New "INSEAD for Impact" executive programme this June in Singapore

- Three-day executive forum-style programme for leaders, high potential executives and teams to deliver real impact

 

INSEAD has launched INSEAD for Impact (IFI), a three-day immersive executive forum-styled programme designed to be practice-led, future-facing and data-driven. It aims to help leaders and strategy teams turn strategic insight into executable action, and aligns with the Asia Campus' 25th anniversary celebrations by exemplifying INSEAD’s legacy of pioneering leadership development in Asia.

At a time when leaders are overwhelmed with disruption, geopolitical uncertainty and competing advice, IFI shifts the focus from understanding what is happening to determining how to make change happen. By combining faculty insight, industry perspectives and collaborative working sessions, the programme enables participants to translate emerging trends into practical strategies and prioritised actions. 

IFI is deliberately structured to move beyond analysis to execution, supporting leaders as they understand the forces reshaping business, develop practical, prioritised plans for change and build the personal and organisational resilience required to sustain execution. 

Sameer Hasija, Dean of Executive Education and Dean of the Asia Campus at INSEAD said: “By combining practice, future-facing perspectives and data-driven rigour in an immersive format–the INSEAD for Impact programme helps organisations move from knowing what must change to actually making change happen.” 

Narayan Pant, Programme Director of IFI and Professor of Management Practice at INSEAD added: “Today’s leaders live in environments that change constantly and unpredictably. Their challenge, then, is to quiet the noise, focus their attention on what really matters, and then act on it. 

"This programme offers leaders focused time and space to understand what matters to them strategically, deploy AI tools that can help them, and practice leadership approaches designed for a new era.” 

The inaugural IFI session will take place from 22–24 June 2026 at the INSEAD Asia Campus in Singapore. Participants can expect:

 Twice-daily plenary sessions led by INSEAD faculty and external thought leaders to analyse key trends and forces 

 Focused working sessions where participants collaborate in smaller groups to develop actionable responses to key trends with relevance to the specific content pillar. 

 Peer benchmarking and exchange, enabling participants to learn from diverse industries and leadership contexts 

Content pillars: 

 Disruption & strategy: Build smart strategies to navigate the inevitable disruptions affecting your business. 

 AI in action: Better leverage AI within your teams to enhance strategic decision-making and build robust processes for your organisation. 

 Leadership development: Develop a practical framework for development for the evolving nature of leadership skills needed to drive change effectively.

Details

Preferential team rates are available.

View the INSEAD for Impact video at https://youtu.be/ZScj3i7ToUo

Visit IFI or contact the programme team at IFI_Contact@insead.edu

Singapore leads the world in talent competitiveness

Source: INSEAD GTCI infographic. GTCI ranks in 2023 vs 2025. Singapore has moved up while Australia has moved down in the top 12.

Singapore has leapfrogged Switzerland to take top spot in the latest Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI), riding on its strength in cultivating adaptable, digitally fluent and innovation-ready workforces in the age of AI.

This year is the first time the city-state topped the annual ranking, which was launched by INSEAD in 2013 as a benchmark for policy thinking on labour markets, work organisation and talent flows.

Themed Resilience in the Age of Disruption, the 11th GTCI examines how nations and economies are building talent systems capable of weathering disruptions. The ranking of 135 economies is based on 77 indicators, including soft skills and AI talent concentration, across six dimensions: Enable, Attract, Grow, Retain, Vocational and Technical Skills, and Generalist Adaptive Skills.

Lily Fang, INSEAD’s Dean of Research and Innovation, commented: “This year’s report should be seen as much more than a race between nations. It offers leaders thoughtful points of reflection on how to integrate powerful technologies, such as AI, into the grand pursuit of human progress.”

This year’s ranking also marks the launch of a new partnership between INSEAD and the Portulans Institute, a non-profit research outfit based in the US. “This collaboration brings renewed depth and clarity to the GTCI at a time when rapid technological change, geopolitical uncertainty and profound societal transitions make dependable talent metrics more essential than ever,” said Rafael Escalona Reynoso, CEO of Portulans Institute.

Singapore stands apart in the latest ranking for the constant evolution of its educational system and its forward-looking approach to nurturing an adaptive and innovation-driven workforce, said the GTCI report.

The city-state was ranked first in Generalist Adaptive Skills for a workforce armed with the soft skills, digital literacy and innovation-oriented thinking that today’s fast-shifting landscape demands. Generalist Adaptive Skills has emerged as one of the strongest determinants of talent competitiveness. Singapore’s ability to retain talent also surged seven spots from 2023, to 31st in 2025. 

The city-state has also scored well for its effective governance and high standard of living, in addition to the constant evolution of its educational system and its forward-looking approach to nurturing an adaptive, innovation-driven workforce. Furthermore, Singapore placed first in the Formal Education and Regulatory Landscape measures, showing the depth and resilience of its human capital systems and institutional frameworks. 

“Economies that cultivate adaptable, cross-functional and AI-literate workforces tend to be better positioned to convert disruption into opportunity and sustain long-term competitiveness,” said Professor Paul Evans, Emeritus Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD and co-editor of the report.

“This year’s results underscore that talent competitiveness is not solely a function of income level, but of strategic policy orientation, institutional quality and effective mobilisation of human capital resources.”

GTCI 2025: The top 20

1. Singapore	11. Ireland
2. Switzerland	12. UK
3. Denmark	13. Iceland
4. Finland	14. Canada
5. Sweden	15. Belgium
6. Netherlands	16. Austria
7. Norway	17. Germany
8. Luxembourg	18. New Zealand
9. US	19. France
10. Australia	20. Czech Republic

One of the defining messages of GTCI 2025 is that the ability to translate investments into meaningful outcomes will set economies apart in the talent race. Singapore, South Korea and Israel stood out for their ability to get better talent outcomes with fewer resources. 

This was also true for some lower-middle income countries such as Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Low-income countries also demonstrated strong foundations for talent development. 

Evans said: “Economies that align education, labour and innovation systems towards adaptive talent development can achieve high performance even with modest income levels.” 

Regionally speaking, there were few surprises. Europe continues to dominate the ranking, accounting for 18 of the top 25 positions. In Asia and Oceania, Australia (10th) and New Zealand (18th) outscored Singapore in retaining talent but fell behind in General Adaptive Skills.  

China’s decline from 40th to 53rd reflected a less favourable business climate and labour market, though the report acknowledges that insufficient data could also have played a part. India, on the other hand, climbed three spots, to 100th. Strengthening the quality of its vocational education and employability could help it capitalise on its digital strengths and world-leading IT service exports.  

North Africa and Western Asia were led by Israel (23rd) while the UAE (25th) topped the region in attracting talent and developing skills, although it lagged in high-level skills.

“True resilience in talent is turning adversity into a catalyst for innovation, adaptability and renewed purpose,” said Professor Felipe Monteiro, GTCI Academic Director and Senior Affiliate Professor of Strategy at INSEAD.

“Resilience means learning how to bounce forward, not just bounce back from the inevitable shocks and crises.”

Escalona Reynoso added: “What matters most today are adaptive capabilities: the ability to collaborate, think across disciplines, innovate under pressure and navigate fast-moving, tech-driven environments.

“These are the skills that increasingly define a country’s competitiveness - and the GTCI now captures this reality more clearly than ever.”

Escalona Reynoso, Professor Evans and Professor Monteiro co-authored an INSEAD Knowledge article that identified the Nordic nations, Singapore and Switzerland as good examples of societal resilience in action. Resilience entails giving priority to active labour market practices to support citizens in bouncing forward from job loss, which may accelerate with the impact of AI, they explained.

Resilience also means having educational systems that help people learn from adversity, alongside a continued focus on developing organisational agility and collaborative problem-solving. To achieve resilience, people must be able to collaborate, think across disciplines, innovate under pressure and navigate fast-moving, tech-driven environments. The Generalist Adaptive Skills dimension of this year’s report operationalises this idea within the talent framework, while new indicators on AI capability, soft skills, employee well-being and workforce resilience measure not only where countries stand, but their preparedness for what comes next.

Taking an AI lens to the situation, the authors said that "the capacity to integrate AI tools, think critically about their use, and combine technological fluency with human-centric soft skills will be indispensable".

Explore

Download the report and infographics at https://www.insead.edu/global-talent-competitiveness-index

Hashtag: #GTCI2025

Stars facilitate innovation: INSEAD

Good mentors are worth their weight in gold, according to new research from INSEAD.

In Where Do Stars Come From? The Role of Star vs. Nonstar Collaborators in Creative Settings, published in Organization Science, Manuel Sosa, INSEAD Associate Professor of Technology and Operations Management, Jürgen Mihm, INSEAD Professor of Technology and Operations Management and Haibo Liu, Assistant Professor of Management, University of California Riverside, discuss the skills required to integrate, or synthesise, various raw materials in a way that will maximise creativity, and create innovations that help organisations outperform their competitors.

Specifically, the research zeroes in on the creative aspects of interpersonal collaboration from a new perspective: the quality of the collaborator, both stars - people able to generate a disproportionate amount of influential output - and non-stars.

“We wanted to understand, if by working with a star, you would be more likely to become a star; we found that indeed you would,” Sosa said. “The interesting question is how does this happen and why does this happen? What happens when you work with a star that is different from when you work with other people?”

By examining the creative performance of designers who have been granted design patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office over a 35-year period, the authors found that collaborating with star designers indeed significantly increases the chances of becoming a star. Interestingly, they found evidence that creative stars are more likely to possess creative synthesis skills required for creating breakthrough innovations and that they transfer such skill to their collaborators.

Such skills include the ability to understand existing innovation paradigms and create a new one by reconciling distant and often seemingly contradictory viewpoints and then continue to iterate and refine such a new paradigm until it leads to an outstanding innovation output.

All of these creative skills are highly tacit and unlikely to be learnt through a book or in a classroom, the researchers say. While some creative stars may pick them up intuitively or through years of trial-and-error experience, the likelihood of someone absorbing these skills is much higher if they work in close proximity with someone who already possesses them. This allows innovators to observe, learn and practice synthesis skills from the star.

“It is important to note that collaborating with stars doesn’t preclude collaborating with others who are non-stars,” Sosa noted. “Both types of collaborators benefit the innovator’s creative performance and increase the likelihood of creating a breakthrough innovation.”

In fact, some companies today avoid the idea of having a design team with a dominant star, and instead focus on the proven premise that diversity – having a wide-ranging pool of potentially innovative ideas – is key to creativity.

Sosa added, “What we found is that as well as bringing with them new data and experience like a non-star, stars contribute a set of creative skills, rarely found anywhere else, that can have a lasting transformation of the innovator’s creative abilities.”

The paper expands on this to assess the conditions required to maximise the chance of rising to stardom, and noted that this varies greatly depending on whether a star is part of the collaboration team.

When non-stars collaborate, shared expertise or a cohesive social network can limit diversity and steer the team towards “group think” - a phenomenon where everyone agrees with each other, even if the conclusion is wrong. This can negatively impact creative output.

However, when non-stars work with stars, greater shared social network connections and closer similarities in expertise facilitate the exploitation of creative synthesis skills. That is, the circumstances help to build a common insightful understanding of the problem at hand; it encourages collaborators to see similarities among their different perspectives and iteratively refine the most promising ideas, increasing the likelihood of breakthrough innovations.

Most importantly, such cohesive collaborative conditions facilitate the transfer of tacit creative skills from stars to his/her collaborators which in turn increases the chances of them becoming stars in the future.

Competencies and complexities for citizens of the world

Source: INSEAD. Cover,
The Global
Cosmopolitan Mindset.

An INSEAD professor’s new book explains the unique competencies and complex issues facing multinational, multicultural “citizens of the world”, the people who have multiple passports or live outside their country of citizenship.

“Many of them come from humble immigrant backgrounds, growing up in multiple countries, languages and cultures so have had to work very hard to get where they are today. Some are simply from bicultural families and have been born into a world of globalisation and change,” says Linda Brimm, an Emeritus Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD. 

“A global mindset is essential in international business and in solving complex problems,” says  Brimm. Given their life and work experience across borders, citizens of the world “have a great deal to teach us about the new ways to address some of the complicated challenges of today,” says Brimm in The Global Cosmopolitan Mindset.

A global cosmopolitan mindset, Brimm says, “is a culmination of a growth mindset, a global mindset and a creative mindset.” Crucially, “their cognitive flexibility also enables global cosmopolitans to think locally while remaining global,” adds Brimm, an important skill to have as the world increasingly looks for new solutions to local challenges.

The book tells the stories of hundreds of global cosmopolitans Brimm has researched throughout her career. While every story is different, Brimm draws them together to find commonalities to understand what makes people successful when they cross borders and what others, especially managers in organisations, can learn from such individuals.

The new book is the sequel to Brimm's Global Cosmopolitans: The Creative Edge of Difference, which introduced the 7Cs Model of Change and Development for the changes people are likely to face on a global journey. The Global Cosmopolitan Mindset delves deeper into how global cosmopolitans develop, the identities they form for themselves and what they have to consider when they want to return home or retire.

Brimm structures the book around three main areas. 

- Part 1: how global cosmopolitans learn from their global lives to develop a mindset and a skillset they use to help them

- Part 2: how global cosmopolitans form their identities throughout their lives

- Part 3: how global cosmopolitans make sense of their journeys as they continue to create new chapters in their life stories

Part 1 explains how global cosmopolitans learn from their global lives to develop a mindset and a skillset they use to help them. Brimm characterises the global cosmopolitans mindset as a combination of learning and growth with a global perspective and creativity. For instance, along their journeys, they will face unpredictable situations such as learning new ways of communicating, new ways of relating to people, even the most mundane things such as how to seek medical care in a foreign land. 

“Those with attitudes of learning and flexibility are able to better learn from their experience and articulate it in constructive ways,” says Brimm.

Part 2 looks at how global cosmopolitans form their identities throughout their lives. Brimm acknowledges that “Some of the classic ways that individuals present themselves as part of their identity story are as relevant for global cosmopolitans as for anyone else. But global cosmopolitans add levels of complexity when facing a major challenge…they author and understand who they are, what they can change, and what must remain the same…black and white perspectives are rarely found in a global mindset.”

Brimm suggests that internal monitoring is a necessary skill for global cosmopolitans and using the image of a “life mosaic” helps them describe a sense of self that travels over time and through change. This helps them manage differences and gives them an acute sensitivity to local vs global norms in the workplace allowing them to feel at home with people of different backgrounds. She also illustrates the unique dilemmas faced by these individuals as they develop their own sense of identity.

Part 3 explains how global cosmopolitans make sense of their journeys as they continue to create new chapters in their life stories. “They write new chapters in their developing lives, which define them as individuals, as well as providing examples of answers to some universal questions, such as how to satisfy the need to belong, what gives a sense of meaning to life, or how to have an impact,” says Brimm. 

“‘If you are used to questioning your life and your possibilities, reflection and personal growth will continue’, is what global cosmopolitans have taught me.”

While nationalism and a resistance to globalisation are ascendant, Brimm believes that it is becoming increasingly clear that solving issues of trade, immigration and climate change transcend any one country or individual. “The global cosmopolitans who have obtained experience in moving skillfully across borders are a major source of energy and expertise to build the coalitions that can address such cross-national, cross-cultural issues,” she concludes.

Asia shines in global indices on talent, innovation

India and Vietnam are outperforming their development-level peers, according to the Global Innovation Index 2017* (GII) co-authored by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Key findings show the rise of India as an emerging innovation centre in Asia.
 
Each year, the GII surveys some 130 economies using dozens of metrics, from patent filings to education spending providing decision makers a high-level look at the innovative activity that increasingly drives economic and social growth. In a new feature for the GII, a special section looks at “invention hotspots” around the globe that show the highest density of inventors listed in international patent applications.

Now in its 10th edition, the GII 2017 notes a continued gap in innovative capacity between developed and developing nations and lacklustre growth rates for research and development (R&D) activities, both at the government and corporate levels.

“Innovation is the engine of economic growth in an increasingly knowledge-based global economy, but more investment is needed to help boost human creativity and economic output,” said WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. “Innovation can help transform the current economic upswing into longer-term growth.”

Global rankings 2017, with 2016 rankings in brackets

1	Switzerland (No. 1 in 2016)	14	Japan (16)
2	Sweden (2)	15	France (18)
3	Netherlands (9)	16	Hong Kong (14)
4	US (4)	17	Israel (21)
5	UK (3)	18	Canada (15)
6	Denmark (8)	19	Norway (22)
7	Singapore (6)	20	Austria (20)
8	Finland (5)	21	New Zealand (17)
9	Germany (10)	22	Mainland China (25)
10	Ireland (7)	23	Australia (19)
11	Korea (11)	24	Czech Republic (27)
12	Luxembourg (12)	25	Estonia (24)
13	Iceland (13)

In 2017, high-income economies took 24 of the top 25 spots, China being the exception at No. 22. In 2016, China became the first-ever middle income economy in the top 25. 
 

“Efforts to bridge the innovation divide have to start with helping emerging economies understand their innovation strengths and weaknesses and create appropriate policies and metrics,” said Soumitra Dutta, Dean, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University. “This has been the GII’s purpose for more than ten years now.”

A group of middle and lower-income economies performed significantly better on innovation than their current level of development would predict: a total of 17 economies comprise these ‘innovation achievers’ this year, a slight increase from 2016. Next to innovation powerhouses such as mainland China, Japan, and Korea, a group of Asian economies including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam are actively working to improve their innovation ecosystems and rank high in a number of important indicators related to education, research and development (R&D), productivity growth, high-tech exports, among others.  

The theme of the GII 2017, Innovation Feeding the World, looks at innovation carried out in agriculture and food systems. Over the next decades, the agriculture and food sector will face an enormous rise in global demand and increased competition for limited natural resources. In addition, it will need to adapt to and help mitigate climate change. Innovation is key to sustaining the productivity growth required to meet this rising demand and to helping enhance the networks that integrate the sustainable food production, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste management known as food systems.

“We are already witnessing the rapid, worldwide emergence of ‘digital agriculture,’ which includes drones, satellite-based sensors and field robotics,” said Bruno Lanvin, INSEAD Executive Director for Global Indices. “Now there is an urgent need for ‘smart agriculture’ to optimise supply and distribution chains and foster creative new business models that minimise pressure on land, energy and other natural resources - while addressing the needs of the world’s poorest.”

“By 2050, the world’s population is estimated to reach 9.7 billion. This presents the global agricultural sector with a daunting challenge. The stage has been set for a potential global food crisis if policy makers and other stakeholders fail to implement agricultural innovation that significantly boosts productivity,” said Barry Jaruzelski, Principal at Strategy&, PwC's strategy consulting business.

Korea maintains its top overall rankings in patenting and other intellectual property (IP)-related indicators, while ranking second in human capital and research, with its business sector contributing significantly to R&D efforts. Japan, ranked third in the region, is in the top 10 global economies for R&D, information and communication technologies, trade, competition, market scale, knowledge absorption, creation, and diffusion.

China continues moving ahead in the overall GII ranking (22^nd overall this year), reflecting high scores in business sophistication and knowledge and technology outputs. China this year displays a strong performance in several indicators, including the presence of global R&D companies, research talent in business enterprise, patent applications and other IP‐related variables.

Within the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN): 

• Singapore is the top performer in most of the indicators, with a few notable exceptions: ICT services exports, where the Philippines leads, and expenditure on education, where Vietnam leads. 
• Thailand’s strengths include creative goods exports and gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) financed by business, where it places 5th and 6^th globally. 
• Vietnam shows the second best rank of the region in expenditure on education and also performs well in labour productivity growth, economy-wide investment, and foreign direct investment net inflows. 
• Malaysia ranks well in high-tech imports and exports, university/industry research collaboration, and graduates in science and engineering.

By subregion, India, 60^th globally, is the top-ranked economy in Central and Southern Asia. It has outperformed on innovation relative to its GDP per capita for seven years in a row, researchers note. India has shown improvement in most areas, including in infrastructure, business sophistication, knowledge and technology and creative outputs. India ranks 14^th overall in the presence of global R&D companies, considerably better than comparable groups of lower- and upper-middle-income economies. India also surpasses most other middle-income economies in science and engineering graduates, gross capital formation, GERD performed by business, research talent, on the input side; quality of scientific publications, growth rate of GDP per worker, high-tech and ICT services exports, creative goods exports, high-tech manufactures, and IP receipts on the output side.

“Public policy plays a pivotal role in creating an enabling environment conducive to innovation. In the last two years, we have seen important activities around the GII in India like the formation of India’s high-level Task Force on Innovation and consultative exercises on both innovation policy and better innovation metrics,” said Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, Confederation of Indian Industry.

Iran (75^th overall) excels in tertiary education, ranking second in the world in number of graduates in science and engineering. Tajikistan (94th) is first in the world in microfinance loans, while Kazakhstan (78^th) ranks first globally in pupil‐teacher ratio and third in ease of protecting minority investors.

Third in the Northern Africa and Western Asia region is the UAE (35^th globally), benefiting from increased data availability and shows strengths in tertiary inbound mobility, innovation clusters and ICT-driven business model innovation. Sixteen of the 19 economies in the Northern Africa and Western Asia region are in the top 100 globally, including Turkey (43rd), Qatar (49th), KSA (55th), Kuwait (56th), Bahrain (66th), Oman (77th), Lebanon (81st), Azerbaijan (82nd), and Jordan (83rd).

The GII, in its 10th edition this year, is co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a specialised agency of the United Nations. Published annually since 2007, the GII is now a leading benchmarking tool for business executives, policy makers and others seeking insight into the state of innovation around the world. Policymakers, business leaders and other stakeholders use the GII to evaluate progress on a continual basis.

The core of the GII report consists of a ranking of world economies’ innovation capabilities and results. Recognising the key role of innovation as a driver of economic growth and prosperity, and the need for a broad horizontal vision of innovation applicable to developed and emerging economies, the GII includes indicators that go beyond the traditional measures of innovation such as the level of research and development.

In April, INSEAD separately announced that Singapore had been ranked No. 1 in Asia Pacific and No. 2 globally according to the Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) 2017. 

Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2017 
Rankings: Top Ten

1 Switzerland

2 Singapore

3 UK

4 US

5 Sweden

6 Australia

7 Luxembourg

8 Denmark

9 Finland

10 Norway

Singapore is ranked second globally for the fourth consecutive year, retaining its top spot in Asia Pacific. Australia (6th), New Zealand (14th), Japan (22nd), Malaysia (28th) and South Korea (29th), ranked within the Top 30 globally.

Produced in partnership with The Adecco Group and the Human Capital Leadership Institute of Singapore (HCLI), the GTCI is an annual benchmarking report that measures the ability of countries to compete for talent. Focusing on Talent and Technology, the 2017 report explores the effects of technological change on talent competitiveness and the future of work, arguing that while jobs at all levels continue to be replaced by machines, technology is also creating new opportunities.

In Asia Pacific, the countries that ranked within the Top 30 globally included:

-          Singapore (2nd)

-          Australia (6th)

-          New Zealand (14th)

-          Japan (22nd)

-          Malaysia (28th)

-          South Korea (29th)

-          Philippines (52nd)

-          Kazakhstan (53rd)

-          China (54th)

-          Thailand (73rd)

-          Sri Lanka (82nd)

-          Kyrgyzstan (87th)

-          Mongolia (72nd)

-          Vietnam (86th)

-          Indonesia (90th)

-          India (92nd)

-          Bhutan (98th)

-          Iran (103rd)

-          Cambodia (108th)

-          Pakistan (111th)

-          Bangladesh (113rd)

The GTCI is an annual study measuring the ability of countries to compete for talent. Designed for governments, businesses and non-profit organisations, the GTCI ranks over 100 economies according to their ability to develop, attract and retain talent.

High-ranking countries share key traits, including educational systems that meet the needs of the economy; employment policies that favour flexibility, mobility and entrepreneurship; and high connectedness of stakeholders in business, education and government as well as high level of technological competence, INSEAD said.

Ilian Mihov, Dean of INSEAD, said: “This year’s GTCI report shows that countries in the Asia Pacific region demonstrate strong talent readiness for technology. It also highlights the important role of education. Educational systems have to revamp to help learners foster learning agility and adjust on the fly of changing conditions. INSEAD looks forward to fully playing its role as a leading global provider of talent and leadership.”

Singapore has shown outstanding performance in the Enable, Attract and Global Knowledge pillars. Countries can learn from Singapore’s well-developed regulatory and market landscapes for global talent to thrive and its ability to anticipate the movements of the economy.

Su-Yen Wong, CEO of Human Capital Leadership Institute, commented: “The recent report published by Singapore’s Committee on the Future Economy suggested that building strong digital capabilities is one of the key strategies that will propel Singapore’s growth for the next two decades. Digital technologies will help small and exposed economies like Singapore punch above their weight by creating means for their businesses and talent to reach out to the global market. Countries must continue to upskill their workforce so that they can adapt to the digitisation wave and the sweeping structural changes that are poised to shakeup traditional work arrangements.”

Asia’s giants China (54th) and India (92nd) are still a fair distance away from the top. Bruno Lanvin, Executive Director of Global Indices at INSEAD and co-editor of the report said: “Overall, a big challenge for China and India lies in their ability to attract talent, and they both face the issue of local higher-skilled workers leaving to live and work abroad. To improve their attractiveness, the countries can further boost their regulatory and market landscapes.

“However, delving deeper and looking at the city-level, the two countries have metropolises exemplary in terms of their talent attractiveness. Shanghai and Mumbai (apart from Singapore) are the only Asian cities identified and ranked in the inaugural edition of the Global Cities Talent Competitiveness Index (GCTCI), but future editions will undoubtedly include more, confirming the growing attractiveness of Asian cities.”

Australia (6th) performed exceptionally being ranked in the Top 10 this year, as it is one of the top countries in the Attract and Global Knowledge Skills pillars. However, Vocational and Technical Skills show room for improvement. This may indicate that the country’s structural shift towards knowledge jobs and services is perhaps leaving gaps in the technical/vocational area.

Christophe Duchatellier, Regional Head of Asia Pacific, The Adecco Group, commented, “Although Singapore, Australia and New Zealand all feature in the Top 20 of this edition of the Global Talent Competitiveness Index, these latest findings highlight the increasing challenges that many countries in the Asia Pacific region have in attracting and retaining talent. In 2017 we are already observing organisations across the region placing an increased emphasis on world-class talent attraction strategies and tactics that will support them in remaining competitive. We would expect to see more organisations offering internship and apprenticeship programmes to foster skills development.”

Malaysia (28th) is the top-ranked country in the group of upper-middle-income countries. The country ranks above higher-income countries such as South Korea (29th).

Paul Evans, The Shell Chair Professor of Human Resources and Organisational Development, Emeritus, at INSEAD, and Academic Director and co-editor of the Global Talent Competitiveness Index said: “Malaysia performs particularly well in the pillars of the Enabling context and Vocational and Technical Skills. It also does well on External Openness as it has been able to attract talent from overseas. In addition, in terms of talent readiness for technology, Malaysia ranks higher than South Korea even though the IT infrastructure of the latter is much superior. The country can boost its rankings if it further improves in Internal Openness in terms of tolerance of minorities.”

Japan (22nd) has a solid overall performance, although it dipped slightly from last year. One of its main challenges is the Attract pillar where it is far behind the top three countries of this region. Middle-income countries such as Malaysia attract more foreign talent.

Although South Korea (29th) makes it into the top 30 this year, it is the lowest-ranking high-income country in the region. Despite being the top country in dimensions such as Tertiary enrollment and the Market Landscape—with world-class R&D in­vestments—the country has major room for improvement in the Attract pillar.

The Philippines (52nd) is the top lower-middle-income country, ranking above several upper-middle-income countries such as China (54th), and even above some high-income countries such as Kuwait (57th) and Oman (59th). Its greatest strength is its good pool of both Vocational and Technical Skills and Global Knowl­edge Skills.

Interested?

Download the Global Innovation Index 2017 report

Read the Global Talent Competitiveness Index report

Download the GTCI 2017 Infographic at this link

Watch the GTCI 2017 Video graphic at this link

The Asia infographic is also attached for media usage.

*To support the global innovation debate, to guide polices and to highlight good practices, metrics are required to assess innovation and related policy performance. The GII creates an environment in which innovation factors are under continual evaluation, including the following features:

• 127 country/economy profiles, including data, ranks, and strengths and weaknesses

• 81 data tables for indicators from over 30 international public and private sources, of which 57 are hard data, 19 composite indicators, and five survey questions

• A transparent and replicable computation methodology including 90% confidence intervals for each index ranking (GII, output and input sub-indices) and an analysis of factors affecting year-on-year changes in rankings

The GII 2017 is calculated as the average of two sub-indices. The Innovation Input Sub-Index gauges elements of the national economy which embody innovative activities grouped in five pillars:

• Institutions, 
• Human capital and research, 
• Infrastructure, 
• Market sophistication, and 
• Business sophistication. 

The Innovation Output Sub-Index captures actual evidence of innovation results, divided in two pillars: knowledge and technology outputs andcreative outputs.

The index is submitted to an independent statistical audit by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

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INSEAD study finds shareholder votes on CEO accountability raise company returns

Do shareholder votes improve CEO accountability and reduce corporate excesses? A new paper, Say Pays! Shareholder Voice and Firm Performance, published in the Review of Finance by Maria Guadalupe, Associate Professor of Economics and Political Science at INSEAD, shows that they do.

Prior to Guadalupe's research, there had been a lack of evidence on the consequences of adopting say-on-pay beyond the short-term market reaction. Existing research has generally examined the effect of say-on-pay after it has been legislated, which has produced mixed results.

Guadalupe’s research takes a different approach to isolate a causal estimate of the effects of say-on-pay. She examined 250 cases of proposals to adopt the say-on-pay policy from shareholders of S&P1500 firms between 2006 and 2010, which was before say-on-pay votes were mandatory.

Her conclusion is that say-on-pay has a positive impact on firms’ accounting and operational performance in the years following the vote to adopt say-on-pay. Firms that adopt say-on-pay in her sample have a higher return on assets and operating assets one year after the vote was introduced. The firms also saw a reduction in overheads and capital expenditure growth.

While she discovered no systematic change in the level or structure of CEO compensation itself or the probability of the CEO leaving the firm after a say-on-pay vote, she did find that say-on-pay increases shareholder value by about 5%.

“The say-on-pay changes CEO behaviour through two main mechanisms. First, by giving shareholders a channel to express their opinions, it intensifies board monitoring and pressure on the CEO to improve performance, especially as a negative vote could have consequences on the level of support the CEO receives within the firm. The prospect of a negative vote is also not one the CEO wants to face for the sake of his or her own career. The second is that the say-on-pay can affect the current level and structure of executive pay making it more closely tied with performance,” said Guadalupe.

Her study also finds that when shareholders in her sample put forward proposals to adopt say-on-pay, boards recommended a vote against it at shareholder meetings in 99% of cases. This, Guadalupe said, represents a misalignment of objectives between management and shareholders that mandatory say-on-pay votes can address.

“While the debate has moved on to whether to make say-on-pay votes binding, for which we have no evidence to support or dispute, it is clear that legislative intervention has addressed a market failure on two dimensions; first, aligning management closer to shareholders and second, giving all shareholders an equal voice,” she added.