Singapore is truly a nation of super talents or, ok, ok, let me be more accurate, a nation with a very small pool of super talents. Mind you, there are plenty of great ideas to learn from them, like making every ministry or minister an entrepreneur and thus making every ministry self sustaining. A very good example is the Ministry of National Development
If I want to be an entrepreneur, the most exemplary ministry to learn from is the business model of MND. For a start, get a piece of land as cheap as possible then call for tenders and let the contractors bid at the lowest price to build properties for sale. There is a slight twist in this from the business model of Singapore Land Authority. In the latter they would open tender for contractors to bid for the land at the highest possible price to take the first bite of the cherry. I think HDB also got their land at a good price from SLA.
Now, after the contractor won the contract to build flats, let them outsource whatever jobs they want to the cheapest service provider. Not my problem as a super talent. Actually my job is already done once the tender is given to a contractor. All I need to do is to wait and shake leg and twiddle my thumbs. When the flats are completed, actually no need to wait till the flats are completed, I could immediately authorise the housing agencies to start marketing the flats. All I need to do is to determine how much profits I want to make per flat. And the housing agents would work furiously to sell the flats for me in advance.
By the time the flats are built and sold, I just collect my profit and don’t even have to say thank you. The biggest talent involved is to tell the buyers that the flats sold to them are very affordable. Better still, tell them they are getting it at a big market discount and see how happy the buyers are. Bought at a discount! What choice have the buyers?
But that is not all. The supreme talent is to tell the buyers that I am losing a lot of money building and selling the flats. You know I did not lift a finger on a single piece of brick. Nevermind, as long as they pay me for the flats and believe that I lost money, that is good enough. This losing money part will make them feel so grateful to me, like I am a philanthropist, or like the merciful God that came down from heaven to do charity, to help the people.
How much it cost me to build the flats, no one knows. How much I made from the sale of the flats, no one knows. They only know that I work so hard to build flats for them and lost so much money. Next time if I raised the price of flats, they will be very understanding. They will convince themselves that my prices are really cheap, even selling below cost, so raising the price a bit will only reduce my big losses. They will understand.
See how talented I am? Or is it the other way, the buyers are just too daft to know what is happening? I am a genius.
Chua Chin Leng AKA RedBean
*The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.com/