ABSTRACT
Japan, Singapore and Asia In modern historical context – for example in the 1980s – Japan was one of the earliest leaders of the world in seeking to harness the development potential of “high technology,” especially by means of its technopolis strategy – for example, see Tatsuno 1986; cf. Morris-Suzuki 1994. Another early information technology (IT) and service-economy pioneer of the era and of the Eastern Asia region was the city-state of Singapore. Its high priority for planning and making investment in IT in the 1985-6 period was in part a function of responding to a contemporary worldwide economic recession. As a city-region and country, Singapore has been particularly noteworthy as a benchmark case of one of the world’s earliest and continuing practitioners of innovative strategic planning for digital development and, more recently, for intelligent development. Further, Singapore’s early planning of digital development innovations operated to stimulate analogous development innovation by Singapore’s competitors and near-neighbors in Southeast Asia (Corey 1998; 2000; and cf.
