When SMU alumnus Vincent Lai arrived in Singapore from Malacca at the age of 19, he couldn’t string together a sentence in English. A six-month internship with Standard Chartered inspired him and three other students to build an interactive touch screen the size of a large coffee table to make selling financial products more interactive.

According to Dean of the SMU School of Information Systems, Professor Steven Miller: "At that time, it was a pioneering application as this was prior to the launch of the iPad, and even prior to the release of the Microsoft Surface Table."

At 28, Vincent is now the CEO of Tocco Studios, a five-year-old multi-touch solution business. Commenting on his former student, SMU Associate Professor of English Literature Kirpal Singh said: “His mission, I feel, is to convince people to believe in the goodness and value of new, original ideas and to show the world that even small countries like Singapore and Malaysia, where he comes from, can and do make an impact on the global stage when it comes to creativity and innovation."