they all shared an entrepreneurial mind and the aspiration to turn ideas into reality. This common ground made them to connect very well.

The most popular topics of the night were related to entrepreneurship, particularly in Asia. Many seem to believe that there are significant differences between entrepreneurs in Asia and in the West. Even if Singapore is proven to be the most business friendly city in the world, top graduates are mostly forced by cultural norms and their families to become employed at multinational corporations. However, Singapore is actually pushing very hard to encourage young people to be innovative and become entrepreneurs. For example, the government and universities engage in providing venture capital so that already now more than 5% of Singaporean companies are backed by Venture Capital. The education system offers some worldwide unique programmes such as a Master in Technopreneurship and universities often provide free office space and support to startups of all stages. Furthermore, you can incorporate your own business through an online platform in no time and with SDG 1 in capital. So if you are talented, have an idea for a business and live in Singapore, please consider starting your own business. It is probably nowhere as easy as here.

I am happy to announce that we further expand Sandbox into Asia. Having been in Singapore for less than a week, I have already met many inspiring young individuals. Singapore is arguably one of the major hubs for talents. Plus, the severe financial crisis in the West is likely to further increase the inflow of talents into Asia. Therefore, I will explore opportunities for Sandbox in this exciting region for the next month or so. If you happen to be there, just drop me a line!