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Mr Koh Boon Hwee
The recipient of the IT Leader Award 2002, Koh Boon Hwee, has been described by many as a technopreneur; architect; strategist; troubleshooter; angel; contrarian; netizen and the list goes on.
Boon Hwee began his outstanding track record at a young age. As a teenager, he made the local news as one of Singapore’s top 5 students in both the Cambridge Overseas School and the Higher School Certificate examinations in the 1960s. Not only did he graduate with a First Class degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Imperial College, he was awarded the Bramwell Medal as the top student of the year. Later at the Harvard Business School, he graduated with an MBA (Distinction).
No less illustrious are Koh Boon Hwee’s achievements in his professional career. He was voted Outstanding Manager of the Year in the Singapore Business Awards organized by The Business Times and DHL Worldwide in 1991 largely for his outstanding contributions to global IT giant, Hewlett-Packard (HP).
Having begun his career as a cash and investment manager after his Harvard stint, Boon Hwee quickly rose through the ranks to become the first local Managing Director of the American multinational’s operations in Singapore. As early as 1990, he assumed additional responsibilities outside the geographic boundaries of Singapore to become HP’s Asia Pacific Director of Manufacturing and Business Development. Today, many of Boon Hwee’s ex-colleagues still hail him as one of HP Singapore’s most respected managers who not only embraced but personifies the high-tech/high-touch management philosophy as reflected in the famous ‘HP Way’ of the 1980s.
After spending 14 years at HP, Boon Hwee in his typical risk-taking style, made a surprise switch to head The Wuthelam Group, a local conglomerate. It was during this time that he founded a number of IT-related start-ups like systems integrator Delteq, and the then-listed Omni Industries, one of the largest one-stop contract manufacturers in Asia. At Omni Industries, he was instrumental in commissioning a decision to install a S$11-million SAP solution for the firm, a large sum in IT for a local company. Boon Hwee recently co-founded ConnexWave, one of the few leading software and consulting services companies in Asia focusing on PLM (Product Life Cycle Management), an essential technology for business to business collaboration across both supply and demand chains.
Boon Hwee is widely acknowledged by the IT community as a leader in the business of angel investing. Since the mid-1980s, he has supported no less than 20 startup IT ventures, putting in not just initial funding but also providing contacts, guidance and expertise to the aspiring technopreneurs. He has served on the boards of not just local companies like MediaRing but also U.S. based firms like BroadVision and QAD.
At SingTel and its predecessor organisation, where he was appointed and then re-elected several times as Chairman from 1986 to 2001, Boon Hwee worked hand-in-hand with the leadership team to help steer a statutory board providing telecom services in a monopoly environment to one of Asia’s leading integrated communications service providers. As the youngest chairman in the organisation’s history, his energy, enthusiasm and forthrightness were evident.
In the words of an ex-senior SingTel staff, "Boon Hwee’s biggest contribution (besides bringing SingTel overseas), was in introducing a more business-like and entrepreneurial spirit in terms of customer service and speed of operations. Not only did he bring in the mandate of listening to the Voice of the Customer, he walked his talk by making sure he was present at each and every presentation by the researchers of the annual customer satisfaction survey.
During Boon Hwee’s chairmanship, SingTel became the first major statutory board to be corporatised to compete in a privatized environment, and in 1993, went on to be listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange. Several of Singapore’s significant telecom milestones were achieved during his tenure. The digital mobile phone system, GSM, was launched. SingTel’s local telephone network was the first in the world to go fully digital, a significant step into the broadband era. SingNet, Singapore’s first public access service to the Internet, commenced operations. SingTel’s expanded geographic footprint speaks for itself. From a monopoly service provider of telecoms services in Singapore, SingTel is now a leading regional player in Asia Pacific. Many of Boon Hwee’s ex-colleagues in SingTel would agree that he has left an incredible legacy during his 15 year tenure as Chairman.
The list of Koh Boon Hwee’s accomplishment goes on - his chairmanship of the Nanyang Technological University Council; aviation giant Singapore Airlines; and his appointment to the national Economic Committee in the recession of the 80s.
He is an early-adopter in the industry who firmly believes that no responsible CEO would abdicate the responsibility to shape an organisation’s IT strategy just to a CIO. A man who evangelizes that in less than a decade, IT and communication infrastructures of homes would be accorded the same attention as the electricity and plumbing requirements today. A man who constantly warns us to take heed of the power of today’s generation of IT-savvy kids to dictate the shape of the IT and telecom industry. And a man whose personal lifestyle reflects, not surprisingly, that of a passionate IT embracer – with his highly intelligent network, multiple PCs in his home. And most of all, an inspiring and fearless leader who has pushed out the boundaries of what’s possible in an e-topia of the future.
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