The Wellington School of Business and Government (WSBG) and the Southeast Asia Centre for Asia-Pacific Excellence (SEACAPE) recently hosted the second event in their International Alumni Speaker Series, ‘Grand Challenges: A Southeast Asian Lens’.
The event featured an insightful and timely presentation by alumna Goh Swee Chen, focusing on the erosion of trust in public institutions and its impact on scientific cooperation and innovation.
Goh Swee Chen has a truly global perspective when it comes to business and partnerships. Since completing her BSc at Victoria University of Wellington, her career has spanned many sectors, including oil and gas, consumer goods, and IT. She has worked in Southeast Asia, China, the US, and Europe, has served as Chair of Shell companies in Singapore (until 2019), and currently serves on boards across sectors such as aviation, energy transition, the arts, and decarbonisation.
Her presentation, ‘Trust in a Fractious World—The Future of Research & Innovation Collaborations‘, opened with a stark warning: growing global distrust – driven by geopolitics, misinformation, and institutional failures – is threatening scientific and innovation partnerships. Citing the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Report, Ms Goh described this as an “age of grievance” where trust in international collaboration is rapidly eroding.
“More than half of major economies actively distrust government as an institution. Without trust, we risk a world where collaboration grinds to a halt – precisely at a time when global challenges such as pandemics, climate change, and technological disruption demand more cooperation than ever.”
To demonstrate the power of trust in science and innovation, Ms Goh pointed to several historical examples of global cooperation, such as CERN – the scientific trust network founded in the 1950s – or more recently the global cooperation that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The open sharing of the virus’s DNA structure allowed normally competitive companies – like Pfizer and BioNTech – to form teams that collaborated on vaccines. Governments put their trust in global mechanisms like COVAX to fund and distribute doses which “resulted in the creation of multiple effective vaccines in record time—a triumph of trusted global collaboration and scientific progress,” she said.
Ms Goh’s talk covered much ground – from diagnosing the ‘trust crisis’ to proposing practical strategies for building resilient and collaborative partnerships in a fractured world.
“The future of research and innovation collaborations will be determined not just by technological advances or financial investments, but by our ability to foster trust amid differences. This is a leadership challenge as much as a technical one.”
Ms Goh challenged business leaders to design partnerships with empathy, transparency, and mutual respect at their core, and offered several tips for them to consider:
- – Lead with transparency and integrity—sharing information openly, keeping promises, and admitting mistakes.
- – Invest in relationships and cultural understanding.
- – Implement strong cybersecurity measures in any shared systems.
- – Discuss intellectual property ownership and rules at the outset of any partnership.
- – Collaborate on setting shared standards.
- – Align around common goals such as tackling climate change or advancing global health.
In her concluding remarks, Ms Goh reiterated that trust is the key variable in the global innovation equation.
“Trust is the linchpin. Make it a priority to cultivate trust wherever you go. By doing so, you not only achieve better innovation outcomes, but you also answer a higher call: helping to restore trust in humanity’s ability to work together for a progressive future.”
Professor Jane Bryson thanked Ms Goh for her thought-provoking and timely address. She also acknowledged Bill Grindell of Datacom for generously hosting the event and extended her thanks to the Deputy High Commissioner of Singapore, Darryl Lau, as well as to faculty, students, and members of the public for their attendance and participation in a lively Q&A session.
“A key public role of universities—and of faculties that combine a focus on both business and government—is to shed light on the grand challenges facing organisations and societies today,” she said.
The third and final event in the WSBG Grand Challenges series will take place on 26 June 2025, featuring Her Excellency Dr Serey Chea, Governor or the National Bank of Cambodia.
