SINGAPORE – Organisations that seek to create value for their partners, customers, employees, communities and the wider economy strengthen the conditions for their own long-term success, said Temasek Holdings chairman Teo Chee Hean on Oct 28.
“You can always try to maximise every last cent in a deal, and even find great satisfaction in having bested your opposite number,” he said in his keynote speech at the Steward Leadership Summit, held at Hilton Singapore Orchard.
“But one has to reflect on whether the better long-term outcome comes from building a larger pie with your partners – perhaps leaving something on the table to build trust, strengthen goodwill and create room for future opportunities and partnerships.”
He said Temasek’s guiding principle is to “do right and do good by the communities we operate in, so that we can do well as an organisation”.
As a generational investor, Temasek makes decisions on commercial terms and with a long-term view, Teo said. This allows it to stay invested through market cycles rather than react to every swing in the market.
He added that shifts in geopolitics, technology, energy and business are converging and reshaping the global order. He said that smaller countries and businesses cannot afford to wait on the sidelines in the hope that things will go back to how they were before.
At the summit, Steward Leadership 25 (SL25), an annual award recognising viable solutions for the environment and society across Asia and the Pacific, announced 25 winning projects from 13 industries.
The winners for 2026 report impact in 19 geographies, up from 11 in the award’s first year in 2022. The Maldives, Taiwan, Palestine, Qatar and Tanzania are among the impact geographies appearing for the first time.
Five of the winning projects are from Singapore.
Across five years of applications, financial services is the most represented industry, followed by education, commercial and professional services and energy.
SL25 is curated by its founding partners Steward Leadership Institute (SLI), Insead Hoffmann Institute, global advisory firm WTW and The Straits Times.
It recognises winners across five impact focus areas: climate and nature; waste and circularity; empowering communities; health; and digital well-being and access.
For 2026, climate and nature leads with eight winning projects, followed by waste and circularity with seven.
One of the winning climate and nature projects was from Singapore’s Durapower Technology, which realised that without clear visibility into battery health, subtle changes in temperature, voltage or charging performance may go unnoticed until a battery fails or needs to be permanently replaced.
Durapower’s solution was to create DP Pulse, a digital platform that continuously monitors changes in temperature, voltage, current and charge. When the platform detects an unusual pattern, it alerts operators, allowing earlier servicing and reducing the risk of premature failure and replacement.
Among the waste and circularity projects honoured was Taiwan’s Ecoco, which rewards Taiwan residents for recycling. When users deposit empty PET bottles, cans, or batteries into an automated machine, they immediately receive points that can be exchanged for vouchers from participating businesses, giving each returned item a visible value.
SLI chief executive Rajeev Peshawaria said: “Over the five years since we established the SL25 awards, we have seen hundreds of business leaders who reject the notion that there is a trade-off between purpose and profit. Instead, they proactively choose to do well by doing good.”
